Success factors of digital university teaching (EdiHo)

What makes for good digital university teaching?

Due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, semesters could not be conducted in the usual classroom formats. In most cases, teaching and learning opportunities had to be redesigned. As a result, the digitisation of university teaching experienced an enormous development boost. The research project "Success Factors of Digital University Teaching" (short German version: EdiHo) provides insights into which developments contribute to increasing the quality of teaching and learning at universities in the long term, even after the pandemic.

Cooperative HE Research Project "Success Factors of Digital Higher Education Teaching" (EdiHo)

EdiHo was set up and coordinated by the Institute for Applied Statistics (ISTAT) as a cooperative university research project. In addition to the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, the University of Bielefeld, the University of Duisburg-Essen, the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, the FernUniversität in Hagen and the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen participated.

Participants

Students and teachers were surveyed using coordinated questionnaires in order to obtain nationwide comparative as well as university-specific analyses. The respondents were asked to give a summative assessment of the semester and the switch to digital teaching and learning after the completion of the summer semester 2020 and the examinations. The survey phase took place at H-BRS in the winter semester 20/21.

Focus and aim

The focus of the study was on the assessment of concrete implementations of digital forms of teaching and learning. Information relevant to steering was generated for university administrations as well as insights for university didactics and teaching staff. The aim of the project was to provide summative information based on the experiences made in the summer semester 2020 in order to enable evidence-based decisions for the longer-term design of digital university teaching.

The survey covered topics such as:

Course formats and online tools,
Interaction between students and lecturers,
workload,
compatibility of family and work/study,
technical equipment.

Results

Thematic reports and analyses were published at the department level.
A scientific use file will be made available by the Institute for Applied Statistics (ISTAT) to interested academics via the Leibniz Institute for Social Research.