postdigital.io
A cross-site teaching-research project
The interdisciplinary teaching-research project “Digitale Grenzen überwinden” (Overcoming Digital Boundaries) connected two universities and three degree programmes: 35 master’s students of educational science, media education and computer science at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg worked together on innovative approaches to questions of media education under the conditions of digitality. The project was led by Florian Krückel (Würzburg) and Dan Verständig.
Following a multi-day kick-off meeting in April 2019, mixed-site teams developed four projects that connect theory and practice and are documented as freely accessible Open Educational Resources:
- Excellenz — a personalised, game-based learning environment: a prototype linking classic knowledge-management content with playful elements for adult education.
- Die drei Selbste (The Three Selves) — self-tracking and Bildung: a theoretically and empirically grounded engagement with the Quantified Self, conveyed as an accessible story.
- Digitale Medien im Lehramt (Digital Media in Teacher Education) — a comparative empirical study of the media-pedagogical competence of teachers and student teachers across several German federal states, designed, conducted and analysed by the students themselves.
- Roboter in der Schule (Robots at School) — the relationship between humans and machines from theoretical and practical perspectives, resulting in a six-session course for children aged 9 to 12, piloted with a fourth-grade class at a primary school in Magdeburg.
Why good practice? The project shows how student work can grow beyond the assessed assignment: the results were not filed away but published as freely reusable materials. Interdisciplinary teams across two universities, a genuine field test in the classroom, and the consistent connection of educational-theoretical reflection with hands-on design make it a model for project-based teaching in media education.