Effectively Utilizing Digital Media in the Classroom for Learning Enhancement
The Tübingen School of Education (TüSE), the Center for Digitalization in Teacher Education (TüDiLB), the Hector Institute for Empirical Educational Research (HIB), and the Department of Adult Education at the University of Tübingen offered a comprehensive professional development program in the context of digital education for teachers starting in the spring of 2022. The professional development initiative aimed to create a research-based offering to enhance teachers' competencies related to digitalization.
The challenges currently faced by history teachers are immense. Effective history education should provide students with historical orientation while considering competence orientation, digitalization, and inclusion. Support is offered to teachers through resources such as digital teaching and learning materials, as well as professional development opportunities.
As part of the KLUG project – InKLUsiv History Teaching, funded by the BMBF and conducted by the universities of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Tübingen, and Oldenburg, the effectiveness of such offerings was evaluated using a controlled group design.
Results of the KLUG Study
The effectiveness of the KLUG concept was demonstrated through a randomized controlled intervention study:
Students of the trained teachers showed significantly better development of their historical competencies compared to the classes of the waiting control group teachers.
After the professional development, students rated their teachers as significantly more enthusiastic about history than those in the waiting control group.
They reported receiving better support, particularly in terms of more feedback.
Digital media have become an integral part of our daily lives. In many professions, humans and computers increasingly share responsibilities, with computers taking on a larger share of the tasks. A fundamental question arising from the ubiquity of digital media in everyday life and work is to what extent our education system adequately prepares children and adolescents for this digital environment. This includes the question of how well they learn to use digital media as cognitive tools that enable them to flexibly complete a variety of tasks and support knowledge acquisition processes effectively.
