| Erfurt School of Education, Erziehungswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Philosophische Fakultät, Forschung, Hochschule, Studium

Funding for innovative impulse project on digitally supported teaching

The eTEACH Network Thuringia has selected four cooperative impulse projects for funding. Among them is a project by Katharina Waldner, Professor of General Religious Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt.

In the teaching project entitled "Sacred spaces in Erfurt - analogue and digital: an experimental-aesthetic teaching project using the example of the medialisation and sacralisation of spatial experiences", a seminar for Erfurt students of religious studies and urban and spatial planning is to be designed and carried out together with Prof. Dr Doris Gstach, Professor of Open Space Planning and Landscape Planning at the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt, and Dr Silke Martin, currently Substitute Professor of Children's and Youth Media Studies at the University of Erfurt.

Prof. Dr. Katharina Waldner
Professor Katharina Waldner

The project focuses on the experience and analysis of three spatial levels ("real", "digital", "transcendent"). In the process, a hybrid, aesthetic-experimental teaching model will be developed in cooperation between urban planning, religious studies and media studies using the example of so-called 'sacred' spaces and places (e.g. various church spaces, synagogues, etc.). After an initially "analogue" and individual experience of such spaces, culturally designated as 'sacred', this experience is not only to be reflected on theoretically by the students, but also medialised and digitalised so that the students can subsequently create a digital teaching/learning unit on the seminar topic themselves. The resulting self-learning tool will then be made available to everyone in the eTEACH network. The project begins on 1 September, runs for six months and is funded with a staff position.

The eTEACH network - an association of all state universities in Thuringia - promotes innovative impulse projects that digitally enrich and develop teaching, learning and testing at Thuringian universities. The results of these projects will then serve as impulses for teachers at all Thuringian universities. Prof. Dr. Gerd Mannhaupt, the academic director of the eTEACH network, is pleased that a project from the University of Erfurt has also been awarded funding in the first round and at the same time encourages his colleagues from the University of Erfurt to apply for the next round. The deadline for applications for the second funding round is 1 October 2021.

In addition to funding innovations, the network also offers qualification formats and events. There are contact points at each institution for networking between the universities and for internal university support. The positions at the University of Erfurt with a focus on teaching and testing have just been advertised and are to be filled as soon as possible.