The aim of the junior research group (JRG) is to analyse, examine and design digital media for use in schools. The project team will work closely with teachers and students at upper and lower secondary level at three kinds of secondary school: a comprehensive, secondary modern and a grammar school. A doctoral thesis in media studies and one in information science will result from the project as well as a habilitation thesis on the area of intersection between media studies and educational science. In the context of the group the heuristic concept of media constellations serves both as an instrument of media studies research and transfer, and as a background foil for interdisciplinary exchange.
Research
The JRG’s research combines the interconnected fields of a) participative project work, b) discipline-specific doctoral and habilitation theses and c) interdisciplinary research.
a) The participative project work will involve researchers working with teachers, and sometimes students, to develop themes and objectives related to digital media in schools. These activities will range from the introduction of tablets, the design of in-school teacher training on digital media, a knowledge management concept for digital teaching tools and the creation of digital surveys on learning content by students regarding the design of a digital system for evaluating student performance data that takes security and privacy factors into consideration.
b) The discipline-specific academic theses are connected with the participative project work but follow their own objectives and research questions and will generate additional data and research output. For example, the information science PhD will be based on interviews conducted to identify the requirements for designing a secure system to compare performance data and to develop technical and conceptual solutions that generate informatics research output. It will also involve literature reviews of digital performance evidence and adaptive learning systems. A central observation at the outset was that issues of privacy are frequently addressed in articles on learning analytics but that approaches for solutions are rarely presented nor are those affected involved in development. As a consequence, the team established that the development of systems to monitor performance records rarely adequately involves users and that privacy considerations are frequently secondary. Such systems are designed only to replace existing systems instead of enabling a far-reaching transformation of processes.
The doctoral thesis in media studies will be based on results from workshops held as part of the participative process, but will also involve observations in schools and interviews in order to gain a perspective of media practices in the ‘digitalisation process’. Initial findings reveal that the transformations of media practices observed in school lessons cannot be explained by digitalisation discourses or school-specific strategies, but result from the often implicit and situated practical execution of lessons.
The habilitation thesis uses the media constellation model both for reflective and design processes in the participative project work as well as for theory work at the interface between media studies and educational science and for the analysis of media phenomena. For example, the head of the JRG was able to introduce media constellation analysis, which views media as a co-constitutive interplay of materialities, knowledge/practices, content, and subject positions, into the current methodological debate within media studies, and to publish a corresponding article in the Handbuch digitale Medien und Methoden (Handbook of digital media and methods), a book which is central to the debate. The group head also published an educational science article on education-related media constellations in the Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik (Quarterly journal for academic pedagogy), which proposes assessing and analysing education as a process of iterative capture and appropriation of subject positions in different media constellations, thus making media theory productive for empirical educational research.
c) The JRG has a strong interdisciplinary composition and regular meetings take place at which researchers report on their key questions, methodologies and interim results. This provides a vital expansion of the respective disciplinary perspectives, for example through explanations of technical functionalities or discussions about interview concepts. Joint publications are also written. The members of the JRG were also able to analyse the inscription of behaviourist teaching and learning concepts in an adaptive learning system as the result of informatic modelling. They worked out how students are conceptualised as profiles of interconnected competencies and knowledge gaps, and how learning is a process of adapting one's own actual profile to target profiles specified by the program.
Transfer
The central transfer activities are the workshops on media reflection that build upon the media constellation model. Other activities include: an OER unit on media reflection, talks on digital media in a practical context, several discussions on privacy and digital media as part of the Book a Scientist programme, a podcast on postdigital participation in education as well as contributions to expert opinions on papers relevant to education policy by the KMK (standing committee of the German ministers of culture), the Association for the Promotion of Science and Humanities in Germany and the coalition agreement of the German government.
Key Publications
- Weich, Andreas/Deny, Philipp/Friedewald, Michael/Priedigkeit, Marvin/Schiering, Ina (i. Ersch./2023): Let’s figure it out. Participatory means for reflecting educational media in a postdigital world. In: Macgilchrist, Felicitas/Weich, Andreas (ed.): Postdigital Participation in Education. Who participates how in contemporary media constellations? Palgrave MacMillan.
- Weich, Andreas/Kaldrack, Irina/Deny, Philipp (i. Ersch./2023): Videoconferencing in Teaching Constellations. In: Volmar, Axel/Moskatova, Olga/Distelmeyer, Jan (ed.): Video Conferencing: Practices, Politics, Aesthetics. Bielefeld: Transcript.
- Weich, Andreas (2023 online/2024 print): Medienkonstellationsanalyse. In: Stollfuß, Sven/Niebling, Laura/Raczkowski, Felix (ed.): Handbuch Digitale Medien und Methoden. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
- Deny, Philipp/Priedeigkeit, Marvin/Weich, Andreas (2023): Zwischen Vertrauen und Kontrolle. Postdigitale Medienkonstellationen im schulischen Unterricht. In: In Education We Trust? Vertrauen in Bildung und Bildungsmedien.
- Weich, Andreas (2022): Bildungsbezogene Medienkonstellationsanalyse. Konturen einer vermittelnden Herangehensweise angesichts der Grenze zwischen Subjekt und Medien. In: Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik. Themenheft: Bildung des Menschen im Anthropozän. Die Grenzen des Menschen neu erforschen. Einsätze Pädagogischer Anthropologie.
- Priedigkeit, Marvin/Weich, Andreas/Schiering, Ina (2021): Learning Analytics and Privacy Respecting Privacy in Digital Learning Scenarios In: IFIP International Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management.
- Weich, Andreas/Deny, Philipp/Priedeigkeit, Marvin/Troeger, Jasmin (2021): Adaptive Lernsysteme zwischen Optimierung und Kritik. Eine Analyse der Medienkonstellationen bettermarks aus informatischer und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive. In: Datengetriebene Schule. Themenheft der Zeitschrift Medienpädagogik.
- Weich, Andreas (2020): Hervorbringung von Medienkonstellationen statt Nutzung didaktischer Werkzeuge. Versuch einer medienkulturwissenschaftlichen Didaktik der Bildungsmedien am Beispiel von Videokonferenzen als Unterrichtsform. In: Medienimpulse. 2/20 Nähe(n) und Distanz(en) in Zeiten der COVID-19-Krise.
- Weich, Andreas (2020): Digitale Medien und Methoden: Andreas Weich über die Medienkonstellationsanalyse. In: Open-Media-Studies-Blog, 16.06.2020.
- Weich, Andreas/Koch, Katja/Othmer, Julius (2020): Medienreflexion als Teil „digitaler Kompetenzen“ von Lehrkräften? – Eine interdisziplinäre Analyse des TPACK und des DigCompEdu-Modells. In: k:ON – Kölner Online Journal für Lehrer*innenbildung, 1/2020, p. 43-64.
