The cooperation between the Pedagogical University Tyrol and the Gordon College of Education in Haifa, Israel, has been dedicated to world literature and digital teaching settings.
Already in September 2018, two colleagues of the Gordon College of Education visited the PH-Tirol and held workshops for PHT lecturers on the topics "How to produce a learning video" and "How to work collaboratively in an online environment" as part of the Professionals' LAB. During this visit, intensive work was done on the planning and implementation of an e-mobility option for students. While e-learning is a well-known concept, e-mobility is a relatively new approach in which the exchange of content is promoted or facilitated online.
The concrete implementation took place through a Moodle course, which was conceived in the winter semester 2018/19 and implemented in January 2019. This was designed as a cooperative and moderated online seminar and integrated into courses of both partner universities. Students from PHT and Gordon College of Education took part in this online seminar simultaneously over the course of a week. The content of this course was about working with and teaching literature in schools. The centre piece of the online course was the creation of a video by the students, presenting a literary text and explaining how they would bring it closer to their future pupils and integrate it into their lessons. The students from Israel and Austria then gave each other peer feedback.
During a follow-up visit by PHT lecturers at Gordon College of Education, the topics of literature, literary education and interculturality were taken up again and developed in several courses using the example of fairy tales with students from Gordon College of Education.
Both lecturers and students of both universities have gained new insights into the possibilities of conveying literature in a school context from an intercultural perspective by means of this online course. Thus eLearning and the digitalisation of education were means to an end and enriched teaching at both universities. The results were analysed and discussed in detail within the framework of two mobilities (PHT-Gordon College of Education and Gordon College of Education-PHT) and the possibilities for further development of the course were discussed.
From left to right: Project meeting at the PHT (Anita Konrad, Davida Pollak, Patrick Pallhuber, Reinhold Madritsch, Ariella Levenberg, Melanie Steiner); Etti Gordon Ginzburg with students of the English specialisation course; discussion with e-learning specialists from partner universities (Ariella Levenberg, Davida Pollak, Reinhold Madritsch, Patrick Pallhuber)
A second important result of the project year is an "explainer video", which was produced during this follow-up visit. This was also a cooperative project. After the presentation and explanation of the innovative digital learning environments at the Gordon College of Education, PHT members documented the "Futuristic Space" of the Gordon College of Education with film and image recordings, members of the ICT team of the partner university supplemented the documentation with the educational concept of the "Futuristic Space".
The resulting video will be used at both partner institutions, and the insights and ideas gained will also be incorporated into the design of the new classrooms and learning environments at PHT's Pastorstraße campus.
From the point of view of the lecturers, the mutual exchange and the continuous work on a concrete project over several meetings were assessed very positively. From the students' point of view, the online course also promoted internationalisation @home and showed how this can be made possible by digital media - keyword e-mobility. Especially with regard to the digitisation of education and teaching and learning settings, this mobility project ends with a very good output and insight:
Digitalisation is enriching teaching, not replacing it.
From left to right: visitng the "Futuristic Classroom" at Gordon College of Education (Melanie Steiner, Anita Konrad, Patrick Pallhuber, Reinhold Madritsch) ; PHT-lecturers teaching at Gordon College of Education (Reinhold Madritsch; Melanie Steiner, Anita Konrad)
Text: Patrick Pallhuber, Melanie Steiner, Anita Konrad