"Making the most of the digitalization push!"

Our university, together with other Saxon universities and the Saxony State Office for Higher Education (BA Sachsen), has been awarded funding in the first call for proposals from the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education. The collaborative project “Implementing Digitalization in Disciplines in a Participatory Manner: Competencies Connected (D2C2)” promotes innovations in digital teaching and their participatory implementation. The project addresses four key challenges in digital higher education for the coming years:

1. developing students’ digital competencies in undergraduate education,
2. enabling didactically sound digitized workshop and laboratory work,
3. establishing the pedagogically sound use of an OER assignment pool for mathematics as a foundational subject, and
4. creating a shared didactic, technical, and legal understanding of digital exams.

To advance the digitization of teaching and learning across disciplines, the “Students as Partners” and “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” approaches are being consistently and comprehensively implemented. Overall coordination is handled by the Saxony Center for University Pedagogy (HDS). The Prorectors of the HDS leadership team form the steering committee. The HDS Scientific Advisory Board and the E-Learning Working Group of the Saxony State Rectors’ Conference form the project advisory board.

The project will run for 36 months and is expected to receive a total of approximately 5 million euros in funding.

In addition to Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences, other participants in the collaborative project include TU Dresden, the University of Leipzig, TU Chemnitz, HTWK Leipzig, HTW Dresden, Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, West Saxon University of Applied Sciences Zwickau, the Academy of Fine Arts, ehs Dresden, and the State Office for Higher Education in Saxony. “This collaborative project offers an opportunity to capitalize on the digitalization surge in higher education—accelerated by the pandemic—for the post-COVID era. Digitalization, for example, offers opportunities for national and international inter-university teaching collaborations and can increase the flexibility of academic programs, ” emphasizes Professor Keil, Vice President for Education and International Affairs at HSZG, adding: “The project aims to help harness the benefits of digitization in teaching and strike an optimal balance with in-person instruction. I would like to thank everyone involved for their participatory and constructive collaboration, and I look forward to this joint project.”