How digitalization is progressing

The digital transformation opens up new opportunities for universities to further develop their programs and structures across all areas of operation, particularly in the areas of teaching and learning.

Implementing modern teaching and learning formats, counseling and support services, as well as new curricula and academic structures, requires an overarching strategy. Aware of this challenge, the HSZG, under the leadership of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and International Relations, Professor Sophia Keil, successfully applied in 2020 for the peer-to-peer strategy consultation offered by the Higher Education Forum on Digitalization (HFD).

During this period, experts from the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung guided the HSZG in its strategic exploration of digital teaching and learning. This peer-to-peer format focused on the key areas of the digital workplace, as well as educational equity, access, and openness. Together with the HSZG, the experts developed recommendations for the further advancement of digitalization, specifically for teaching and learning. As part of our university’s participatory “University for Future” process, the peer-to-peer consultation represents another milestone in the HSZG’s strategic direction. Building on the peers’ recommendations, an action plan was formulated in collaboration with stakeholders from the Office of Education, the Centre for eLearning (Zfe), and other university members.

Through this action plan, the HSZG is pursuing comprehensive goals and implementing measures aimed at enhancing the attractiveness of the university as a place to study, as well as ensuring quality assurance. Therefore, the next step will be to launch a project group on “Digitization in Academic Studies and Teaching,” which will develop a strategy for the future direction of academic studies and teaching. The goal is to develop a vision (Why), mission (How), and guiding principles (What) for digitization by 2030 and to integrate these into the HSZG’s existing guiding principles. From this, the profile and digital identity of our university will be derived. The first new initiative in the 2022/23 winter semester will be to promote exchange among HSZG faculty members through the “Good Practices” format in the context of digitization. The Vice President for Academic Affairs, in cooperation with the Centre for eLearning (Zfe), will issue regular invitations for this purpose. The goal is to create a platform for faculty members to exchange ideas with other internal or external faculty members. Furthermore, faculty members will learn about support opportunities through projects and become familiar with new digital tools for their own teaching. A corresponding event schedule is currently being prepared.

Since the process of developing the digitalization strategy is being designed to be participatory in accordance with the University Executive Board’s guiding principles, the Vice President invites all interested individuals to participate in this initiative. At the same time, she extends her sincere thanks to all those who have contributed to the peer-to-peer strategy consultation.