Sover@gn Digital Teaching and Learning

With the project "Sovereign@nes digitales Lehren und Lernen in Niedersachsen" (SOUVER@N; en: sovereign digital teaching and learning in lower saxony), recently approved by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education Teaching, Leuphana University Lüneburg is participating in a state-wide cooperation project with a total of 9 network partners with a duration of 2021-2024; starting in August 2021. The aim of the project is to promote sovereign digital teaching and learning. This includes 1) the sovereign, i.e. competent and learning-goal-oriented use of digital tools on the part of teachers and students (digital literacy) as well as 2) the professional development of high-quality digitally enriched teaching/learning concepts and content and 3) the digital sovereignty of the universities as institutions strengthened by the network.

With the intensive use of digital learning technologies in the past few semesters, experience and digital competences, but also didactic, legal and technical needs and requirements have increased massively. Oriented towards the goal of digital sovereignty, the partners in the network have joined forces in order to be able to meet the increased requirements in the long term by bundling their competences and services in the areas of IT basis, services and content.

The SERVICES field of action is coordinated by the teaching service of Leuphana University of Lüneburg in cooperation with the virtUOS centre of the University of Osnabrück and pursues the following objectives:

The centre of the field of action is an agile innovation network, through which processes are established that, in the sense of a learning organisation, record existing, new and discontinued needs and requirements of users and map them in development and services based on the division of labour. The innovation network is a virtual umbrella under which the development and support facilities of the network partners come together and through which users can access support and services.

Another area in the SERVICES field of action, coordinated by ELAN e.V., concerns the clarification of legal issues in the context of digital teaching and learning.

The concrete measures in this field of action concern:

1. Qualification, support and service offers in the media-didactic and technical areas
2. Provision of digital tools for studying and teaching in line with demand
3. Networking of ELAN e.V. with the legal representatives/data protection officers at the joint universities
4. Development and provision of information, handouts, services and training courses

The field of action CONTENT/OER is coordinated by the University of Oldenburg and the Hannover Medical School and pursues the following objectives:

Digital learning modules and teaching materials are to be created in cooperation between the partners, which, after testing and proving themselves, will be offered sustainably at the partner universities and made widely available as OER under various Creative Commons licences.

The concrete measures in this field of action concern:

1. Development of digital learning content for the basic qualification in German/Mathematics or Sachunterricht (teaching profession primary school).
2. Provision of digital teaching skills for tutors
3. Best practice collection for teaching/learning concepts

The IT-BASIS field of action is coordinated by the universities of Osnabrück, Oldenburg and Clausthal University of Technology and pursues the following objectives:

The coordinated operation of technologies for digital and hybrid learning and teaching is to take place within the framework of an operational concept based on the division of labour and oriented towards the respective expertise and resources. The goal here is also the - deliberately partly redundant - expansion of the service portfolio. The aim is to achieve a mixture of open source and commercial products that offer the universities equally diverse, functional and independently designable software solutions for the autonomous (sovereign) design of the digital space. The selection and further development is oriented towards the needs and usage habits of teachers and students and at the same time takes into account (data protection) legal criteria, questions of long-term cost development, integrability into existing systems, stability and reliability.

The concrete measures in this field of action relate to the areas of:

1. Server infrastructure and basic services
2. Learning management systems Stud.IP, Moodle and ILIAS
3. Event recording systems
4. Video conferencing systems

Under the joint leadership of the Universities of Osnabrück, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg and Leuphana University Lüneburg, the project also involves the Foundation University of Hildesheim, Clausthal University of Technology, the University of Vechta, the Foundation University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover and the Hanover Medical School, as well as the E-Learning Academic Network (ELAN e.V.).

At Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the project is led by Prof. Dr. Erich Hörl (Vice President for College and Quality Development) and Dr. Julia Webersik (Head of the Teaching Service). In addition to the teaching service, the Media and Information Centre is also involved in SOUVER@N.

The SOUVER@N project sees itself as the nucleus for the development of a state-wide network whose services and offers are to be extended step by step to all universities in Lower Saxony and later rolled out nationwide in certain specialised areas. It thus makes a significant contribution to the state-wide initiative Hochschule.digital Niedersachsen.

Here you can find more information on the umbrella initiative Hochschule.digital Niedersachsen (in german).

Here you can find information on the collaborative partner "E-Learning Academic Network" (ELAN e.V.)