Abstract:

High-quality teaching results from interaction between teachers and learners. Achieving a high degree of interaction between teachers and learners in purely digital teaching is challenging. This contribution presents an innovative teaching and learning approach for distance study students that facilitates and promotes a very high degree of interaction. The structure of this approach, including all the media, materials, tools used, and data on the students' interaction rate, is explained and differentiated from other teaching and learning approaches.

The method has been tested for four semesters in the distance learning module "Introduction to Computer Science” at IU International University of Applied Sciences. The participants are first-semester students of different computer science study programs and are geographically spread all over the world. Similar to a blended learning approach, the students prepare in an individual learning phase (accompanied by various digital media) for a virtual presence phase, which serves to deepen and prepare for the examination of the teaching content. The virtual presence phase consists of several live virtual sessions, which are held either weekly or bundled within 1 to 2 weeks. Each live session is attended by an average of 20 to 50 students and lasts 90 minutes.

A live session begins with a warm-up phase, followed a learning phase that uses a digital whiteboard. The content of a course book unit is structured and clearly summarized on the digital whiteboard by the educator before the session. However, essential terms have been removed beforehand, resulting in so-called "didactic gaps" on the whiteboard. These "didactic gaps" are then filled step-by-step during a guided discussion in the live session and the explanation of the contexts with the help of interactive feedback from the students. While the educator queries and contextualizes the terms and concepts, students provide their input or feedback through the chat. Questions can also be asked directly via the chat and integrated into the explanations. The unique aspect here is that not just one student answers a question, but all students, if possible, enter the missing term. Consequently, the educator gains an immediate overview of where uncertainties in understanding still exist and can respond directly with additional explanations. Students can reflect on their knowledge of the learning unit and close knowledge gaps immediately through follow-up questions. With this approach, several hundred answers, questions, and pieces of customized feedback are possible per live session, thereby achieving a higher degree of interaction than would be feasible in a physical classroom setting. The session concludes with live quizzes to further reinforce the knowledge. Here too, the educator's commentary on the correct and incorrect answers plays a central role.

The often-lacking interaction opportunities in distance learning can not only be elegantly supplemented by this approach but can even be intensified compared to physical classroom teaching. By closing the “didactic gaps” on the prepared whiteboards, this approach not only fills the students’ knowledge gaps but also fosters a collaborative international teaching and learning experience, creating a sense of community among the students who are studying worldwide, while allowing students to maintain a tailored level of anonymity, ranging from chat-only to audio and video participation.

Keywords:

Virtual teaching, distance study, didactic gaps.