Abstract:

University teaching is no longer limited to attendance-based courses, rather lectures and seminars are increasingly supplemented by e-learning platforms. These digital tools provide the opportunity to adjust teaching to the students’ individual needs and is therefore a key instrument of the political demand to keep education inclusive. This normative claim is increasingly being implemented in the educational landscape which can be illustrated by the example of RWTH Aachen University: While German federal and state policies recommend the digitalization of university teaching, RWTH Aachen University has incorporated this recommendation into its “Digitalization Strategy for Teaching” and is actively implementing this with different tools.

While the use of e-learning platforms in the university environment is largely considered useful, the factual introduction and implementation of such a system at a large institution is not trivial. The benefits as well as the success of an e-learning platform is based directly on its application-oriented provision. Consequently, it is important not only to ask questions about the effects of digital teaching to the learning success, but also to take a closer look at the "how-to" of introducing such a system. Thus, the paper’s objective is to give an application-oriented practical report of such an introduction at a large German university. The paper refers to the introduction of the e-learning platform RWTHmoodle at the RWTH Aachen University and will focus especially on the role of the first-level support: The IT-ServiceDesk as single point of contact plays an important role in the user-oriented introduction of different IT services at RWTH Aachen University. In the case of RWTHmoodle, the first level support is especially important to ensure the high-quality usage of this platform. RWTHmoodle is based on Moodle - an open-source system that can be adapted to the needs of the institution using it.

For the paper’s objective, three questions are at the center of the discussion: How can the actual demands and needs of users on a e-learning platform and support structures be evaluated? What are the difficulties with the user-oriented introduction of an e-learning platform and how were they solved in the case of RWTHmoodle? What specific role does first-level support play in the introduction of RWTHmoodle?

The paper is based on the experiences of the introduction of RWTHmoodle in the summer semester of 2019. This introduction was preceded by a total of three test and pilot phases. During these test and pilot phases, quantified user surveys were carried out, which will be further discussed in the paper.

Keywords:

Moodle, e-learning, evaluation, support.