Abstract:

The change of role from learner to teacher (MacGregor 2009; Kosinár 2014), the appreciation of theory, the awareness of metacognitive reflections on one's learning process (Knight 2015), and – at least in Germany, although there is a recognizable positive development (Lorenz, Yotyodying, Eickelmann, & Endberg 2022) – digital media literacy are central problem areas in teacher education. They are part of the 21st Century Skills (Trilling & Fadel 2009), and their acquisition during studies is slow. Time pressure and limited subject didactic offers in teacher training make eliminating these deficits more difficult. A successive, additive focus on each competence has yet to prove useful. Suppose subject-specific study content of the later school teaching subjects is acquired simultaneously with the didactic and pedagogical perspectives – i.e., similar to the digital deep learning processes – the necessary networking for one's later teaching practice seems more straightforward (Dede 2010). That can be drawn from evaluating a teaching offer at the TU Dortmund University and the Ludwigsburg University of Education.
The digital course "MediaDigidactic," a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) – developed by students for students under professorial supervision and part of a third-party project sponsored by the Stifterverband, “a joint initiative started by companies and foundations” (Stifterverband.org) – has been tested at both universities for four semesters to counteract these desiderata in terms of content and method. First, in two semesters, master's students in cross-university groups developed and revised 12 learning units on topics of digital competence needs in the school context as a Moodle course for their fellow students at the bachelor's level (Marci-Boehncke & Rath 2022). As a result, bachelor students of both universities in German and ethics have been able to take this course for two semesters now and work independently with digital exchange possibilities. They start with specialist knowledge of mediality and mediatization (Krotz 2007), deepen their understanding of lesson planning with TPACK (Koehler & Mishra 2008) and ITPACK (Marci-Boehncke 2018), get to know Universal Design for Learning (Meyer & Rose 1984; Cast 2018) concerning digital possibilities, reflect on the opportunities and possibilities of social media in teaching and deal with the development of Artificial Intelligence. In this way, the contents of the subject sciences on the horizontal level and 21st Century skills on the vertical level are connected actively.
Expectations and learning success were surveyed to evaluate this setting. The results show that the acceptance of peer-based teaching/learning offers is high – despite the need for more technical professionalism in some cases (McGarr, O'Grady & Guilfoyle 2016). These experiences suggest that the model should be adapted to emphasize voluntary peer-based formats in in-service teacher training (Balta, Michinov, Balyimez & Ayaz 2017).

Keywords:

21st Century Skills, Pre-Service Teacher Training, MOOC, Collaborative and problem-based teaching and learning.