Abstract:

In times of increasing heterogeneity of learners, German universities face, among others, the challenge of meeting the didactic demands for individual and student-centred learning. Teaching and its technological support through learning management systems (LMS) is currently structured as a one-size-fits-all principle. LMS are particularly useful for organising large numbers of students, providing learning content and creating opportunities for communication and cooperation. However, beyond these basic and proprietary technologies, there are highly specialized technologies that can provide individual support through learning analytics, in-process feedback and mentoring.

The article aims to outline how the quality of learning processes at German universities can be improved by technically combining different technologies and securing the data exchange between them. For this purpose, we describe the technical concept and the data cycle between different systems within the framework of the development of a so-called Mentoring Workbench. We consider this as a solution to combine the established infrastructures with innovative applications and tools, which support mentoring in a way that allows both university teachers and students to stick to their routines. They can do so by using their well-known LMS alongside specialised tools for delivering or gaining individual assistance and feedback.

The design and implementation of the Mentoring Workbench is based on web components, which are used for firstly, merging data from different systems, secondly, generating feedback externally, and, thirdly, showing this feedback to students as well as teachers in the existing LMS. For this technical concept the following aspects must be taken into account:
(1) the secure and protected export of student-related data from the proprietary systems of the universities;
(2) the external storage, aggregation, processing and interpretation of this data as well as
(3) the individual and demand-orientated presentation of the information generated for students as well as lecturers within the proprietary infrastructures.

In addition to the technical conception, there are also data protection and organizational challenges and requirements that have to be faced in the development. This article describes the approaches that are being developed to solve the above-mentioned challenges within the framework of a current research project.

Our paper serves as a proof of concept, and reflects on the didactical, technical as well as organisational aspects on the implementation of the prototype of a new educational technology in German higher education. This includes the presentation of our use cases, the demonstration of the data cycle and the implementation of the web components as well as a reflection on trusted data usage and the implications for the design and technical implementation process. We will depict benefits and open challenges as well as an outlook of how they might be tackled in the future.

Keywords:

Mentoring, Higher Education, Learning Management System, Feedback, Infrastructure, Data Privacy, Mentoring Workbench.