Abstract:

With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic over a year ago - early 2020, a new era of digital-assisted education began. Home office, distance learning and tele-education came to the foreground of teaching and learning activities. This concerned familiarizing with various video conference systems, migration the learning content from file storage-based to learning platform-based systems, using new tools and finally changing the form of exams from written tests to individualized, video- and platform-supported, open-book exams. It was a challenge for many teacher and professors, but it could also lead to a milestone for the digital dividend in the teaching area.

In general, the term 'digital dividend' comes from radio technology and describes the spectrum advantage, which is achieved when switching from analog transmission methods to digital, more efficient technologies. In short: The change from analog to digital provides resources with new abilities and opportunities.

This presentation investigates, whether the change from traditional to fully digitally-supported education enables an advantage in the sense of a release of resources for the teacher. A survey and interviews with colleagues from different education organizations, the highlighted experiences that were documented, compared and evaluated. Therefore, quantifiable properties such as the duration of preparation, course implementation and exam processing have been used as key research issues. Added to this is the degree of reusability of teaching materials, as well as soft skills such as the ability to maintain a central thread in the teaching material as the backbone of the course. This is offset by the availability and activation of the students for blended learning units as well as their success and outcome of the examination.

It turned out that the digital change could be divided into three phases. In the first, between the start of the pandemic closure in March 2020 and the end of the summer semester, the transformation was carried out with try-and-error methods, experimented with pleasure, but the acquired skills and developed materials were only employed for immediate use. At the beginning of the autumn semester in October 2020 it became clear, that a return to only presence-oriented education would not be possible in a longer term and that the digital, distance-learning method should not only be expanded, but also customized for further semesters. In this second phase, it proved to be possible to proceed in a more targeted manner. New 'tricks' and innovations were acquired through the exchange of experiences with colleagues. The third phase began in spring 2021 and was the repetition of the first-years distance learning phase. From now the previously prepared and live-recorded course units could be easily accessed and lecturers could make these previous recordings available for their own preparation and as alternative teaching units, which resulted in a previously inexperienced release of time as a resource for immediate use and future development.

However, the effort to keep up with the soft skills has shifted. Due to the more fragmented sections within the alternated courses, the overview was reduced and required more focus in the structuring of the course units. Significant more attention must be paid to the activation of the students in the distance and blended learning units. A clear advantage from the digital dividend will only be available in further semesters.

Keywords:

Digital Dividend, Pandemia, Intangible Asset, Distance Learning.