Current
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New media in daily life and on the job
:: Project title: Non-formal Learning in the Context of the New Media (Prospects for enhancing skills through network and multimedia learning: Analysis of skills-enhancing learning by means of computer activities not explicitly designed as learning systems)
This research project begins by describing in detail the non-formal and implicit learning processes that occur in daily dealing with the new media. This serves as the starting point for a more detailed analysis of implicit learning processes and everyday patterns of skill development. Here, too, the relevant recent research into human cognitive and affective-motivational learning is summarized from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Implicit learning and especially the elaboration of a clear and scientific conception of intellectual and perceptual-motor skills is here the thematic focus of a number of different research projects.
Defining the nature of human skills brings together such different branches of research as artificial intelligence, analytical philosophy, cognitive psychology, motivational psychology and the more recent mapping of human intelligence. On the basis of these analyses, investigation may be conducted in a later project segment into some innovative aspects of future workplaces designed to facilitate learning processes, IT-centered training concepts and the design of learning environments and learning software.
Client: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Betrieblicher Weiterbildungsforschung e.V. (Association of Vocational Training Research) (Project executing organization of the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology)
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New media as training tools
:: Project title: Using New Media to Improve the Educational and Training Capacities of Turkish Young People in Baden-Württemberg.
Against the background of educational problems and correspondingly limited employment opportunities for segments of the German population, this pilot project investigates and tests new training methods. To begin with, the prerequisites and aspirations of German education in the broadest sense are analyzed, as are its underlying values, traditional behavior patterns and key framework conditions.
In socially, culturally and economically integrated population groups, attitudes and values regarding education have already been imparted during primary socialization. In other groups, commonly referred to as "education-deprived," these prerequisites must first be created if educational activity is to be first set in motion and then sustainably institutionalized.
The investigation and innovative conception of the education process is here implemented and developed as a prototype using Turkish youths as a group in Germany. Integration of this population group into the employment market is particularly difficult. If it continues to be less than satisfactory in the long-term future, the threat arises of subculture formation, impoverishment, disturbance of social peace and, consequently, heavy burdens on public budgets. To prevent this, it is essential that these youths be integrated as soon as possible into the German federal education system.
In order to bring alternative modes of education within reach, in this project the analysis of the economic and social situation of Turkish immigrants is supplemented by research into their media-use profile. This profile indicates that dramatic series, especially soap operas, rate especially high. These secure a durable and broad audience in the relevant age groups and, as experience with this genre internationally shows, they are an extremely well-suited non-formal tool for imparting knowledge and values and providing role models and behavior patterns. Given this background, the project will include close examination, in cooperation with television production personnel and artists working in the genre, of innovative ways of combining educational content with a highly entertaining format.
The project is, to our knowledge, one of the very few international attempts to establish a long-term, broad-scope media educational project as part of the integration of immigrants and education-deprived groups. European television broadcasting experts, contacted in December 2001 during the Basel-Karlsruhe Film Festival at the ZKM, attribute great significance to this project. Accordingly, close cooperation, aimed at developing an appropriate format and a film production, is taking place during project preparation with the German broadcasters SWR and Bayrischer Rundfunk, and with the TV producers Maran and Bavaria.
Client: Baden-Württemberg Social Ministry
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Media-supported Information Systems for Industry
:: Project title: Tax-Calculator. A pilot project on the Tax-Calculator has been conducted.
Client: North-Rhine Westfalia Economic Ministry
