Digital Teaching and Learning

Nowadays smartphones, WLAN, and mobile devices, and AI-based applications are part of everyday reality for young adults and children. Mornings often still involve quickly checking an Instagram profile, liking interesting posts, or sending a WhatsApp message before heading to school or university. In schools and higher education institutions, new media have been used more frequently, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. This raises the question of how these new technologies can be meaningfully integrated into institutional and private teaching and learning situations, and what added value they may provide. 

Computer science therefore has many points of contact with didactics and with teaching and learning in general: 

First, under the interpretation of “digital teaching and learning,” media-based support of teaching and learning situations is to be understood. This requires innovative hardware and software solutions that take into account and support didactic and pedagogical considerations as well as the framework conditions of subject-specific teaching and learning situations. The term e-learning, although it covers only partial aspects of this field, nevertheless characterizes it quite well. The design-oriented approach, including technological and organizational implementation, is of equal interest as empirical evaluation. 

If the term is written as “Digital Teaching and Learning,” aspects of computer science education and, more generally, the teaching of computational competencies come into focus. The present research field of ZIAI addresses research in both directions. 

In the area of digital teaching at higher education institutions and teaching in computer science, the focus was for a long time on the large collaborative projects DiKuLe, VoLL-KI and DiSo-SGW, which were completed at the end of 2025; since October 2025 the collaborative project BaKuLe (Shaping Bamberg’s Cultures of Teaching Together, Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre) has been at the centre. The Research Group for Elementary Computer Science (FELI), founded in 2025, bundles the work on AI education from primary school to teacher training (see below).

With regard to the application context of schools and teacher education programs, ZIAI works closely with the Bamberg Centre for Teacher Education (ZLB) as well as its Centre for Digital Teaching and Learning (DigiZ). Members of ZIAI are involved in various projects in the context of the ZLB. Examples include DiSo-SGW or MINTmobil (see below).

Completed Projects

• DiKuLe – Developing Digital Cultures of Teaching (Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre) [2021–2025]
• VoLL-KI – Learning from Learners (BMBF, with FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) [2021–2025]
• DiSo-SGW – Digital Sovereignty in Teacher Education for Languages, Social Sciences and Economics (BMBF) [2023–2025]
• KLARO-KI! – AI Literacy for Adults without an Academic or Technical Background (BMUV) [2024–2025]
• WegE: Pioneering Teacher Education – Development of Reflexive Communication Processes [2016–2023]

Participating Disciplines and Persons

Sorted alphabetically by last name

• Media Informatics: Prof. Dr. Andreas Henrich
• Privacy and Security in Information Systems:  Prof. Dr. Dominik Herrmann
• Business Informatics, especially Industrial Information Systems:  Prof. Dr. Sven Overhage
• English Linguistics: Prof. Dr. Julia Schlüter
• Cognitive systems: Prof. Dr. Ute Schmid
• Business Informatics, especially Energy Efficient Systems: Prof. Dr. Thorsten Staake
• Didactics of Mathematics & Computer Science: Prof. Dr. Anna Susanne Steinweg
• Research Group for Elementary and Primary Computer Science (FELI): Dr. Eva-Maria Weiss

as well as many other colleagues involved in the above-mentioned projects in the field of digital teaching and learning in higher-education (university teaching) and school-based (teacher education) contexts.

There are numerous collaborations with the

• ZLB Competence Center for Digital Teaching and Learning (DigiZ)