November 1^st-3^rd, 2023 - The STUDYasU workshop week brought students and lecturers closer to barrier-sensitive teaching and learning

Among the highlights: Contributions from Dr. Gerard Doetjes, Head of the Foreign Language Centre from the Høgskolen in Østfold, Norway, Martin Holmgren from the Umeå University, Sweden & Dr. Lea Schulz as Educational Engineer of the EUF. Dr. Gerard Doetjes and Martin Holmgren, who are both experts in digital-inclusive learning and teaching, provided valuable insights into the Norwegian and Swedish education systems and foreign language learning for students with special needs. Their experiences and methods have enriched the portfolio of barrier-sensitive teaching and learning at the EUF in many ways

Dr. Lea Schulz, Educational Engineer at the EUF's Department of speech and language education, led an extremely informative workshop on #diclusion, which links digitalization and inclusion and implements them together. Participating students, lecturers and guests of the EUF had the opportunity to actively engage with various technical applications related to #diclusion. In combination with the Scandinavian perspective, the workshop provided important impulses and ideas on how digital tools can contribute to making educational content accessible and inclusive.

Waffles, coffee and an exchange of ideas: inclusion starts here!

At the Meet & Greet in the Study Office for Barrier-Aware Services (STUBBS), students, lecturers and guests of the European University of Flensburg had the opportunity to exchange ideas with the academic guests in an informal setting and gain valuable insights into the world of barrier-sensitive teaching and learning. Not only were ideas and experiences exchanged at this informal meeting, but delicious waffles and coffee accompanied the discussions.

STUDYasU will continue to work on designing barrier-sensitive learning opportunities.

You can find more information and updates about the project on our website (https://www.uni-flensburg.de/studyasyouare/projekt-studyasu) and our Instagram account (https://instagram.com/studyasyouare?igshid=YzAwZjE1ZTI0Zg).

22.11.2023 - Presentation of the results of our needs assessment at the Teaching Day

At the Teaching Day 2023, the project team presented the results of a university-wide needs survey on digital barrier-sensitive teaching and learning scenarios. The presentation was attended by students, lecturers and employees from the field of equal opportunities. A 30-minute input was followed by a 60-minute discussion with the participants. The next step will be to present the results to the Conventions and the Executive Board.

December 7th, 2023 - Workshop on the Day of Teaching and Learning at Kiel University (CAU)

Under the motto 'Learning spaces for innovative and participatory teaching/learning settings', the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel organized its Day of Teaching and Learning. In this context, STUDYasU held a workshop on the development of barrier-sensitive, digitally-supported teaching/learning scenarios. The focus was on awareness of and dealing with DLN. The 14 participants developed a prototype to consider the learning needs of five personas as part of a teaching concept. 

January 15, 2024 - Presentation of a handout for barrier-sensitive teaching-learning scenarios at the Schleswig-Holstein eDidactics working group

In January, Anna Rüscher presented the current status of the STUDYasU handout for barrier-sensitive teaching-learning scenarios at a meeting of the Schleswig-Holstein eDidactics working group. During this collegial exchange, members from all universities in Schleswig-Holstein provided valuable feedback and tips. The feedback will be used for the further development of this handout.

February 27^th, 2024 - Virtual tour with H5P (practical workshop at FabricaDigitalis)

As a digital learning medium, virtual tours offer a wide range of opportunities to promote the learning process. In the state project "Language education in daycare centers", a virtual tour in a daycare center is used as a learning medium to present the possibilities of different literacy offers in everyday daycare.

In this practical workshop, coordinator Bennet Sobania reports on how the idea of a virtual tour came about. Simon Hachenberg from "STUDYaU" then discusses the production steps and the aspects and limitations of accessibility. Petra Reich takes the perspective of the users. She is the author of the topic in the context of language education in daycare centers and has compiled the content for the tour.

To the practical workshops

April 25^th and 26^th, 2024 - Barrier-sensitive teaching - knowing how! Final conference of the STUDYasU project

After two and a half years, the STUDYasU project invites you to its final conference in collaboration with (inter)national cooperation partners. The focus is on the implementation of digitally supported barrier-sensitive teaching. Together with experts from the field, solutions will be presented, tested and discussed.

This conference thus contributes to raising awareness of the individual learning situations of pupils and students and enables teachers to proactively take these into account in digitally supported heterogeneity-sensitive teaching/learning settings. The keynotes on both days offer insights into the lives of people with biographical experiences as well as into the future of digitally inclusive teaching. Practical parallel workshops will show how a wide variety of individual learning needs (DLN) can be met using barrier-sensitive, digitally supported teaching/learning arrangements.

The first day is dedicated to the "know how", while the second day focuses on dialog-oriented exchanges with people with different biographical experiences. We cordially invite you to participate and look forward to an inspiring exchange on the future of digital-inclusive teaching.

Thanks to the cooperation with the Center for Teacher Education at the European University of Flensburg (ZfL), participation counts as official further training for teachers.

From September to December 2022, STUDYasU conducted a needs assessment at the EUF. The aim was to find out the individual needs of students and lecturers and the current status of taking barrier sensitivity into account in teaching. To this end, students and lecturers were asked about their wishes and needs for teaching, how they perceive the implementation of barrier-sensitivity at the EUF and what experiences they have had with it. 60 lecturers and 872 students took part in the survey. The following provides an insight into some of our results.

Excerpts from the student results

• 11.7% of the participating students surveyed have a health impairment. Of these, students with psychological stress are the largest group (43%). There are restrictions that strongly influence students in their studies but still do not receive any compensation for disadvantages.
• A third (37%) of participating students regularly or irregularly perform care work alongside their studies. A quarter (28%) of students feel severely or generally restricted. Three quarters (72%) felt little or not at all restricted. The situation is similar with part-time jobs. Three quarters (73%) have a part-time job. Of these, more than a third (40%) feel severely or generally restricted. The remaining students (60%) feel little or no restriction.
• The participating students state that a third of lecturers (34%) ask about individual needs at the beginning of a semester. For two-thirds (68%), this survey does not take place.
• The participating students perceive that 10% of lecturers prepare their teaching content in a barrier-sensitive manner. Slightly more than half (58%) perceive a partially barrier-sensitive design. Around a third (30%) do not perceive any barrier-sensitive designs.
• The participating students, by a small majority, preferred seminars (53%) and tutorials (54%) in presence. Only a few (27%) were in favor of face-to-face lectures. The majority preferred digital teaching formats with the option of attendance (alternating or hybrid).
• As barrier-sensitive methods/tools, the participating students would like to see different forms of content presentation (40%), information in easy language (33%) and transcriptions for videos (24%).

Excerpts from the lecturers' results:

• 12% of the participating teachers have a health impairment. Of these, the largest group (43%) has a legally recognized disability/chronic illness. Around a quarter (28%) state that they have a disability/chronic illness that is not recognized by law. The disability/chronic illness restricts half of the lecturers (57%) in their everyday work.
• 59% of participating lecturers perform care work in addition to their teaching duties. Two thirds (68%) of lecturers are restricted in their day-to-day work as a result.
• Half (46%) of the participating lecturers had already received information at the beginning of a semester that students with individual learning needs were taking part in their seminar. The other half (54%) had not yet had any points of contact.
• In addition to the information provided, a quarter (27%) of participating lecturers ask students about their individual needs at the beginning of the semester. Two thirds (69%) of teachers state that they respond to students' individual needs.
• One third (35%) of the participating lecturers state that they prepare teaching/learning content in a barrier-sensitive manner. Two thirds (65%) do not explicitly take barrier-sensitive preparation into account.
• The main accessibility-sensitive methods/tools used are different forms of content presentation (72%), accessible documents (30%) and the use of audio for online presentations (28%).

You can read the complete Report on Zenodo:

STUDYasU needs assessment (only in german)

The Colour Contrast Analyser checks the contrast of a foreground and a background color to ensure WCAG conformity. For this purpose, the respective color tones can be selected via a slim interface. The Color Contrast Analyser checks the values on the basis of relevant test criteria and displays the result.

For lecturers, the Color Contrast Analyser can be installed via the EUF kiosk.