Results of the participate@UOL project at School VI
Results of the participate@UOL project at School VI
How can students and teachers shape university teaching together?
This was one of the central questions of the university-wide participate@UOL project, which was funded by the Foundation Innovation in University Teaching until December 2025. Participation of students and lecturers was strengthened through the use of innovative digital formats, increased language awareness in university teaching and the consideration of student lifeworlds.
On these pages you will find an overview of teaching and learning formats that have been implemented and integrated into teaching at our School as part of the project.
Teaching and Learning Lab sub-area
Innovative teaching concept for virtual reality (VR) in medical training
Virtual emergency room Step.VR
A young patient with a fever and severe abdominal pain is lying in an emergency department treatment room. The nursing staff report that she is suffering from chronic inflammation of the bowel. The attending doctor does not yet have any further information. Sounds like everyday life on the ward? In this case, however, the young patient is a virtual patient and the doctor is a medical student about to start her block placement in surgery. The young patient's case is one of currently nine cases in the STEP.VR simulation programme, which was programmed by the company ThreeDee and virtually simulates an emergency department. The focus is on general surgery and internal medicine cases.
As part of the participate@UOL project, we were able to procure VR glasses, computers and the licence for STEP.VR for this new teaching format. The project work also gave us the freedom to establish and plan the virtual emergency department. After initial trial runs and a pilot phase, PD Dr Nader El-Sourani introduced the emergency department directly into the regular curriculum. In academic year 4, 82 students took part in the course during the last teaching unit before the start of the block placement in the clinic. The aim was to close the gap between the theoretical everyday life of the degree programme and the practical day-to-day work in the clinic.
The Virtual Emergency Department enables students to try out how to deal with patients, simulates the time pressure in the clinic and promotes clinical-analytical thinking. Clinical decision-making in particular can be practised and standardised procedures can be consolidated. Haptics, on the other hand, are still very limited and expressions of feeling and emotions can also only be represented to a limited extent by virtual avatars. As a result, dialogue situations and learning units on the doctor-patient relationship cannot be implemented virtually. VR should therefore not be seen as a replacement for established teaching formats but as an extension of the traditional curriculum and was therefore chosen as the "final and concluding" teaching unit.
The seminar was evaluated and accompanied by a student research project (René Klarmann). Further information can be found in a blog post published by the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung about the event and in the associated publication.
The virtual emergency room is currently being used in seminars in the subjects of surgery and internal medicine as part of regular teaching.
Publications:
1. El-Sourani N, Mühling T, Klarmann R, Quintes S, Bockhorn M. Implementation and Analysis of a Fully Immersive Virtual Reality-Based Emergency Training in a Surgical Curriculum. Adv Med Educ Pract. 2025 May 16;16:811-823. doi: 10.2147/AMEP.S507357. PMID: 40401262; PMCID: PMC12094490.
2. blog article of the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung
https://hochschulforumdigitalisierung.de/notruf-aus-der-zukunft/
3. Mühling T,-Späth I, Backhaus J, Milke N, Oberdörfer S, Meining A, Latoschik ME, König S. "Virtueal reality in medical emergencies training: benefits, perceived stress, and learning success. 2023. Multimedia Systems 29; 2239-2252. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-023-01102-0
VR-as-tutor:in supported peer-to-peer format in the Clinical Training Centre
In preparation. Planned from summer semester 2026.
Communication and interprofessional education: The virtual platform for nursing UbiSim
Similar to the STEP.VR virtual emergency department, the UbiSim platform offers standardised clinical simulation scenarios in immersive virtual reality. Existing cases can be customised or even new scenarios can be created. However, these are not acute emergency situations, but a wide variety of scenarios from the everyday lives of carers. Up to three people can be in the same virtual patient room at the same time, so that, for example, two carers and a trainer can go through a scenario at the same time. It is also possible for up to 10 invisible observers to participate in a simulation and observe from different angles without being visible themselves.
Another special feature of the platform is the possibility of controlling the behaviour of virtual patients, relatives and the healthcare provider by the teacher on the computer. A large number of possible dialogues are available for this purpose. In addition to the correct execution of nursing activities, the simulations focus on communication and are very well suited for interprofessional teaching formats.
We have piloted UbiSim in small groups as part of the project and are currently planning to use it in the Advanced Nursing Practice (ANP) Master's programme.
Sub-area digital accompanying services
Abhört, the (medical didactics) podcast
with Thomas Schmidt and Susanne Quintes
The monthly podcast deals with topics from didactics and teaching with a focus on the model degree programme in human medicine. The target audience are teachers and students of the university, who are also regularly invited as guests. Initially only accessible via the Medical Didactics website, the podcast is now available on all common platforms. In addition to the low-threshold and easily accessible communication of didactic topics, we would also like to familiarise lecturers with the advantages of the audio format for teaching. Microphones, headphones and a mixing console were purchased as part of the project and are available for teachers to borrow.
Digital teaching website and courseware
The existing medical didactics website on digitally supported teaching has been revised and expanded. In addition, lecturers can now register in a corresponding community forum via Stud.IP and find up-to-date information on the Stud.IP plugins and other applications there. These are summarised in courseware that can also be accessed without registering in the forum.
Piloting the Labster simulation platform
Labster offers the opportunity to access over 300 scientific simulations directly via the browser. Teachers and students at the University of Oldenburg were able to use all of the platform's simulations until summer 2024 and test their use for their own teaching or learning success. The aim was to enrich the teaching of complex topics through storytelling and game elements and to find out whether Labster can be a useful addition to existing teaching units.
Open Educational Resources (OER) sub-area
Padlet with freely available games for teaching
Game-based learning (also known as edutainment) uses playful elements to convey learning content and increase student motivation. Learners have to master different levels of difficulty, receive rewards or immerse themselves in a story that only progresses by solving puzzles.
To make it easier to incorporate game elements into teaching, a padlet has been created with a collection of freely available games from the fields of medicine and science.
Learning unit with videos on the topic of racism in medicine
Simon Gerhards, Niklas Ellerich-Groppe, Prof Mark Schweda in collaboration with Ulf Goerges, Susanne Schorer and Susanne Quintes.
The following extract from the introduction to the learning material provides an overview of the content and objectives. The complete description of the learning material can be found as OER on the Twillo portal or under this section as a pdf download.
The learning unit "Let's Talk about Racism" is based on the results of the research project SoDiMe on the perspectives of medical students on racism, which was carried out in the Department of Ethics in Medicine at the University of Oldenburg (https://uol.de/medizinethik/forschung/projekte/sodime). In the analysis of group discussions with medical students in Germany, five typical approaches to the topic of 'racism in medicine and healthcare' were identified: Pragmatism, scientism, subjectivism, interculturalism and criticism (Gerhards & Schweda, 2024). These typical approaches are made comprehensible in the video material "Let's Talk about Racism": Five medical students discuss a situation in the clinical training centre that one of them experienced during an internship and show these five typical arguments and attitudes. The following is an overview of a learning unit in which the material is used as part of an interactive learning interface in order to provide suggestions for the didactic embedding of the video material on racism-critical teaching in medical studies.
The learning unit "Let's Talk about Racism" pursues the following learning objectives:
1. to impart knowledge about racism in medicine and healthcare
2. to promote self-reflection on one's own approach to the topic of racism
3. support and development of action plans and strategies for dealing with racism
The learning material thus addresses learning objective VIII.6-04.4.13 of the National Competence-Based Catalogue of Learning Objectives in Medicine (NKLM) 2.0:
"They [medical students] can recognise disadvantages, stigmatisation and discrimination on racial grounds or because of ethnic origin, gender, religion or ideology, disability, age or sexual identity and take action to prevent or eliminate these disadvantages."
Literature: Gerhards SM, Schweda M (2024) How do medical students deal with the topic of racism? A qualitative analysis of group discussions in Germany. PLoS ONE 19(11): e0313614. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0313614
The video material for the learning unit can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5446/71560
The complete description of the learning unit as a pdf document can be found here: doi.org/10.5446/71560
Formats in cooperation with all Schools
Practical workshop for lecturers: "Tooltime: media technology and didactic scenarios for hybrid teaching"
The practical workshop is offered by the faculty staff approximately every 8 weeks. Various didactic scenarios, media technology, various applications for hybrid teaching and other exciting topics related to digitally supported teaching are presented. Lecturers at the university can either attend on site and try out the relevant technology with their own devices or get an overview online.
The slides and information from all events will also be made available in a freely accessible community forum in Stud.IP. In the future, there are plans to create vodcasts and short videos on the technology presented and make them available digitally as a collection together with existing instructions and concepts.
Cross-faculty courses
In the winter semester 2023/24, the seminar Entdeckungsreise "Digitale Bildung - Experimentieren, Anwenden, Reflektieren" (Journey of Discovery - Digital Education - Experimenting, Applying, Reflecting) was designed and held jointly by all faculty members of the project for the first time.
In short inputs, the lecturers presented digital applications, virtual worlds, gamification and open learning materials and their potential uses in science and education and then discussed them with the students. The learning content was also tried out and deepened in practical phases (maker spaces). Finally, the participants developed their own digital educational product, partly as OER, in individual or group work and with the support of the lecturers. These included interactive quizzes, teaching units on digitalisation and virtual worlds for primary schools and an information video for refugees.
In the winter semester 2024/25, the seminar "Think small - Microcredentials and Future Skills" focused on the increasing dynamics and changing requirements in the education sector. Participants were first given an insight into the basics of microcredentials and future skills and then presented individual areas of the topics themselves in short presentations. After critical analysis and discussion, they then developed their own small course formats using digital applications as part of the event. These included courseware on stress management, an app for senior citizens to help them use digital devices and materials on autism and ADHD for use in schools and for general education. Some of the products are currently being further developed and prepared for further use, including as OER.
In future, the courses are to be consolidated as a cross-faculty offering and become a component of a university-wide digital skills curriculum.