As part of the 2020 call for proposals ‘Strengthening university teaching through digitalisation. Innovatively rethinking, testing and structurally embedding face-to-face teaching, blended learning and online teaching’, the Foundation for Innovation in University Teaching (a subsidiary of the Hamburg-based Toepfer Foundation) is funding the individual project‘participate@UOL’ with a total of approximately €3.9 million until 31 July 2024 at the University of Oldenburg.

All six Schools are involved in the project - in the form of staff positions - as well as the central institutions of the BIS, the Department for Study Affairs, IT Services and Division 3 with the ZSKB. In addition, there are many supporters who do not have positions in the project but are actively involved in its content. In total, there are 22 project employees and around 20 supporters.

Due to the pandemic, the ad-hoc switch to digital teaching in the sense of "emergency remote teaching" took place a good two years ago. We are now experiencing a "return to face-to-face teaching", which means that the JETZT project provides an opportunity to determine which innovative teaching and learning formats will continue to be viable in the future, regardless of "online vs. face-to-face". This means that with the project, the University of Oldenburg wants to give its teaching staff and students the opportunity and freedom to work together and in a participatory manner to identify and test the best teaching and learning formats for them in terms of quality and to implement them in practice in the long term.

Firstly, the creation of digital support services for students to assist them in the introductory phase of their studies (so-called "social onboarding") is key. The pandemic has shown that students miss social contact in particular. Therefore, information offers on the following aspects are conceivable: Orientation at the University of Oldenburg, organisation of studies, use of infrastructures, information on (research-based) learning and taking examinations, opportunities for social networking, etc.

The development area of open spaces for digital and hybrid learning and teaching is the centrepiece of the project and comprises two sub-areas: Establishment and development of a Teaching Lab and Learning Lab and needs-based creation and use of OER. In the rooms of the Teaching Lab and Learning Lab, students and teachers will be able to try out new teaching and learning formats and further develop existing scenarios together. They will be supported in this by project staff in the Schools and in the media technology and university didactics service centres.

In the Virtual Spaces development area, capacities for creating virtual laboratories in various subjects are being built up. This is intended to strengthen self-directed learning and enable it, for example, by means of augmented and/or virtual reality.

Ultimately, support for digital and hybrid teaching is about reorganising existing support services for lecturers and students. In the future, a joint "AskOne portal" will bring together all the services offered by the institutions involved in support for digital and hybrid teaching (BIS, IT services, university didactics) under one virtual roof in order to provide easier and faster access to support services for questions relating to digital teaching and learning.