The global spread of COVID-19 and the related regulatory measures pose great challenges for researchers in science. But even in times of contact blocks and home offices, it is important to counteract the standstill of scientific work. For this reason, the fifth joint meeting of the DATAFIED project took place on 27 and 28 April as an online event. On two exciting days, many content and organisational issues were addressed and discussed during the first quarterly meeting in 2020. On the first day, the individual sub-projects presented their previous findings via video conference, which served as a basis for informative and fruitful discussions. In addition, further synergies and sub-project overlapping topics were identified, which will further intensify the work between the individual research groups and offer exciting cooperation opportunities. But also the handling of the challenges arising from the rampant corona epidemic and the resulting changes in the school education sector were discussed. Schools in all German states are currently affected by closures and the corona crisis requires a responsible approach to the situation. All …

Even in times of crisis, scientific exchange does not stand still. In the context of the online lecture series “BILDUNGSDIALOG.DIGITAL: Inside Bildungsforschung”, which will be held weekly from 28th April 2020, various funded projects will be presented to discuss current issues in the context of education and digitisation.  The sessions, which take place on a total of 12 dates, consist of 15 to 30 minutes of input from a project with a subsequent discussion with the participants.  Besides many interesting projects, the DATAFIED project will also be part of this valuable exchange. Represented by Prof. Dr. Andreas Breiter the joint project will be presented on 05th May 2020. We cordially invite you to participate in the lecture including the subsequent discussion.   Access to the lecture series can be found here:  Dates: Weekly from 28th April 2020 Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Place: https://onca.adobeconnect.com/insidebildungsforschung/

Very enjoyable discussions on data, software, discourse, power and knowledge were had at the Data in Discourse Analysis conference at the TU Darmstadt on Wednesday 18 February. Drawing partly on analysis with Juliane Jarke on predictive analytics within the DATAFIED project, Felicitas Macgilchrist reflected on how discourse studies’ „object of analysis“ is changing as education is increasingly datafied.  She observes changes to the discourse “about” education, the discourse “in” education, and alerts us to the need to analyse the discourse “encoded into” education. Here’s the updated abstract for the paper: Datafication, the increased transformation of information about education into digitally manipulable data, is a process occurring in educational practice and in (critical) discourse analytical research on education. In part one of this paper, I explore three ways in which ‘digital data’ have changed the way educational discourse studies perceives its object of analysis. First, ‘data about education’ flow abundantly. Schools are producing more numeric data about their students than ever before. Critical discourse studies have analysed, e.g., PISA, ICILS and other international assessments, the media reports about these assessments, …

On Thursday, 30 January 2020, a methodology workshop on software studies took place at the premises of the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib). Participants were representatives of all participating subprojects as well as Mathias Decuypere, who is an assistant professor at the KU Leuven and researches and teaches in the field of educational science methodology. The workshop was opened with a presentation of Decuypere’s work on the topic “How to investigate the new normal? In search of inventive methods for inquiring the datafication of education”. The workshop was followed by a fruitful exchange of ideas between the participants. Various approaches from Decuypere’s presentation were taken up and further developed. Many valuable references to interesting literature sources and other projects were exchanged. In the course of this, the influence of the order of the methods used on the results was discussed, among other things. After a short break, Jasmin Troeger and Irina Zakharova presented the current status of the methods used in subprojects 2 and 3, as well as considerations for further work. A lively …

Vom 11. bis 12.Dezember fand das vierte Verbundtreffen des vom BMBF geförderten Projekts DATAFIED statt – dieses Mal in den beindruckenden, neuen Räumlichkeiten des Leibniz-Instituts für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation (DIPF) in Frankfurt. Im Mittelpunkt des Treffens stand die Vorstellung und die Diskussion der ersten Ergebnisse aus den einzelnen Teilprojekten. Hierbei konnten beispielsweise erste Eindrücke aus den Interviews wiedergegeben werden.  Auch wurden die einzelnen Projektteilnehmer über die Quintessenz von Dokumentenanalysen informiert. Als interdisziplinäres Projekt birgt DATAFIED viel Potential und schafft Raum für einen regen Austausch, wie z.B. der Verwendung und Definition von Begrifflichkeiten sowie den Einsatz von Methoden. Auch über Möglichkeiten der Verzahnung der Teilprojektergebnisse wurde intensiv gesprochen und erste Ideen stehen im Raum. Über die inhaltlichen Themen hinaus gab es einige organisatorische Aspekte zu planen. Hierzu gehörten u.a. die Herausforderungen im Rahmen der Akquise von Schulen und anderen Interviewpartnern.   Nach dem ersten Jahr befindet sich das Projekt durch viele verzögerte, jedoch notwendige Vorbereitungsschritte, hinter dem Planungsstand. Dennoch gestaltet sich die Zukunft des Projekts für das kommende Jahr mit der intensiven Feldarbeit sehr optimistisch, da …

From November 26 to 28, 2019, the doctoral students* of the DATAFIED project met in tranquil Braunschweig for methodological training in a workshop. On the first day the focus was on the art of reading and writing strategies. Guided by Dr. Sven Arnold, the participants gained valuable insights into the subject matter, so that the skills they had acquired so far could be reflected and optimized in this area. The second day was devoted to text analysis. In this context, the theoretical approach of the so-called Rich-Point-Analysis was presented, which we were able to apply practically afterwards. As a research group, the participants analyzed class observations under the guidance of Barbara Christophe. The workshop ended in the evening of the 2nd day. All participants found it interesting and helpful to receive further and more detailed information on the topic of reading and writing strategies and rich point analysis.    

As part of subproject 3: “Digital learning software and teaching”, an interactive map was created showing the locations of the manufacturers of learning software.  The map can be used in a variety of ways because it has many useful filters and can therefore be used optimally and efficiently for further research purposes. The manufacturers of digital learning software are classified according to location flags in different colours: Level 0: Non-customizable software Level 1: Learning Management (LMS) Level 2: Data Driven Learning with Teacher Decision Level 3: Data Driven Learning without Teacher Decision Level 4: Adaptive Learning Level 5: Intelligent Tutor Level 6: Intelligent Game-Based Learning Environments Level 7: Cognitive (Deep Learning) System You can find the interactive map here.

On September 12 and 13, 2019 the international “DATA POWER: global in/securities” conference took place at the University of Bremen.  On the second conference day the DATAFIED project had the opportunity to hold the session “DATAFIED: DATA For and in Education – The construction of school in a datafied society” within the framework of a dialogue café. After a few introductory words by Annekatrin Bock on the general setting of the event and the thematic project DATAFIED, the participants embarked on a journey through a total of four stations. Even though the group was small, interesting discussions on the methods used and (surprising) differences between Germany and e.g. Great Britain arose.  

From 23 to 24 September, the third joint meeting of the BMBF-funded DATAFIED project took place at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg. The meeting was used for an intensive exchange with the partners of the other participating institutions, the Helmut Schmidt University (HSU), the Georg Eckert Institute Leibniz Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI) and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Research and Information (DIPF). In addition to the reports of the four subprojects on their current status and the interdisciplinary exchange of participants, this joint meeting was marked by the incipient field survey phase. In the course of the year, the subprojects were able to identify many relevant actors who can now be successively interviewed and researched. The coordination and the exchange of experiences in this regard are of great interest for all participants in order to be able to use synergies at an early stage or to face problems together. The discussion about the research methods used was not neglected either. Last but not least, there was an exchange between the doctoral students …

On September 6th and 7th, 2019 the DATAFIED project team participated in the workshop “Exploring the Datafication, Digitalization and Automatization of Educational Governance and Practice” of the Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg. The workshop was organized by Sigrid Hartong and Annina Förschler within the framework of the DFG project “Bildungsdatenmanagement – Neue Wissens-, Interdependenz- und Einflussstrukturen im Kontext der Digitalisierung von Educational Governance“. The agenda of both days was filled with interesting lectures of various international researchers as well as discussion and question rounds on the topic of data archiving, digitisation and automation of educational policy aspects. In addition, the workshop was divided into four sessions and thus offered a broad spectrum: International perspectives on the multiple dynamics of data infrastructures in education Discussing effects of datafication and digitalization for school management and the teaching profession Methodologies and methods of (researching) big data in education Broadening the Scope The workshop was a great opportunity to discuss current topics on an international level as well as to establish and intensify contacts. Thank you very much for the invitation! For …