ConnEx – Vernetzung von Expert:innen und Services

Connecting Experts and Services (ConnEx) is a milestone in the development of Hochschule.digital Niedersachsen: The joint project brings together all 20 state universities in Lower Saxony for the first time. ConnEx is aimed at teaching staff and those involved in the technical and didactic service and support facilities at the universities.

The ‘service interfaces’ set up from the requested personnel funds function as satellite-like units distributed across the state, which are located locally in a service and support facility, but from there act at the interfaces and provide coordination and service tasks for the exchange and cooperation of all universities in Lower Saxony. Their deployment is aimed at networking the permanent units so that the cooperation structures established continue to exist after the initial funding. In this way, they directly build up the network of universities and act as a catalyst for Hochschule.digital Niedersachsen.

The joint project aims to intensify networking, exchange and transfer between the universities in five thematic focus areas:

Focus 1: Expertise map/mapping

Over the course of the project, a mapping of Lower Saxony’s service and support facilities for digital teaching, their structural integration, their tasks, expertise and focal points (technical/didactic) as well as existing networks and focal points was created. This is the first time that an inventory has been systematically compiled in the field of digital teaching in Lower Saxony and presented in the form of profiles. On this basis, an interactive expert map was developed as a visualisation.

Priority 2: Development of a Lower Saxony university network for digital teaching

The second focus of the project was aimed in particular at conceptual preparatory work for a state-wide network of service centres for digital teaching. The overarching goal behind this is to further increase the quantity and quality of the services offered by the institutions for all universities in the future by pooling forces and to benefit from each other.

Focus 3: Material exchange and good practice collection

The third focus of ConnEx was to provide a thematically sorted and systematised (indexed) collection of materials from the support and further education sector for digital teaching and examples of good practice (e.g. instructions for tools and platforms or for media didactic concepts) from all locations.

Focus 4: Communities of practice

Another focus was on the conception and realisation of networking and exchange activities among teachers in Communities of Practice (CoPs) on media didactic topics of digitally oriented teaching. Various event formats were designed and tested for this purpose. In addition, a self-directed learning circle (‘Failing Out LOUD’; based on the concepts of ‘Working Out Loud’ or ‘Learning Out Loud’) was developed.

Priority 5: Networking activities among student assistants

Under the supervision of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, student assistants from nine participating universities networked with each other and discussed examples of good practice in digital teaching at their respective home universities at regular meetings. This has also made it possible to integrate the student perspective into the overall project.

ConnEx also serves as a platform for identifying synergies and for joint initiatives of the three Lower Saxony collaborative projects Co3Learn, Futur.A and SOUVER@N, which are currently funded by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education. For example, the social networking software HumHub is currently being made available nationwide via the Academic Cloud with the participation of all four projects and in collaboration with the GWDG.

ConnEx was acquired under the leadership of Leuphana University Lüneburg and is funded with almost 1 million euros by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (duration: 01.01.2022 - 31.12.2023).