STEM Student Labs for Teacher Education

This new project will develop formats for using student laboratories in teacher training. These good-practice examples will become the basis for a catalogue of criteria for scientifically monitored formats. The project will use student laboratories to expand the digital infrastructure in teacher training. In these laboratories, future teachers will be shown ways to use digital tools to enhance their teaching. ‘We would like to work with teachers to explore how they can use various digital tools in a way that contributes to the educational value of their lessons. This could involve interactive explanatory videos, molecular dynamics simulations, or even digital learning platforms, for example,’ says Professor Dr Stefanie Schwedler. Studies will ensure that such measures for the qualification of teachers are indeed effective in the digital world.

The proposal group is made up of 21 scientists. They come from the universities in Bielefeld, Paderborn, Lüneburg, Oldenburg, Kaiserslautern-Landau, Münster, and Dresden as well as the Institute for Information Management (ifib) at the University of Bremen. One of the researchers’ aims is to investigate how to improve the implementation of training in the digital world for the STEM sector.

The short name LFB-Labs-digital stands for ‘Student laboratories as a place for teacher training in the digital world’. The project started on April 1, 2023 and runs until September 30, 2025. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding it with around 3.2 million euros, of which around 1.9 million euros will go to Bielefeld University.

Read the article on the website of Bielefeld University.