Educational informatics
The formation of computer science concerned with principles, methods and applications of information technology in education science. It has its roots on the one hand in computer science and information science , on the other hand in empirical educational research . This connection in turn gives rise to indirect connections to pedagogy and pedagogical psychology .
The task and goal of educational informatics is to use core informatics methods to establish an interdisciplinary branch of informatics on the one hand, and an independent scientific cross-sectional discipline on the other, similar to business informatics , bioinformatics and medical informatics . This includes, among other things, the gradual integration of educational technology with the aim of improving school and teaching quality in educational contexts and the establishment of educational technology (especially digital media) as didactically valuable teaching and learning tools. This is a process in which the effectiveness of technical tools must be evaluated with the aim of continuous improvement. Since the disciplinary boundaries of computer science, media education and learning psychology are too narrow for this, an interdisciplinary view of teaching and learning with digital media is necessary. This is one of the goals of the interdisciplinary field of educational informatics.
Beginnings
At the beginning of the millennium, educational informatics was used in German-speaking countries to use knowledge from learning theories for software engineering and to support the virtualization processes of courses with software tools. In addition, the areas of responsibility of educational IT specialists included activities in educational institutions and companies as well as in the development of user-friendly introduction and use of learning management systems (LMS), learning content management systems (LCMS) and knowledge management systems (KMS).
More recently, requirements from informal learning contexts in the knowledge society have given rise to new perspectives and possible applications for educational informatics. In particular, educational informatics focuses on applications such as wikis, blogs and social networks that support and transform traditional education.
Questions
The questions of educational informatics include, on the one hand, how educational technology and educational media can be developed, further developed and evaluated according to teaching and learning theory aspects and, on the other hand, how educational content and research data can be found in automated processes and created with computer support. One aspect is how content can be prepared with the support of visualization techniques in such a way that a better reception and dissemination of education-relevant topics succeeds.
Areas of application
Areas of application of educational informatics aim to develop, further develop or scientifically evaluate educational technology with the inclusion of an educational-didactic and teaching-learning-theoretical perspective.
Other application scenarios deal with the task of making online search processes more intelligent, improving instruments for analyzing user behavior on the Internet and using virtual research environments for educational research.
Further applications of educational informatics in the area of " Open Educational Resources " support users in selecting and evaluating educational content and putting them together into meaningful learning units.
Footnotes
- ^ Educational informatics research of the FTzM
- ↑ Seminar website 2001/2002 of the University of Stuttgart ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Concept of educational informatics at the PH Ludwigsburg (PDF; 91 kB)
- ^ Educational informatics at the TU Darmstadt
