Digital media in inclusive education

As an interdisciplinary element of the "Sing" project, the core research area "Digitalization" addresses the potential of using digital media in inclusive learning environments in terms of developing system solutions that are as low-threshold, flexible and interactive as possible. Students at TU Dresden develop their own digital solutions for subject-specific and interdisciplinary issues in inclusive education in corresponding courses. The areas of activity "inclusion through media" and "inclusive media didactics" are considered equally in order to define the promotion of participation in educational processes with digital tools as a necessary component of lesson planning, as well as to reflect on the relevance of social interaction in the digital space as a central topic of inclusive education. In this way, teacher training students are encouraged to use digital media in an active and differentiated way and an awareness of the opportunities and risks of digitalization in the school environment is created.

The conceptual basis is the "OPAL" learning management system established at TU Dresden. Based on the course, test and communication structures already set up in the system, interfaces for linking with compatible teaching and learning software will be explored and, in cooperation with the subject didactics represented in the project, holistic teaching scenarios will be developed.

The central focus of the discussion is primarily on the implementation of communicative, collaborative and interactive elements in existing digital learning spaces in order to support the teaching dimension of social participation through media. In this sense, digital environments are not seen as an alternative to the classroom, but as an extension of it. In supporting the daily collaborative work of pupils, this results in new or alternative forms of action that can enrich the learning process in terms of content, aesthetics and structure. Taking into account the heterogeneous student body, also in terms of media competence, the use of digital media is thus understood as a subject-linking element for linking and transferring processes, structures, knowledge and information. The aim is to develop prototypical system examples and integrate these into the concepts being developed in the project.