Context
In the school year 2019–20, a ‘Digital Learning Lab’ was established at this urban school location, which includes a primary school (volksschule – VS) and a secondary school (mittelschule – MS) with a digital focus. This lab physically represents the key skills that are crucial for today’s students’ future, such as collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, digital competencies, communication, and personal and social responsibility. These skills are all outlined in the Future Learning Lab of the European Union, which describes the areas of interaction, presentation, research, exchange and development in the classroom of the future. The Digital Lab for Inclusion (DLI) expanded the range of offerings by providing tools for specific solutions in the context of various disabilities or chronic illnesses, with the goal of advancing inclusive school and teaching development.
Objectives
The Digital Learning Lab (DLL) aims to explore, innovate and implement digital and media-supported teaching for all stakeholders involved, including students, educators, school principals, parents, teachers, university professors and all other professional groups working in the interdisciplinary field of education. The goal is to align these efforts with the latest developments and research findings, and to create relevant formats for development and evidence-based professionalisation.
One of the explicit goals of the DLI is to familiarise teacher education students and students in related fields (e.g. educational studies) with the potential of digital technologies for pedagogical work in inclusive contexts and provide them with a space for experimenting with such technologies. This goal is pursued, among other things, through the offering of guided visits to the DLI, which have been taking place regularly since the winter semester of 2022/23. They are also being considered as a fixed component of specific courses at teacher education institutions (PHSt and PPH Augustinum) and the University of Graz, in consultation with the respective course instructors.
Implementation
Since the autumn of 2022, the DLI has been available to primary education students at PHSt as a university learning workshop. It provides settings that have been established in the international higher education didactic discussion for teacher education studies in recent years.
The DLI is designed as a part of the collaborative centre and is being established as a research and experimentation field for schools and universities. The DLL is located on the East Campus of the University College of Teacher Education Styria (PH Steiermark) at St Leonhard Middle School in the heart of Graz. It was established through a collaboration between the Institute for Digital Media Education at PH Steiermark, the city of Graz, St Leonhard Middle School and Microsoft Austria.