Acta Informatica Pragensia 2021, 10(3), 211-235 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aip.1702868

Social Informatics Experience: A Case Study on Learning and Teaching Sociological Basics in a Technical Context

Christa Weßel ORCID...
Independent Expert – freelance scientist, adviser, lecturer and author in organizational development, social informatics and higher education, Königstr. 43, 26180 Rastede, Germany

To be able to play an active role in the design, creation and development of a networked society, students, scholars and practitioners need basic knowledge in social informatics. Students at a university of applied sciences attended a one-term seminar that consisted of eight two-day workshops. The students learned and used theories, concepts and methods of social informatics (SI), focusing on the sociological part of SI. The learning and teaching approach is grounded in competency-based learning. It enables students to explore a certain field. This is implemented by means of organization development, project-based learning, agile learning and teaching plus blended learning. It empowers teachers and students to work together efficiently, effectively and with joy. To learn how and why this approach worked, an embedded case study investigated the design, implementation and evaluation of the workshop series. Finally, the paper describes impediments to the communication and understanding of the term and the field of social informatics and sketches ideas how to deal with it concerning study programmes and the value social informatics can contribute to challenges like a pandemic.

Keywords: Social informatics; Socioinformatics; Project-based learning; Continued multidisciplinary project-based learning; CM-PBL; Competency-based learning; CBL; Agile learning; Blended learning; Organization development.

Received: July 28, 2021; Revised: December 15, 2021; Accepted: December 20, 2021; Published: December 31, 2021  Show citation

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Weßel, C. (2021). Social Informatics Experience: A Case Study on Learning and Teaching Sociological Basics in a Technical Context. Acta Informatica Pragensia, 10(3), 211-235. doi: 10.18267/j.aip.170
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