Research Focus

Focus on Extracurricular Educational Research

Have you ever satisfied your hunger for knowledge with explanatory videos on the internet? Have you ever participated in a parliamentary visitors’ programme? Have you ever improved your foreign language skills with the help of a learning app or explored a historical memorial with virtual reality glasses?

The list could go on almost indefinitely. The common thread is that these are educational opportunities that exist outside of educational institutions. Depending on their location, design and didactic support, these are referred to as non-formal or informal learning opportunities. Learning contexts with varying degrees of formalization are the focus of the innovative research and teaching specialism ‘Non-formal and Informal Learning Environments at the Institute of Educational Science’.

Using theoretical foundations and methodological tools from educational science, psychology and computational linguistics, we investigate the significance of different learning locations and contexts for knowledge acquisition; we promote the skills of critical information use; and we analyse the data generated during learning, for example using methods from the fields of learning analytics and educational data mining. One focus, for example, is on learning experiences in virtual worlds, which significantly expand access to knowledge in our society and build bridges between formal, non-formal and informal learning opportunities.

The study of non-formal and informal learning contexts also has a firm place in the courses offered by the Institute of Educational Science, especially in the Bachelor and Master of Arts in Educational Science. Students learn to design, implement and evaluate digitally supported teaching-learning scenarios with the help of our ongoing research projects. They explore extracurricular places of learning (e.g. museums, prisons, parliaments), develop workshops for the Alfried Krupp Schülerlabor der Wissenschaften, or research the influence of digital media on students' nutritional behaviour and eating habits. In doing so, it is important to us to show connections between formal, non-formal and informal learning opportunities and to sharpen the view of future education experts for the value benefit of multi-layered educational ecosystems.

Find out more about our research on the websites of the working groups of:

Prof. Dr. Sandra Aßmann, Junior Prof. Dr. Maren Scheffel, Prof. Dr. Falk Scheidig, Prof. Dr. Marc Stadtler