The Non-Cartesian Way: Developing Media Competence through Media Production

Organizational Background

The Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (referred to below as University of Oldenburg) that emerged from the teacher training college ‘Pädagogische Hochschule Oldenburg’ in 1973 is one of Germany’s younger universities. Today it has achieved a profile as a medium-sized, interdisciplinary university, with study programs geared to research and spearheading new and existing priorities in interdisciplinary cutting-edge research. It excels in teaching with a focus on research and interdisciplinarity, centering on lifelong learning as its education mandate. In the winter term 2013/14 there are 12,000 students at the University of Oldenburg, supervised and taught by 182 professors who are supported by altogether 2,000 academic and non-academic staff (University of Oldenburg, 2013a). Academic life is divided between three campuses – the ‘Campus of Wechloy’, the ‘Campus of Haarentor’ and the ‘Lifelong Learning Campus’. The University of Oldenburg offers 82 bachelor and master degree courses as well as a wide range of other further education options (University of Oldenburg, 2013b).

The ‘knowledge transfer’ module presented here is based in the Department of Continuing Education (Institute of Educational Science; Faculty I)¹. It is at the same time part of a larger range of modules addressing students from all schools/faculties and semesters (Table 1). The module is offered regularly in the summer term and is open to all students at the university within the ‘Professionalisierungsbereich’ (career-oriented phase: acquisition of key competencies). The composition of the student groups is heterogeneous as regards their primary subjects, and it is this interdisciplinary background that is a special feature of the module. A further hallmark is the close cooperation with external partners-in-practice, such as museums. All students can take advantage of such cross-subject and interdisciplinary study offerings during their studies and obtain credit points for these. The underlying idea is that fostering key competences and meta competences, such as those promoted by these overarching modules, can improve subsequent employability. Such skills also include for instance media competence, on which the present article focuses.