Danube University Krems (DUK) is a public university specialised in postgraduate continuing education, keen on addressing the technological and social challenges of lifelong learning and implementing innovation in education, both in research and teaching. It was established in 1995, has 3 faculties, 445 employees and manages 212 postgraduate study programmes for approximately 7000 students from 78 countries.
The Department for Continuing Education Research and Educational Technologies
The Department for Continuing Education Research and Educational Technologies specialises in educational technology teaching and research. It strives to link ICT with educational processes. The department concentrates on the design, realisation and evaluation of didactic arrangements for technology supported learning in all educational sectors. In the field of higher education development, the department focuses on research regarding lifelong learning, assessment methods, the taxonomy of teaching methods and Christopher Alexander’s pattern theory, to support strategies to validate non-formal and informal learning.
Contribution to VINCE
The Department for Continuing Education Research and Educational Technologies contributes to the VINCE project through its expertise in creating a web-based platform for supporting the development, dissemination and implementation of validation procedures. The department were involved in coordinating the VALERU project and developing the valeru.net platform together with Russian project partners. Univ.-Prof. Dr. habil. Peter Baumgartner and Isabell Grundschober coordinated the project, which ran between 2013 and 2016.
The Team
Also within the VINCE project, the same time like in VALERU participates: Peter Baumgartner (professor), Isabell Grundschober (researcher) and Gregor Pirker (technician) as well as Wolfgang Rauter (researcher). They have the work-package lead in “WP6: Platform Development” and also bring in Danube University’s expertise in validating prior learning for admission in Higher Education in several other work packages.