Funding for student assistant positions: TIB eTrainer funding enters its fifth round

Open call for appli­ca­tions: With the sup­port of the MWK Lower Sax­ony, the Tech­nis­che Infor­ma­tions­bib­lio­thek Han­nover (TIB) is award­ing fund­ing for stu­dent assis­tants for the year 2025. They are to develop dig­i­tal teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als for STEM sub­jects and pre­pare them as OER.  

Auxiliary resources for OER production in the STEM subjects

Open Edu­ca­tional Resources (OER) are openly licensed teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als that can be used, redis­trib­uted and edited by third par­ties. Thanks to their flex­i­bil­ity, OER enable inte­gra­tion into dif­fer­ent teach­ing and learn­ing con­texts and tai­lor­ing to the spe­cific needs of a learn­ing group. The cre­ation of OER also offers the oppor­tu­nity to make your own teach­ing vis­i­ble in the aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity.

The devel­op­ment of OER that are suit­able for use in dig­i­tal teaching/learning set­tings — as well as the asso­ci­ated famil­iar­iza­tion with tech­ni­cal sys­tems and copy­right and licens­ing issues — can be chal­leng­ing. For this rea­son, sup­port for open media pro­duc­tion by stu­dent assis­tants is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant in the uni­ver­sity con­text.

With the sup­port of the Lower Sax­ony Min­istry of Sci­ence and Cul­ture (MWK), the Tech­nis­che Infor­ma­tions­bib­lio­thek Han­nover (TIB) is award­ing funds for the year 2025 to finance stu­dent assis­tants for the devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als and their prepa­ra­tion in the form of OER. The focus of the fund­ing is exclu­sively on sup­port­ing media pro­duc­tion for the study areas of math­e­mat­ics, com­puter sci­ence, nat­ural sci­ences and tech­nol­ogy (STEM).

The aim is to cre­ate inno­v­a­tive teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als on basic sci­en­tific and tech­ni­cal study top­ics. We are look­ing for e.g. scripts, work­sheets, sam­ple exams, sem­i­nar pre­sen­ta­tions or com­plete mod­ules, lessons, self-study units, learn­ing games or sim­i­lar, which can be eas­ily reused and adapted for use in other teach­ing-learn­ing con­texts due to their license and tech­ni­cal for­mat.

Best prac­tice exam­ples for some of the above-men­tioned for­mats can be found here: Lec­ture notes on atomic physics, Anno­tated solu­tions to a sam­ple exam, Dynamic data struc­tures course, Self-study unit on dig­i­tal­ity in biol­ogy.

The use of open sys­tems and tools that offer the great­est pos­si­ble flex­i­bil­ity for the fur­ther use of the mate­ri­als is par­tic­u­larly desired for the tech­ni­cal map­ping of the learn­ing con­tent (tuto­ri­als and tem­plates can be found here).

Application and award modalities

Sub­ject to approval and autho­riza­tion for allo­ca­tion by the MWK, the eTrainer Fund 2025 of MWK and TIB has funds of around €50,000 avail­able for uni­ver­si­ties in 2025.

The fund­ing is aimed at STEM sub­ject areas. The max­i­mum indi­vid­ual vol­ume to be applied for is €10,000. Only per­son­nel costs for stu­dent assis­tants are pro­vided. The appli­cants are respon­si­ble for select­ing the stu­dent assis­tants. The assis­tants are to be hired by March 1, 2025; all fund­ing must be drawn down by Novem­ber 30, 2025.

Pro­fes­sors and aca­d­e­mic staff at uni­ver­si­ties in Lower Sax­ony with state respon­si­bil­ity are eli­gi­ble to apply. Each appli­cant is per­mit­ted to sub­mit one appli­ca­tion. A max­i­mum of two appli­ca­tions per uni­ver­sity will be approved in order to ensure a fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of fund­ing.

Appli­ca­tions are sub­mit­ted using the short appli­ca­tion form. Inter­ested par­ties are requested to send the doc­u­ment by email to foerderung@twillo.de. The dead­line for sub­mis­sion is Decem­ber 18, 2024.

The selection of eligible applications is based on the following criteria:

1. The project envis­ages that the funded assis­tants will cre­ate dig­i­tal teaching/learning mate­ri­als on spe­cial­ist top­ics of a STEM degree pro­gram.
2. Prepa­ra­tion of the cre­ated mate­ri­als as OER is planned: Open licens­ing of the con­tent under CC 0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or a com­pa­ra­ble open source soft­ware license as well as repro­duc­tion in an open file for­mat is planned.
3. All mate­ri­als pro­duced as part of the fund­ing are to be pub­lished on the OER por­tal twillo at the end of the project.
4. To pre­pare the funded assis­tants for open media pro­duc­tion as part of the project, par­tic­i­pa­tion in an OER basics work­shop (online) is planned. In addi­tion, the twillo online con­sul­ta­tion hour is to be used reg­u­larly for sup­port with prac­ti­cal ques­tions and the pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion of interim results.
   

The deci­sion on the allo­ca­tion of funds will be made in Jan­u­ary 2025 and is the respon­si­bil­ity of a selec­tion com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the twillo OER ini­tia­tive. Incom­ing appli­ca­tions are first for­mally reviewed and then assessed accord­ing to the above-men­tioned con­tent cri­te­ria. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion will be paid to the reusabil­ity of the OER to be devel­oped.

Contact us

If you have any ques­tions or com­ments about this fund­ing, please con­tact Noreen Krause (TIB), Britta Beut­nagel (TIB) and Dr. Matthias Stein (HIS-HE): foerderung@twillo.de