E'SPRESSO – Virtual Communities of Practice in Higher Education

Findings from educational research show that the successful transfer of higher education didactic knowledge and acquired competences into planning and teaching activities is only guaranteed if there is also a lively discourse and transfer of knowledge between lecturers in so-called "communities of practice" as a form of social practice.

The organisational characteristic of universities of applied sciences is the strong involvement of experts from the professional field in teaching. The ratio of external lecturers to full-time lecturers is currently around 4.6:1. Networking both groups and the intended discourse on didactics and methods for quality assurance in teaching is currently difficult due to the given framework conditions.

To counteract this, Campus Connect was published in a previous project as a platform for networking lecturers. In addition, the idea of developing "E'spresso", a digital, location-independent short format for lecturer networking, was born. "E'spresso" is associated with a small, strong and substantial, invigorating drink that can be enjoyed quickly. The apostrophe before the E stands for e-learning and our focus on digital learning.

The MA23 funding project aims to establish a virtual and location-independent community of practice ("E'spresso") of full-time and external lecturers at Hochschule Campus Wien. The knowledge generated is to be shared on Campus Connect. To support the university-wide transfer of knowledge and practice, a CampusTube is planned to be connected to Campus Connect. Teaching videos created in the course of the previous "Flipped Classroom Lab" project are to be attractively prepared and made available there. It can be assumed that this will lead to a further revitalisation of the discourse and the further development of teaching and learning concepts.