City of Vienna Competence Team for Teaching

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Vienna Competence Team for Digitalization of the Communication Professions placed a special focus on the experiences and learnings of students and faculty during this time. Thus, in the process of this project, four online surveys were conducted with students and faculty of FHWien der WKW, as well as 60 in-depth interviews. The results of this research project help to identify and sustainably improve the optimal conditions for Distance Teaching. This concerns for example:

• the ideal design of Distance Teaching Units
• the recommended duration of Distance Units
• the compulsory presence of students in class

The research results also contribute to

• clarify the purpose of digital activities,
• understand the support services or online materials required
• and develop ways to optimize student progress through the program.

Although the findings are only a snapshot because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are useful in further developing student needs for future Distance Units and their didactics

The results of the COVID-19 series of studies have also been recognized in the international scientific community, such as in a presentation at the 2021 EADTU I-HE Conference in Bari, Italy.

Communication professions in the fields of marketing, PR, media and journalism are particularly affected by digitalization. One of the main concerns of the competence team was therefore to teach current and future digital trends in a practical way – to name just a few focal points:

• Online Marketing and Communication with a focus on Programmatic, Social Media, Influencer, Search Engine and Content Marketing, Big Data and the DSGVO.
• Digital Journalism with topics such as “fake news,” “echo chambers,” and “filter bubbles”

The focus was on the development of digital skills and the confident mastery of related tools by the students. A regular exchange with a selected expert reflection panel from leading digital, advertising and media agencies ensured that relevant trends were diagnosed. In this way, the skills sought by employers flowed directly into the teaching. In addition, the competence team regularly shared these findings with the professional community, for example as part of the Marketing Club Österreich (MCÖ).

Overall, the project provided groundbreaking insights for the future design of innovative digital teaching settings, as well as important perspectives on the digital future of communication professions. The results of the competence team’s research and teaching were incorporated into the current curriculum development. As a result, FHWien der WKW’s positioning as a leading university of applied sciences for management & communications with teaching content on the pulse of the digital age has been significantly strengthened.