Digitales Mentoring

Digital Mentoring is a joint project of Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Bochum University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences and Arts and is part of the Institute for Higher Education Didactics at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Description of the project:

Surveys and evaluations at Fachhochschule Dortmund have shown that the first 3 semesters are crucial for a successful course of study. Developments during the corona-related restrictions have also shown how important meaningful digital support is, as personal contact for counseling, for example, is not always possible. The Digital Mentoring project has therefore developed a web-based, AI-supported dashboard on which students can manage their exam dates and registration deadlines, view their exam results in a structured way and obtain an overview of the ECTS and bonus points they have collected. The aim is to give them a digital helping hand right from the start. Further self-assessment content is intended to help students reflect on their own individual learning behavior and adapt it to their life or study situation if necessary. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and learning analytics (LA), the potential of digitalization is also being used to develop a system for recording, reflecting on and supporting learning processes. To this end, an AI was developed that can be used to make predictions about the course of study. Functions such as an anonymized peer-to-peer comparison or a competence spider are intended to provide students with individual information on learning progress (also in comparison to their fellow students). For further help, all study-related offers of the Fachhochschule Dortmund are available in a specially created selection matrix.

An important component of the dashboard is also an intuitive presentation of results from the bonus point system, as it is currently used in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The bonus point system in the Department of Mechanical Engineering is an offer for examinations in the subject of mathematics; students can check their knowledge through mini exams and online tests before the actual exam. For each mini-exam and online test, they earn bonus points (depending on the grade of the tests), which can be credited as points towards the result of the main exam. Initial evaluations suggest that this offer helps students to prepare better for the math exam and is more likely to pass the exam.

Together with existing study-related offers, Digital Mentoring thus digitally supports students in achieving their learning goals and creates an attractive and intuitive, digitally supported mentoring system.

• Improvement of (digital) teaching as a result of interpreting the data
• New form of teaching/learning support as part of quality assurance and development
• Closer, individual support of the teaching/learning process

The project is being carried out by Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in cooperation with Bochum University of Applied Sciences(Opens in a new tab)  and the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences(Opens in a new tab) .

The results of the project can be found in a separate ILIAS folder(Opens in a new tab) .