Autori
Staubitz, Thomas
Meinel, Christoph
Friedrichsen, Mike

Titolo
From open courses to accredited degrees. A journey in digital education
Periodico
Rivista di Digital Politics
Anno: 2025 - Fascicolo: 2/3 - Pagina iniziale: 249 - Pagina finale: 265

The German University of digital science (Uds) is a new private, non-profit, and fully online startup university. Officially approved by the German State of Brandenburg, it has offered six accredited master’s and Mba programs since April 2025. Its current form is the result of the merger of the two founders’ visions for digitalizing education. The article highlights the development of the German Uds, focusing on the journey from the launch of the successful openHpi Mooc platform in 2012 via the merger process to the current state of the German Uds more than a decade later. The decision to focus on the history of only one of the two pillars of the German Uds is not intended to diminish the importance of the other pillar’s development and influence; it is simply a different narrative to be told elsewhere. As active participants in this process, the authors offer an insider’s perspective rather than an objective scientific analysis. The development of openHpi began as a small research project with a few doctoral candidates and student assistants. It eventually expanded to a team of nearly thirty individuals with various roles in the development and management of the platform and its associated projects. However, during the transition from the Mooc platform to the online university, only a small fraction of this team moved to the newly formed organization, and the technological foundation was largely abandoned. Despite this, the Mooc platform served as a valuable tool for fostering online education research in a real-life, non-laboratory setting, providing researchers with direct access to a large user base. Consequently, although only minor parts of the openHPI team and software transitioned to the German Uds, the institution continues to build on this rich legacy and experience and it benefits from the connections that have been established to the relevant international research communities.



SICI: 2785-0072 (2025)2/3<249:FOCTAD>2.0.ZU;2-F
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.53227/119803
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/119803

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