Teaching and Research at HdWM

Dementia is a neurological disorder that leads to the progressive loss of cognitive functioning and reasoning. It encompasses a range of symptoms that worsen over time, affecting memory, causing confusion, impairing language, and comprehension, and requiring assistance with daily living tasks. An estimated 9.1 million people live with dementia in EU member states (OECD, 2018). This condition profoundly impacts the lives of individuals with dementia as well as their families, necessitating specialized care and sensitive management.

This project aims to introduce innovative, digital, and targeted approaches for the elderly healthcare workforce. As part of this larger initiative, we are developing an EU Handbook to help upskill the workforce and enhance targeted treatment and care for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Digital health technologies will play a crucial role in delivering practical and accessible care solutions that can be assimilated effectively by people with dementia.

We aim to provide an overview of strategies and digital solutions that can support healthcare providers in their work with people living with dementia, while also raising awareness of this condition.

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Developing smart cities requires special competences. The aim: to constantly improve citizens’ quality of life as efficiently and sustainably as possible. The innovators and operators of this development need to engage with this change process, adopt new behavioural patterns, and internalise an innovative set of competences. The project supports people in the smart city sector (planner, IT manager, ICT project managers, programmers, technical journalists, web designers, system administrators, technicians) in their professional development. To achieve this, it teaches them to apply DevOps, an approach that combines the “development” and “operation” phases. This will improve the quality of e-services and help cities in becoming IT-sustainable. 
The project aims at:

• Identifying competences and job profiles of smart city DevOps professionals.
• Developing a professional curriculum that combines digital and transferable skills, including MOOCs, open education resources (OERs), e-learning, and in-class training.
• Initiating the education in Germany, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and evaluating the experiences.
• Develop and foster networks, in which specialists, trainers, and employers can collaborate to improve the smart city sector.
• Referring to European and national qualification frameworks and the European credit transfer system for vocational and further education to facilitate mobility and recognition of qualifications.
• Using recognised frameworks such as EQAVET and e-CF to ensure quality and transferability. 

Partners are: HdWM – University of Applied Management Studies Mannheim, EVWB- European Association of Professional Educational Institutions, BBB – Federal Association of Professional Education Providers, All Digital – Enhancing Digital Skills Across Europe, Centro Studi Citta di Foligno, Associazione Stati Generali de’ll Innovazione, K-Digitale SRL – Digital Transformation Insight, University of Thessaly – Project Leader, Hellenic Open University, Hellenic Organisation for Standardisation, CitiesNet, EDEX – Educational Excellence Organisation, and ANEL Nicosia Development Agency.
 

Managers take a central role for the execution of safety and health measures at the workplace. 

Within the prevention campaign „KommitMensch”, the DGUV (German State Compensation Insurance) instructed HdWM with the research project to examine the role of company managers in small and middle-sized businesses (SMBs). Co-operation partners of this three-year study are three occupation cooperatives (BG Bau, BG ETEM, and BGW). The research tackles the so-called “management commitment”, i.e. the willingness of a company to invest in short-term non-productive measures to reduce long-term security- and health costs. The study aims at identifying possibilities to exert positive influence on managers. This is in turn used by the occupation cooperatives in their company support services.

The research project is divided in the following four work packages:

1. Qualitative pilot study about the management commitment in SMBs
2. Field study to identify influence factors and outcomes of the management commitment 
3. Deduction of motivation strategies for small businesses
4. Scientific evaluation of the strategies in selected businesses

The project QUAPI is a subsidised by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the state of Baden-Wurttemberg for the development and expansion of academic further education by universities in the federal state.

The over-arching project goal is to meet the specific demands of professionally experienced people in the workforce with respect to their needs and desires for professional qualifications. This will help to cover the demand for specialised personnel in Baden-Wurttemberg.

The aim of QUAPI is to equally master the problems of social and economic policies. Therefore, it specifically focuses on the yet relatively untapped potential of professional and experienced professional people with migration background. Also, it wants to assist the recently immigrated and those who are likely to immigrate from the Middle and Near East during the next years to come.

Among others, the content of measures of the project are:

• Development of flexible study programmes
• Development of special curricula and methods for the quaternary education, respectively the adaptation of existing curricula for the target group
• Support of work and study as a joint and consistent process in the sense of a workplace related and project oriented further education using an innovative browser-based learning environment (presenter)
• Conveying of German skills (academic German)
  
  QUAPI is funded by the Ministry for Social Affairs and Integration Baden-Wurttemberg from funds by the European Social Fund (ESF) as well as the Ministry of Science, Research and Art Baden-Wurttemberg.

The Covid pandemic changed many traditional learning settings to digital learning settings overnight. This posed many challenges to institutions of learning as well as to students, for which not everyone was equally prepared. Apart from a lack of technical skills on both sides, many users were overburdened with the usage of the available tools. This often leads to neglect of aspects such as inclusion, participation, and collaboration in the design and realisation of learning sequences.

Within the project REACT:
•    Digital material, tools, and techniques are evaluated and developed to support a digital classroom that is more aligned towards cooperation, integration, and cultural understanding
•    Lecturers, teachers, and pedagogues are enabled to independently develop and use digital materials so that collaborative learning is incorporated better in digital learning contexts
•    The access to OER materials is made possible or improved.

The basis for the content within REACT is the DigiComp Framework (DigiComp2). By this, trans-national institutions of education (e.g. universities of applied sciences or institutions for vocational education) are supported in their work. 

Project coordinator: University of Applied Management Studies (HdWM)
Project Partner: AKMIAE AKMI EDUCATIONAL ORGANISATIONSA (Greece), BK-CON (Germany), EVBB (Germany), HumaCapiAct (Italy), Nordic Horizon Institute AB (Sweden), Opinion & Action Services Ltd (Cyprus