Margit Scholl, PhD, is Professor for Business Informatics and Administrative IT in the Faculty of Business, Computing, and Law at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau (TUASW) situated to the southeast of Berlin. Her research and teaching work centers around process and project management, (mobile) business applications, information security including baseline protection and awareness, multimedia and learning methods.
Prof. Scholl has assembled a research team (Innovation in Teaching/Learning) for her planned projects, a group that is to be completely supported by external funding. The team has been carefully chosen to bring together a broad range of interdisciplinary research and teaching experience.
In 2010, she founded the WILLE Institute (Wildau Institute for Innovative Teaching, Lifelong Learning and Constructive Evaluation), which is affiliated to the university under the umbrella of the Centre of Technology Transfer and Advanced Learning. She won the university’s research prize in 2011, and in 2013 she did a research semester at the University of Washington’s iSchool in Seattle, USA. In 2014, she had her university professorship at the TUASW converted to a five-year research professorship. Her aim in this new position is to focus on developing and deploying a holistic understanding of technology in an area that will in future be more strongly characterized by diversity. This focus will be applied to the following research area: “Holistically Building and Managing Smart Technologies in the Twenty-First Century.”
The constant proliferation of digitalization is increasingly penetrating all areas of life and requires greater awareness and improved skills to handle processes based on information and communication technologies (ICT) and digital transformation (DT). In addition, the use of applications and ICT is prevalent both in private life and at work. DT itself is an ongoing process of change that not only affects individual enterprises, modern administrations, and other organizations but is also having an increasing impact on the entire (knowledge) society and all human beings.
Digital technologies and infrastructures form the basis for new digital applications, new exploitation potentials, and digital business models as well as communication in digital value-added networks. This has changed people’s communication behavior, and new knowledge is needed to deal with digital technologies, coupled with soft skills to cope with the changes triggered by digitalization. It is also necessary to foster a new awareness of the various challenges and threat scenarios of organizational and social values.
Due to shorter and shorter technology cycles, lifelong learning is taking on a new meaning. Recent research suggests that for a new sensitization to occur, a change must be made to include learner-centered, realistic, and participatory learning environments with real-world contexts. Innovative teaching and learning methods that integrate reflection, self-assessment, and performance review are needed. This brings into play cooperative learning exercises in cross-disciplinary teams drawing on authentic game-based learning approaches. The inclusion of playful elements is particularly suitable to increase motivation and encourage behavioral change.
