# Developing Informatics Modules for Teachers of All Subjects Based on Professional Activities

Torsten Brinda, Ludger Humbert, Matthias Kramer, Denise Schmitz

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Torsten Brinda, Ludger Humbert, Matthias Kramer, Denise Schmitz. Developing Informatics Modules for Teachers of All Subjects Based on Professional Activities. IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education (WCCE), Aug 2022, Hiroshima, Japan. pp.451-462, 10.1007/978-3-031-43393-1_42 hal-05533298

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# Developing Informatics Modules for Teachers of All Subjects Based on Professional Activities

Torsten Brinda<fnref n="1" />, Ludger Humbert<fnref n="2" />, Matthias Kramer<fnref n="1" />✉, and Denise Schmitz<fnref n="2" />✉

**Abstract.** In recent years it has become clear that teachers need digital competency to master their everyday work. However, this digital competency is based on informatics concepts and phenomena that cannot be addressed in an appropriate way without informatics education. This article describes an approach to basic informatics education for all teachers, regardless of their subjects or stage of their professional life. The results of a funded project in the federal country of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany are presented in which, among other things, a community of practice (CoP) with members from all three phases of teacher education (pre-service, induction and in-service) developed and tested a modular concept of basic interactive informatics teaching units.

**Keywords:** Informatics competency · Digitalization-related competency · Teacher education

## 1 Introduction

What became evident by the results of international studies in recent years, see e.g. the evaluation of the PISA results 2018 [1], was even more reinforced in times of a global pandemic: publishing learning material for students on internet platforms, using end-to-end-encrypted messengers for communicating with students and their parents as well as selecting and using platforms for distance learning were only a few of the tasks, which posed problems to teachers in schools during the last years. In this context, educators are expected to be competent both in using digital technologies as professional educators [2] as well as in educating students on this topic [3]. At the same time, such competency has been required for decades [4], but has not been systematically anchored in teacher education until recently. Teachers need such competency for the competent handling of computing systems (e.g. mobile devices and apps) that they want to or should use for professional activities. The PISA results show that teachers' competencies are key: even if they want to implement digital alternatives to traditional

<footnote n="1">¹ University of Duisburg-Essen, Schützenbahn 70, 45 127 Essen, Germany
{torsten.brinda,matthias.kramer}@uni-due.de</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² University of Wuppertal, Gaußstraße 20, 42 119 Wuppertal, Germany
{humbert,dschmitz}@uni-wuppertal.de</footnote>
teaching, they often lack the skills and abilities to do so efficiently and competently. Training on selected products might be a short-term solution. Yet, the acquired skills become obsolete as soon as tools, programs and platforms that are considered popular today are replaced in a few years. All these products are the result of a modeling and implementing process and as such are based on informatics concepts and principles. So that all teachers can act competently – when teaching with current and future digital technologies (e.g. with a virtual laboratory), during other profession-related activities (e.g. for communication via messenger), or when creating subject-specific references to digital technologies in class (e.g. discussion about artificial intelligence) – they will therefore also have to acquire, to a certain extent, facets of informatics competency (see Subsect. 2.1), as explained in [5]. This could enable them to select and to use digital resources according to scientific criteria, to react competently to occurring phenomena when using such resources and – finally – to become self-determined citizens in a world shaped by digitalization, which has also been emphasized already in other works (e.g. [6,7]).

This article describes processes and results of a large funded project in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, in which stakeholders from twelve universities, centers for practical school teacher training (in German *Zentren für schulpraktische Lehrerausbildung*) and from schools as well as ministries work together to address competencies related to digitalization in teacher education. Within the project, communities of practice (CoP) on different aspects of digitalization-related competency of teachers are the main way of cooperation. The authors of this paper are the members of the management team of a CoP that deals with the development of basic informatics competency in all teachers.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Sect. 2 first presents the background of the work. Section 3 gives an overview of the development of a modular interactive informatics teaching concept oriented along teachers’ professional activities, presents one learning unit in detail as well as first experiences in pilot courses. The paper ends with summary and conclusions in Sect. 4.

## 2 Theoretical Background and Related Work

The aim of the paper is to present a concept of how informatics can be integrated into general teacher education by developing modular teaching units that can be used at all stages of teacher education. First, an overview of educational recommendations and existing models is given. Then, the German teacher education system is briefly described. The section ends with a brief description and discussion of related projects.

### 2.1 Digital Competency and Informatics Competency

During the last years, an often heard demand in all educational fields from primary to higher education has been the call for *digitalization* accompanied by the development of *digital skills*, *digital literacy* as well as *digital competency*,
although the terms have been and still are used inconsistently. The definitions
of these terms comprise a multitude of skills, knowledge and attitudes such as
awareness for safety issues or the ability to develop a computing system by
oneself [8, pp. 50–52] as well as a combination of generic digital competency,
subject/didactic digital competency and profession-oriented competency [9, p.
217]. In general, any usage of computing systems to perform a certain task can be
found using the terms *digitalization* or *digital media*. And even though different
authors refer to different concepts, wider or narrower, there is usually not much
debate about the importance of skills and competency related to digitalization,
as these are “at the top of the European Policy Agenda” [3, p. 2].

On a European level, detailed competency frameworks addressing the com-
petencies students at school as well as their teachers are expected to acquire
have been published (e.g. DigComp [3], DigCompEdu [2]). The DigComp frame-
work focuses on using digital media in all subjects and beyond school-life and
DigCompEdu assumes that teachers have developed exactly these competen-
cies, before they include such technologies in their classrooms as well as in
other facets of their professional life. Informatics competency has almost not
at all – at least not explicitly – been included in these models. However, other
competency frameworks addressing informatics competency also exist (such as
the K12CS recommendations, cf. k12cs.org, and the educational standards for
computer science [10]). As argued before, teachers also need to deal with infor-
matics phenomena occurring when using computing systems in the classroom
and they need to address certain informatics aspects which occur in the digi-
tal transformation of the underlying disciplines of the subjects they teach. This
general idea has already been anchored in the famous TPACK model [11], which
describes the knowledge and skills teachers need to have when teaching a subject
in a technology-rich environment and in which the description of the underlying
“technological knowledge” combines digital skills as well as informatics com-
petency [4]. To better connect all these different models and frameworks, an
interdisciplinary working group developed an approach to integrate the afore-
mentioned models and more in a new integrated model [5, p. 8] of digitalization-
related competency of teachers. The key idea of this model is a broad and inte-
grative understanding of digitalization-related competency, which covers using
and understanding digital technologies, their informatics background as well
as impacts, such technologies have on society. This broad understanding then
determines the competency facets in the main pillars of teacher development in
this context, namely learning and teaching with and about digital technologies
and using digital technologies in other profession-related activities. This broad
understanding of digitalization-related competency of teachers, which explicitly
integrates informatics competency, will be used for the rest of this paper.

## 2.2 The German Teacher Education System

As this work refers to specifics of the German teacher education system, a brief
overview is given. Teacher education in Germany is separated into three distinct
phases or stages: The first stage covers academic education with a duration
of at least five years (finishing with a *Master of Education*). Usually, prospective teachers study at least two subjects they will later teach in schools plus a selection of topics on education, e.g. foundations of psychology, educational theories, school development etc. In the process, prospective teachers specify one type of school (e.g. primary, secondary or vocational school) and learn specific requirements for this selected type of school. If informatics education should be integrated in this stage of teacher education, it should be provided in the typical form for this stage, i.e. a seminar or a lecture.

A Master's degree is required to enter the second stage, so called assistant teacher stage (in German *Vorbereitungsdienst*). For at least 18 months, assistant teachers work the majority of the time in schools, teaching their two (or more) subjects to students. In the beginning of this phase, the assistant teachers work with experienced teachers who support them in the development and teaching of their first series of lessons. A smaller amount of time (usually once a week) is spent in close-by seminars, located in centers for practical school teacher training, with other assistant teachers to foster their knowledge on educational theories, both general and subject-specific. They finish the second stage with an exam, thus receiving their official teaching degree which allows them to teach in a selection of public schools in Germany. If informatics education should be integrated in this stage of teacher education, this should be accomplished by integrating aspects in learning units which take place at the centers for practical school teacher training.

Having passed the second stage, teachers enter the third and final stage where they receive in-service training about selected topics. If informatics education should be integrated in this stage of teacher education, it should be accomplished by integrating learning units in in-service teacher training offers at their schools.

It is worth noting that the three stages of teacher education are organized by completely different institutions and that is why the supervisors of these institutions often do not cooperate with each other in a systematically organized way. The described project also had the aim to establish new and better ways of cooperation between educators in the different phases of teacher education.

## 2.3 Related Projects

Provided that all teachers should develop informatics competency, the next question to be answered is, how such informatics education can be implemented in teacher education. Just as mathematics is taught as an independent subject but is needed in other subjects, such as physics or social sciences, concepts and methods of informatics are applicable in a wide contextual range.

One possible way to educate teachers in informatics is to present core informatics concepts to them and to let them transfer these principles into their subjects. This approach was used in several projects. For example, Seegerer and Romeike [7] investigated where informatics-related topics can be found in other school-relevant disciplines and described, how a course can be structured that deals with informatics foundations which are then applied within different subject domains [12]. The benefit of this approach is obviously that teachers can
immediately apply their knowledge in their respective subjects and hence can use it directly in their classes. However, all scientific fields need different approaches and transfers, e.g. the principles applicable in STEM subjects might differ from the ones applicable in liberal arts, sports, music etc.

Another facet of teachers' activities is their professional engagement ( [2,5]). Hence, another approach would be to start from their everyday profession-related activities. For example, teachers have to ensure that the data they store about their students (and possibly their parents) such as addresses, grades, medical issues etc. are accessible solely by those who are permitted to access them. They also have to communicate with parents and colleagues. If they choose to use a messenger, then they have to ensure that neither the service provider nor anyone in the routing path can access any private information. As explained in Subsect. 2.1, to make a competent decision for or against an existing program, teachers need to understand at least on a basic level how these programs work, i.e. how they process input data, which features they do and do not incorporate and which consequences would follow from using a specific tool, e.g. for the privacy of their students' data. This approach is described by Braun et al. [13] and the work presented in this paper is also based on this approach. The obvious advantage is that the contents are independent of a specific subject group, i.e. they are relevant for all teachers of all subjects. This, however, is also a disadvantage, especially for in-service trainings in later stages: Teachers tend to prefer in-service trainings with accompanying material which they can include directly into their lessons.

## 2.4 Interim Conclusion

Demands for digital competency are high and become increasingly frequent. They comprise a multitude of skills and all of them include the competent usage of computing systems. As informatics is the science that enables and drives all digital transformation, demands for digital competency imply demands for informatics competency. Teachers are the key actors in the education system. Not only do they need to understand how the subjects they teach and the teaching methods they use are influenced by computing systems, i.e. by informatics concepts, many further professional activities in school are also increasingly shaped by the usage of computing systems. As informatics has not yet been implemented as a mandatory school subject in Germany, all prospective and current teachers need to develop informatics competency in any of the stages of teacher education, so any approach should take this broad need into account. To be motivating and convincing especially for practicing teachers, any approach should be oriented towards teachers' profession-related activities, so that they can directly understand, how this new competency help them for their job as a teacher and beyond. Subject-independent activities have the advantage that they are relevant for all teachers of all subjects. That is why this approach was chosen for the project described here. Based on such a foundation, connections to informatics concepts within other (groups of) school subjects can then be developed in a following step.
# 3 Digitalization-Related Competency for All Teachers

The ComeIn<fnref n="1" /> project (communities of practice in North Rhine-Westphalia for innovative teacher education, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, 2020–2023) has two main objectives: (1) to further develop digitalization-related competency of teachers, (2) to use communities of practice as a cooperation method to better network the three phases of teacher education. In the project, more than 200 stakeholders from all three phases of teacher education collaborate in five subject-specific (e.g. STEM, humanities) and three interdisciplinary CoPs (e.g. basic informatics education, inclusion).

## 3.1 Key Steps in the Development Process in the CoP “Basic Informatics Education”

In order to anchor basic informatics concepts in teacher education, the CoP<fnref n="2" /> decided at the start of the project to develop a course whose accompanying material can be used completely or partly in all phases of teacher education.

Longer discussions followed on the question of which informatics concepts or competency facets should be taught or developed in such a course. First, the idea of choosing school-relevant informatics concepts, such as “algorithms” or “languages and automata” [10, p. 289] as a starting point was discussed, since these are known and established both nationally and internationally. CoP members from the second and third phase of teacher education criticized this approach, because it did not seem practical enough for practicing teachers. Instead, explicit or implicit references to informatics concepts in other subjects or groups of subjects as well as in subject-independent, profession-related activities with a connection to informatics were discussed as an alternative starting point, from which underlying informatics competency facets should then be developed. Since this alternative approach also connects university teacher education with school practice, in accordance with the explanations in Subsect. 2.3, this approach was chosen as the starting point of the course development.

As explained in Subsect. 2.2, the possibilities to integrate new educational elements are quite different for each stage of teacher education. For example, while a lecture seems appropriate for student teachers in university, visiting a weekly lecture seems completely unmanageable for teachers who work full-time in schools. Hence, the CoP agreed on developing a collection of interrelated but essentially independent teaching units (referred to as *modules* in the following) for several reasons: (1) There are neither national nor federal guidelines regarding the extent to which digitalization-related competency should be anchored in university teacher education. As a result, the curricular space available for such competency development varies greatly between universities. A modular concept offers the advantage of being able to integrate only selected modules into courses with a broader thematic focus, as well as being able to offer specific courses with a

<footnote n="1">¹ https://comein.nrw/.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² https://comein.nrw/portal/cop-igb/.</footnote>
focus on informatics competency development. (2) In the second and third phase of teacher education, key competencies such as digitalization-related competency are usually addressed in (a series of) half-day or full-day workshops. A modular concept also offers the necessary flexibility here.

Based on the decision to orientate the module development along subject-independent teacher activities, the CoP collected a set of prototypical activities derived from several digitalization-related competency frameworks (see Subsect. 2.1). For example, such a digitalization-related activity is chosing an appropriate program to communicate with colleagues, students, parents, institutions etc. To make an appropriate choice, e.g. for communicating via messenger, mail or any communication via internet, this choice must be based on certain criteria that distinguish the communication methods from each other. As one concern in professional communication of teachers is the data privacy of students or parents, teachers must be aware of communication methods that keep these data secure. This also means that they are aware of possible points of data privacy breach. And this means, they have to know in general how the internet works. Only then can an informed choice about forms of communication be made, i.e. which forms of communication should be chosen and which should be rejected. Similarly, other activities of teachers have been selected, e.g. protecting student data from unauthorized access, using collaboration platforms when collaborating with colleagues or searching and remixing existing resources to generate new learning material.

## 3.2 Developed Modules

Following the process described above, by September 2022, members of the CoP had developed nine modules related to teachers’ professional activities, see Table 1.

Each module is the result of a intensive brainstorming and discussion process among the CoP members, reflecting their individual expertise on competency frameworks as well as professional requirements and general conditions in school. The starting point was the analysis of school-relevant competency frameworks related to digitalization in order to ensure that these competencies are also being addressed in the module. The German implementation of DigComp [3] is the strategy “Education in the digital world” developed by the Standing Conference of the German Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) [14]. Even though this strategy is mostly directed towards competencies of students, for all profession-related actions of teachers it is assumed that they have also at least developed these competencies. Currently, there isn’t a comparable national strategy document for digitalization-related competency development of teachers, however, on a federal level such documents exist, such as the “Orientation framework: teachers in a digitalized world” [15]. As these are compulsory standards for teacher education, at first competency specifications from these frameworks were analyzed and grouped regarding typical profession-related activities of teachers, such as communication with others via internet. For every activity represented by a group of competency descriptions a module
<table><caption>**Table 1.** Overview of the developed modules, the underlying informatics concepts, and the relevance for teachers</caption><thead><tr><td>Module title</td><td>Informatics concepts and competency facets</td><td>Important for teachers, because ...</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>M1: Informatics - from science to practice</td><td>Definition of terms, objects and methods of informatics, subject areas of informatics</td><td>... arguing with informatics first needs an insight into what informatics is and what not</td></tr><tr><td>M2: Information search and text design</td><td>Search engines, word processing systems and text design, bibliographical objects</td><td>... they use search engines to find teaching material and to combine the results into new material</td></tr><tr><td>M3: The "secure" chat with colleagues</td><td>Internet as interconnected networks, communication in networks, client-server architecture, encryption</td><td>... they must select appropriate ways for communicating with colleagues, parents, students etc.</td></tr><tr><td>M4: Artificial intelligence</td><td>History, machine learning, recommendation systems, neural networks, new learning and teaching situations with AI</td><td>... the term "artificial intelligence" is ubiquitous and it is especially relevant in schools (automatic language translators, automated assessment)</td></tr><tr><td>M5: From paperstacks to databases</td><td>Change of data management, possible uses of databases, querying data from the database, e.g. with SQL commands</td><td>... especially on management level they need to manage data of students, most probably from more than one class for several years</td></tr><tr><td>M6: Create, recall, protect data</td><td>File management on computing systems, encryption and decryption, backups, file management of apps</td><td>... they need to manage data of their students (contact data, grades, health remarks etc.)</td></tr><tr><td>M7: Shaping school life together</td><td>File properties, client-server model, persistence of data, versioning</td><td>... they need to cooperate with each other via shared platforms or documents</td></tr><tr><td>M8: Digital self defense</td><td>Password security, data tracking on websites, data transfer on the internet, malware</td><td>... they use the internet frequently, for lesson preparation or enhancement</td></tr><tr><td>M9: Creating legally compliant teaching material</td><td>Licenses as attributes of every digital artefact, structure of documents</td><td>... they frequently use and remix material they find on the internet</td></tr></tbody></table>

was specified. Each such module was then analyzed for informatics-related competency which should be addressed in the module. This process was continued with the remaining competency descriptions, until the majority of competency specifications in all documents were addressed, which resulted in the presented nine modules. Subsequently, responsibilities for modules within the CoP were defined and their concept was developed and refined by those responsible. Then the teaching material for the modules was developed and mutual feedback was given in internal peer reviews.

The resulting modules consist each of presentation slides, accompanying notes for educators with further examples as well as necessary files to illustrate examples in the module. In each of these modules, first a scenario from everyday lives of teachers is presented. This scenario is based on one or more of the collected professional activities. Based on this scenario, the related informatics concepts are explained. Every module also includes practical exercises for the (prospective) teachers to develop specific informatics competency facets. At the end, the introductory scenario is presented again and reviewed with regard to the concepts presented in the module.
To give a more detailed example, we use the third module *The "secure" chat with colleagues*. Professional communication, not only with colleagues but also with students, parents, institutions that students visit etc., is part and parcel of the teacher job and it definitely is an important part in every major framework that deals with digital skills, cf. [3, p. 15], [2, p. 19], [4, p. 39]. For example, in DigCompEdu, educators on levels B1 and B2 are expected to "use different digital communication channels and tools, depending on the communication purpose and context" as well as "select the most appropriate channel, format and style for a given communication purpose and context" [2, p. 35]. To make an informed decision about which tool or channel to use implies that educators can distinguish between different programs and channels based on certain (non-trivial) features. This means, they know how their communication data is processed in which way and can therefore choose or reject a certain program. The module starts with a scenario, where the students are faced with the situation that a messenger for communication with colleagues in the near future should be selected. Afterwards, the participants learn about different parts of the internet (client, server, router, internet provider, DNS), their respective functions and what this has to do with the messengers they are using. Next, they have to explore a simulation of a "small" internet, where one client asks for a website from a browser and two other clients exchange mails. Subsequently, they are presented with the logs from the servers to experience which parts of their requests and data can be seen by a server. Based on this, the participants learn that encryption can be a valid tool to keep data protected, their own as well as those of their students. Based on what has been experienced until then, a list of properties for messengers is derived with the participants and exemplary messengers are rated regarding these properties. Finally, the scenario is picked up and students have to reflect their own messenger use, both private and professional. The presented content as well as the embedded exercises present a possibility for participants to develop informatics competency facets, such as distinguishing between clients, routers and servers, explaining communication in the internet or using encryption to protect data privacy. Furthermore, these informatics competency facets are necessary to develop the demanded "digital" competency descriptions, such as selecting "the most appropriate channel, format and style for a given communication purpose and context" [2, p. 35].

In a similar way, all of the presented modules are designed. The competency specifications from national and international frameworks build the foundation. Afterwards, a scenario from the professional school life is constructed so that participants can relate the following contents to their job. Then, informatics concepts and their relation to the scenario are presented to clarify, why a competent execution of the given task requires informatics competency.

The modules are designed in such a way that they can be presented independently of each other as well as combined to form a larger sequence of modules. Since the modules do not focus on isolated informatics concepts but on school context, certain topics naturally occur in several modules, e.g. backups: In the module M6, different backup strategies are shown through which participants
should develop their own strategies for their everyday lives. This is reflected in module M8 with a focus on specific ransomware where the backup acts as a protective mechanism. Among other things, this engagement with data is used to achieve the required competencies from DigCompEdu [2, p. 49].

## 3.3 First Experiences

The modules were first tested in the year 2022 on several occasions. In the summer term (15 weeks from April to July), an optional lecture was organized for student teachers at the university of Duisburg-Essen. It was a virtual lecture with integrated practical exercises that was held every week for 90 min. As module M9 was still in production, the modules M1 to M8 were presented in the order M1 - M6 - M2 - M3 - M8 - M7 - M5 - M4, as this sequence – according to the CoP – best reflects and supports the development of the underlying informatics competency. The number of participants was very small, even for an optional course. While 17 students subscribed to the course, only seven showed up regularly and participated in the final survey. Overall, the course was rated by the remaining students as profitable and useful for their future work as a teacher, although this might as well be interpreted as *survivorship bias*. It would have been also very interesting to hear about the drop out reasons of the other students, but there was no possibility to reach out to them, after they had removed themselves from the course. One of these students commented before that she had difficulties to understand even very basic informatics terms such as “sourcecode” or “compiler” and that the amount of technical terms overstrained her. Therefore, technical terms are reduced where they occur in masses and a glossary will accompany future material. Other students pointed out that some parts of the lecture contained too much presentation and gave not enough time to actually perform the tasks. To address this point, several modules are currently being enhanced with more interactive exercises, which is also beneficial for in-service training in the third stage.

In addition, at least four modules were integrated in existing lectures and seminars in universities of other CoP members. At least three times selected modules were tested in the third stage of teacher education, where about 15 to 20 teachers received an in-service training. In particular, the feedback from the latter situations was extremely valuable as these teachers could provide immediate feedback about the usefulness, strengths and weaknesses of the material. In addition to the positive feedback, almost all of participants agreed that all teachers should get educated in informatics, especially since lots of them associated informatics with “just programming” before. Whenever the material became too theoretical, participants gave us the advice to constantly clarify the necessity of certain concepts for teachers’ work.

The feedback has then been and will further be used to revise and to update the material. It will also be published as Open Educational Resource (OER) at https://www.orca.nrw. Overall, it can be stated that the development of loosely connected informatics modules, each of which is oriented towards profession-related activities of teachers, has proven to work in general teacher education.
# 4 Summary and Conclusions

In order to implement the digital transformation of the school education system and to develop and to foster digital competency at all students, all teachers also need digital competency both for their own professionalization and for teaching with and about digital technologies as well as for other profession-related activities. Such professional activities require – among other things – informatics competency. As long as informatics has not been adequately anchored as a compulsory subject for all students in school education, such competency needs to be developed by the teacher education system for prospective and practicing teachers. In the paper at hand, a concept for modular informatics teaching units based on professional activities of teachers was motivated and described, which has already proven to be promising in initial teaching interventions. In the remaining project time until September 2023, the concept and the specific modules will be further tested and refined. Accompanying material with didactic comments for each module will be created so that the modules can be used by any educator in the three phases of the German teacher education system and not only by the developers of the modules. Further trials will take place in the second and third phases of teacher education. Based on the experiences, the modules will be further enhanced. In doing so, the COP members are in constant contact and consultation with members from the national and international community.

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