Yesterday, I received word that the University of Paderborn will honor me with the “Teaching Award of the University of Paderborn for Junior Academic Staff” (Lehrpreis der Universität Paderborn für den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs). The committee decided to present this award to me mainly for the pedagogic concept and the three triple implementation of the “Future Social Learning Networks” seminar series. The price will be presented on 20.01.2013 within the scope of the New Year reception with the chancellor of the University.

I am very pleased and honored by the award and happy that the committee perceived the concept of FSLN as a valuable endeavor to enhance and open up university courses.

I conceived the FSLN seminar concept in 2010 while being at the Computer Science Education Group of the University of Paderborn. The first two implementations of the course were carried out in cooperation with Nina Rebele (a.k.a. Nina Heinze), who then was with the University of Augsburg’s Institute for Media and Educational Technology. This summer, the third implementation of the course was carried out with six partners and about 90 students from Germany and Israel. In detail we collaborated with Ilona Buchem (Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin), Moshe Leiba (Holon Institute of Technology), Alexander Perl (University of Braunschweig), and Timo van Treeck (Cologne University of Applied Sciences). The main aim of the FSLN courses always have been to foster international and interdisciplinary collaboration of student teams working on real-world problems while communicating with social media tools and services alone. This way, the students should be supported in gaining first-hand experience in using these tools purposeful and to the team’s benefit. The tasks have always been challenging and related to top notch research projects, such as STELLAR or MATURE.

If you want to know more about FSLN, you can check the following references:

• Buchem, I., Reinhardt, W., van Treeck, T., Leiba, M. & Perl, A. (2012, in print). Designing and Developing Mobile Learning Applications in International Student Teams, eLearning Papers, (32).
• Heinze, N. & Reinhardt, W. (2011). Educating Educators with Social Media. Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, Chapter: Future Social Learning Networks at Universities — an Exploratory Seminar Setting, (1), 153–170.
• Reinhardt, W., Moi, M. & Heinze, N. (2011). Analysis of Twitter usage in an exploratory seminar setting. Form@re, (74).