The second – and much larger – project I am currently working on is a teaching research project on Communication Data Science, which I have acquired together with the professors and other colleagues at the IJK at the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony in the program „Quality Plus“. It finances my position for three years and aims to integrate Computational Methods into the education at the IJK. Besides me, Jule Scheper is currently working on the project.
The project started in July 2019 and is roughly divided into three phases in which the objectives are outlined, a training concept for the scientific staff is implemented and concrete computational courses are designed and tested. At first sight, 3 years are seemingly a long time and they are indeed a good framework to carry out the changeover systematically. At the beginning there is a dialogue with practitioners, former IJK alumni. In addition, we have also considered entering into dialogue with other academics, because ultimately many institutes face the same challenges in terms of teaching computational methods. Furthermore, we will also push ahead with the training of the faculty. After all, it is the colleagues who will also use R in teaching in the future and therefore have to be prepared for it. I really enjoy the systematic work, which also has a strategic component.