Flex Data Competence (DigiFlex)

Data literacy is becoming increasingly important as a key future skill (BMBF 2024) both in everyday life and throughout the education sector and the world of work. In a world characterised by (digital) data, data literacy is essential in order to make informed decisions – also with regard to the handling of personal and other people's data (Schüller 2019). Specialist data skills are also required in various professions. Accordingly, numerous e-learning programmes have already been created. Many of the digital learning programmes available free of charge are of high quality, but only provide general knowledge.

This is taken into account at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, where all students can acquire and deepen data skills as part of the interdisciplinary elective area FLEX. In order to meet the heterogeneous prior knowledge and interests of the students, the two modules FLEX 02 Applied Data Literacy and FLEX 03 Data and Models focus on different areas of data literacy.

In the FLEX Data Literacy (DigiFLEX) project, e-learning programmes are being developed specifically for these modules, which on the one hand teach generally relevant skills in dealing with data across disciplines. This helps to identify and discuss interdisciplinary application references. On the other hand, learning opportunities are created in collaboration with experts from the five departments, in which students work specifically on case studies and data sets from the intended professional discipline. The students apply the data literacy they have built up in their domain and are thus optimally prepared for their future careers. Furthermore, the learning time can be optimally utilised through targeted content-specific teaching in order to build up special, subject-specific skills. At the same time, a programme tailored to individual needs meets the interests of our students and thus increases their motivation.

The University of Applied Sciences Potsdam is an ideal project location, as interdisciplinary research into data management, open science and data ecosystems is already being conducted in the profile line "Digital Transformation – Urban Future". One result of the collaboration is QUADRIGA, a data competence centre at the science location Berlin-Brandenburg, in which digital educational opportunities for researchers at all career levels are developed and offered. The research results are directly incorporated into teaching in the degree programmes.