Prof. Dr. Gilbert Greefrath, Institut für Didaktik der Mathematik und Informatik

The DEM project aims to bring the use of digital textbooks to the next level: providing practical guidelines and specific samples of how to develop and produce a digital textbook considering all didactical, design, technical and accessibility aspects. In other words, the DEM project permits digital textbooks that meet the needs of all the stakeholders involved in the production and use of digital schoolbooks.

The multidisciplinary partners will develop and create the outcomes of the project at international working meetings, in online meetings and in individual working groups during the entire project. Subsequently, the outcomes will be presented to technical-pedagogical experts as well as to publishers, parents, and students on the project website, in social media, in a series of publications, and at national and international conferences and meetings.

In addition to a scientific analysis of the digital textbook, which describes the current state of development and evaluates existing implementations, the DEM project develops practical guidelines that illustrate how digital, accessible textbooks should be created. Prototypes will be the practical implementation of the guidelines and are dedicated to specific examples and problems of everyday school life.

When working on modelling tasks, references to the real-world play crucial role. However, a learning group is composed of students with various personal interests. Therefore, the question arises as to what influence the personal interest in the real-world context of a modelling task has on the modelling process of students. For this purpose, the personal interests of the pupils are first assessed. Subsequently, individual students work on an individual selection of modelling tasks, whereby the assignment is made taking personal interests into account. Qualitatively, it will be investigated to what extent the processing of these tasks differs depending on the degree of interest in the real context of the modelling task.