Just one click !? Bridges into the profession

Project management: Prof. Dr. Karsten Wolf

Funding institution: Federal Ministry of Education and Research

At the 10th It Summit of the Federal Government in Saarbrücken, ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Karsten D. Wolf presented an app prototype to support informal learning by means of explanatory and performance videos. The ZeMKI Lab “Media Education and Educational Media” designed the prototype of a “social video” app “ski115” in the style of “design-based research” to support the development of interests, self-expression, networking and career entry.

Around 800,000 small companies with fewer than 10 employees are looking for trainees every year and often have great difficulty finding the right trainee for them. At the same time, around 23% of trainees terminate their training contract prematurely every year; in figures, this amounts to around 130,000 young people. Every year, tens of thousands of training places remain unfilled. The existence of small businesses is particularly at risk in this context. What contribution could social media make to solving this problem? The ZeMKI Lab “Media Education and Educational Media” designed the prototype of a “social video” app “ski115” in the style of “design-based research” to support the development of interests, self-expression, networking and career entry. The basic idea is to offer an editorially supervised, low-threshold space for the development and presentation of informally acquired individual (professional) skills of young people in the form of explanatory videos and tutorials, free of commercial exploitation interests and oriented towards the interests of young people in their everyday lives. An innovative feature is the possibility of “skilling” explanatory videos, i.e. documenting one’s own imitation via photo and video.

The concept of ski115 was not intended to be a classic online community in the sense of Facebook or similar, but rather a mediatized learning collective. This can be understood as a community of joint, self-organized learning, which is constituted through interests and documentation. A group of people publicly documents their learning and problem-solving processes. In contrast to so-called communities of practice, only a single interaction is required to contribute to the learning collective. A video contribution or an explanatory comment – even if the author is no longer involved with the topic – can give later learners the decisive clue to acquiring a skill or solving a problem. Learning collectives are thus built around interests, questions and problems to be solved. The prototype combines (“digital bridge”) practical or interest-driven informal learning processes (“interest-driven” groups and practices) on the one hand, with formal, professionally supervised teaching processes for the development of professional orientation and (professional) expertise on the other. For example, performance and explanatory videos initially offer an excellent opportunity to get more involved with a topic and try it out. Building on this, topics from leisure time can be professionalized (“geeking out”; from hobby to profession: e.g. from working with BMX bicycles to working in a bicycle workshop; from designing your own textiles to an apprenticeship as a tailor).

The prototype was further developed together with the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training and partners from the vocational training sector.