The inter-university teaching network Teaching Low German (LeNie) has been working together in various forms since 2018 and is centred around the cooperative, digital teaching of the regional language Low German. Since it was founded in 2022, the teaching network has been united by the aim of strengthening the training of future teachers of Low German. Thanks to funding from the Foundation for Innovation in University Teaching, the teaching network is able to promote the development of a digital infrastructure to expand the digital teaching-learning situation in higher education and enables cooperative and collaborative research and teaching in Low German. Open educational resources are created and disseminated across the teaching network in order to diversify the local university programmes of the respective locations and to exchange knowledge.

In this innovative project, LeNie sets new standards for the cooperative work of niche subjects and implements them in the teaching network as described below:

Each member is part of one of the following 5 creative groups according to their specialist expertise: literary and cultural studies, linguistics, language practice, language history, and Low German didactics. In these inter-university, cooperative groups, the lecturers exchange creative ideas that are implemented as OER and used in university teaching. Setting up a virtual learning environment minimises the technical challenges and at the same time offers the opportunity to produce modern interactive teaching and learning formats in a safe and learner-friendly environment. In order to exploit the potential of open educational materials and make knowledge in the subject available in the long term, the Teaching Network 2024 is creating various OER for the subject of Low German [de], which includes formats such as interactive learning videos, podcasts and interactive language cards. In 3 inter-university training workshops [de], university lecturers acquire practical knowledge and digital skills, so-called future skills. However, LeNie not only promotes collaborative working and teaching through the joint development and exchange of knowledge in the workshops for continuing professional development. LeNie also establishes these cooperative structures for students: students from all universities in the network take part in the winter academies [de] and come together in one place to deepen their knowledge and get to know our digital teaching and learning materials.

As a teaching network, we have exchanged views on common standards for our teaching cooperation and our OER. The LeNie policy now brings together guidelines and further information for the network that is relevant to all federal states.

In October 2023, the Teaching Network for Teaching Low German (LeNie) gave a digital presentation about itself at the conference ‘Quo Vadis? Tagung zur digitalen Lehre und Lehrkräftebildung in M-V’. The article ‘Mit LeNie die Zukunft interuniversitärer Lehre stärken’ focuses on the forms of cooperative collaboration and the goals of the network. The article was recently published in the conference proceedings.

We have been part of the OERinfo blog since 16 January 2024, where we present our project and our teaching network. Find out how we want to strengthen inter-university teaching: LeNie: strengthening inter-university teaching in Low German with OER [de]