Since the beginning of the year, we have been a proud partner of edu-sharing NETWORK. The non-profit association has been networking educational organizations since 2010 and makes digital, free learning content accessible to teachers, students and other inquisitive people. At the beginning of the Corona crisis, the network built the national platform “WirLernenOnline – Freie Bildung zum Mitmachen”. As UX experts, we actively helped shape the platform.
Finally: WirLernenOnline
WirLernenOnline (WLO) is a meta-platform for educational content jointly developed by edu-sharing NETWORK e.V., Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. and the Hasso Plattner Institute and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The platform relies on qualified open learning content (Open Educational Resources OER) and high quality standards: All content is curated and reviewed by expert editors.
The task: digitizing education in a user-centric way
WirLernenOnline (WLO) provides digital learning and teaching materials: on the one hand via the search engine and subject portals, and on the other hand via the Open Edu Hub directly in platforms of the states and schools. WLO launched in Corona Spring 2020 and today already provides over 130,000 pieces of learning content for the classroom.
To make “Free Education to Participate” work for everyone, this content must be easily accessible to users. That’s why we had initially optimized the search function in the project. Our team also worked on the new version of the topic pages. These pages fed into the schools’ learning platforms and provided quality-assured content on various topics. We also designed the usability of the WirLernenOnline website and worked with edu-sharing to consolidate content.
Overall, however, we had little influence on the project as a whole and were not able to fully exploit the potential we saw in it. It is a pity that our part is now finished, we would have liked to do more.
