Target groups

Target groups

The CO-LAND OS addresses two clear target groups: the teaching or tutoring team and the students. External participants are considered a third target group.

Each of the nine project partners sends experts to the course who together form the teaching and tutoring team of the CO-LAND course. Likewise, learners come from all institutions involved, mainly from the seven participating universities so that an international learning community is involved in the process of each course delivery. Furthermore, the consortium partners come from different disciplines and bring expertise in landscape architecture, regional planning, coastal geography, tourism geography, architecture and urban planning. This combination of expertise and diverse skills creates a unique and enriching learning environment, that is further characterised by its international and intercultural dimension.

Participation in the OS is possible in active and passive modes. In the first case, university students joining the course actively can receive academic credits for the regular attendance of the online classes and the completion of seminar coursework and group assignments (see chap. 7.2ff). The online course is also passively available to the external audience of international planners and designers, who can audit the lessons to learn a new design methodology and improve their professional skills.

Not to be ignored is the perspective that the previous knowledge of online teaching on the part of the teachers and online studies on the part of the students is also very different. For both, participation in the OS therefore also means training new skills. A target group-oriented design of the online seminar must take this into account. For example, the teaching or learning units should not be too long, should offer options for different forms of teaching and presentation styles, and leave enough time for interactive teaching elements. A preparatory 'training for trainers' is especially important in this context.