Online Dossier Education

Abstract

The Online Dossier Education is an internet platform integrated into the bpb.de website that provides basic information about key players and institutions in the German education system and brings together debates, findings and insights from education research. 

It was initiated in 2011 as a cooperation project between the WZB and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) and is aimed at a broad public interested in education policy, especially lay experts. It is now one of the major media portals in Germany (alongside the German Education Server and the German School Portal) that provides free, scientifically sound, non-partisan and multi-perspective information on fundamental issues of education policy and education research. In currently thirteen thematic modules on individual areas of education and key cross-cutting issues, the dossier brings together text contributions, interviews, podcasts, interactive graphics with explanatory texts, videos, timelines and other media formats on key educational issues of our time.

The Online Dossier Education is characterised by a number of special features that set it apart from other offerings in the field of educational science transfer and make it attractive to a wide audience – from school pupils and students to parents and others interested in education, as well as media professionals, multipliers and experts from politics and practice: 

  • Conceptual approach: The Online Dossier Education deliberately focuses on a carefully curated selection of content. This content is interconnected and embedded in an overall editorial concept that addresses fundamental questions of educational science and policy.

  • Tailoring of articles: The articles in the dossier combine a high academic standard with comprehensibility for non-specialists and political balance in line with the Beutelsbach Consensus on Political Education. These criteria also apply to all secondary uses of articles from other media. 

  • Diversity of formats: We work with a wide range of media formats and explore and test new concepts in order to create as diverse an approach as possible to the topics, reaching different target groups and serving different contexts of use. 

  • Scientific reputation of contributors: The scientific authors are among the leading researchers in their respective disciplines and subject areas.

  • Relative timelessness of the content: The content mainly comprises articles that deal with fundamental issues in education policy and science that are highly consistent over time. Regardless of the need for occasional updates, the dossier content is therefore designed for long-term usability and sustainability of the information. 

Since March 2022, a follow-up project has been underway. The project partners have set themselves the goal of systematically developing the internet platform and, above all, its information channels on social media, also with a view to younger and less science-savvy target groups, and of exploiting the potential of digital science communication even more consistently. To this end, new, more visual and preferably short formats are being developed, for which the editorial team is also working more closely with journalists. In addition, innovative digital presentation methods are being explored and the navigation structures of the dossier are being optimised so that users can move more fluidly between thematically related content in the spirit of independent knowledge acquisition.

You can find the Online Dossier Education here.