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Introduction
Thomas Pfeffer currently works at the Department for Continuing Education Research and Educational Technologies, University for Continuing Education Krems. Sociologist by training, Thomas does research on education institutions and systems, globalisation, systems theory and the sociology of organisations.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
University for Continuing Education Krems
Position
- Researcher
March 2008 - December 2009
September 1997 - March 2014
Publications
Publications (54)
Die hier vorliegende Studie der Universität für Weiterbildung Krems(UWK) im Auftrag der Digitalen Kompetenzoffensive der österreichischen Bundesregierung leistet
Vorarbeiten für Maßnahmen zur Steigerung der KI-Kompetenz der österreichischen Bevölkerung. Zu diesem Zweck analysiert sie zunächst zwei Politik-Stränge, die das Thema KI-Kompetenz beeinf...
Strategisches ExpertInnenpapier im Rahmen des Digitalen Aktionsplans Austria
Die grüne Transformation zu einer ökologisch nachhaltigen Gesellschaft und die Erreichung der 17 Nachhaltigkeitsziele (Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs) der Agenda 2030 hängen wesentlich von der Entwicklung entsprechender Kompetenzen in der gesamten Bevölkerung ab. Diese Kompetenzen werden von den Vereinten Nationen definiert als „Wissen, Ferti...
We live in a period of heightened internationalisation of population movement for work, education, and varied forms of forced and voluntary migration. Recognition of qualifications earned by the individuals concerned is a key practical, social, and psychological issue for themselves, as well as impacting on prospective employers, host communities a...
Since the days of Talcott Parsons (1973), Joseph Ben-David (1977) and Burton Clark (1983), higher education research has been deeply rooted in the analysis of individual national higher education systems and in their comparison. For a long time this has been an appropriate and fruitful approach, since in many countries of the world higher education...
Im vorliegenden Heft geht es um die Diskussion "Lehre und Forschung", jedoch nicht im Sinne einer "tired old teaching vs. research debate" wie das Titelbild mit der abgenutzten Waage möglicherweise suggerieren könnte. Vielmehr wird die Verbindung von Lehren und Forschen in den letzten Jahren enorm differenziert betrachtet, denn das traditionelle Id...
Thomas Pfeffer erläutert in seinem Artikel die Umstrukturierung der österreichischen Hochschullandschaft als Reaktion auf den Bologna-Prozess am Beispiel der Universität Wien.
Since tertiary education is the highest level of the sequentially structured formal education system, one can argue that universities should help their students to achieve the highest levels of literacy. In this sense, academic literacy comprises all skills necessary to competently read and write academic texts.
Comparing different information and...
Der vorliegende Text gibt einen Überblick über die institutionalisierten Verfahren zur Anerkennung von im Ausland erworbenen Qualifikationen und zur Validierung nicht formal oder informell erworbener Kompetenzen in Österreich. Zu diesem Zweck wird ein konzeptioneller Rahmen vorgestellt, der einerseits eine zusammenhängende Typologie unterschiedlich...
The following chapter reports findings of the European eCompetence initiative. It conceptualizes effective practices in the use of educational technologies at universities as phenomena, which are determined by three dimensions: actors in education, educational products or processes, and educational technologies. Based on the description and compari...
The following text uses the conceptual framework of “six organizational dimension for the use of ICTs” as an instrument to describe an institutional case study at Klagenfurt University. It shortly sketches the national context for eLearning initiatives in Austria and the definition of institutional case studies on organizational development in rela...
As has been described in Chap. 2, digital media have to be understood as a fundamentally new cultural phenomenon, which creates a functionally distinct symbolic layer and a new set of communicative options for society. Digital media do not substitute previous information and communication technologies, like language, script, print, or broadcasting,...
This chapter goes beyond the context of the classroom, trying to examine eLearning not only under the perspective of personal interaction in a course, but also under the perspective of possible effects on larger social communication systems like organizations and society. For this purpose, learning materials and learning interaction will be disting...
The aim of this chapter is to explain the concept of societal function systems, especially focusing on three function systems with the highest relevance for universities: education, science, and (academic) mass media. This perspective may lead to a better understanding of the different rationales in the three functional domains and serves as a grid...
To create a better understanding of the fundamental effects of new information and communication technologies, like the computer and the Internet, the following chapter describes the emergence of digital media as the most recent step in the long history of the evolution of information and communication technologies. The comparison with other commun...
The purpose of this volume is to shape conceptual tools to understand the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the organization of universities. Traditional research-based universities, the most typical representatives of the higher education system, find themselves challenged by the speed and the wide range of technic...
The following chapter describes the educational use of new information and communication technologies as an institutional achievement of the entire university, rather than as a task of individual teachers or of specialized service units. To organize observations from an institutional perspective, a theoretical framework is suggested that distinguis...
This chapter will explain, why electronic knowledge resources in academia cannot exclusively be treated as private commodities, but can also be seen as public goods. After sketching a concept of public goods for a post-national, global society, three types of electronic knowledge resources are distinguished: scholarly publications, course materials...
The purpose of this volume is to shape conceptual tools to understand the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the organization of universities. Traditional research-based universities, the most typical representatives of the higher education system, find themselves challenged by the speed and the wide range of technic...
The following paper reports about the results of the collaboration between 12 higher education institutions in Austria. The purpose of this collaboration was to share institutional practices for supporting educational developments at universities. Rather than to follow a merely functional logic, the paper suggests to focus on the educational produc...
Der Diskurs des Radikalen Konstruktivismus hält, häufig in Begleitung der soziologischen Systemtheorie, seit den 90er Jahren vermehrt Einzug in die Theoriedebatten der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften. So prominent die philosophische und theoretische Reflexion konstruktivistischer Erkenntnisprämissen ist, so vage bleibt die Bestimmung ihrer konkret...
This paper reports about an organisational development project at the University of Vienna that focused on the quality of study programmes, especially on a joint understanding for describing the quality of study programs and for integrating different internal processes into a comprehensive quality management for the development, implementation and...
Content Management und Blended Learning: Jenseits der Hörsaalgrenzen
Der folgende Text geht über den Kontext des Hörsaals hinaus, indem er e-Learning nicht nur unter der Perspektive von Interaktion in der Lehrveranstaltung betrachtet, sondern auch Kommunikation innerhalb der Organisation Universität, als auch darüber hinaus als mögliche Kontexte u...
The following paper goes beyond the context of the classroom, trying to examine e-Learning not only under the perspective of personal interaction in a course, but also under the perspective of possible effects on larger social communication systems like organisations and society. For this purpose, learning materials and learning interaction will be...
In the 21st century, intangible resources such as knowledge and social capital have become as necessary to the modern economy as coal, diamonds, and oil were to the past. This shift from product-focused to service-focused economies necessitates a drastic re-thinking of the ways in which we support the mission and business of economic development on...
Die Systemtheorie in der Tradition Luhmanns kann gegenwärtig als das größte und umfassendste Theorieangebot in der Soziologie betrachtet werden. Der Erfolg dieser Theorie fand aber im Methodenkanon dieser Disziplin bisher keinen Niederschlag. Methodologische Interpretationen systemtheoretischer Konzepte fehlen in der Soziologie. Andererseits verfüg...
Obwohl in den letzten Jahren auch in der Soziologie zunehmend ein konstruktivistisches Wissenschaftsverständnis Verbreitung gefunden hat – ein Umstand, der vor allem auf den Erfolg der luhmannschen Systemtheorie zurückzuführen ist – besteht ein gewisses Defizit an konstruktivistischen Forschungsmethoden. Im Gegensatz zur Soziologie verfügt die syst...
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the variety of information and communication technology (ICT) applications at traditional universities and to integrate them into a holistic picture of the institution. Using the distinction of three key elements of scholarly activity (research, publication, education), it suggests a functional per...
Die Schaffung eines europäischen Hochschulraumes, zu der sich die Bildungsminister von 29 europäischen Staaten mit der Unterzeichnung der "Bologna-Erklärung" 1999 verpflichtet haben, stellt auch den österreichischen Fachhochschulbereich vor neue Herausforderungen. In dieser vom Österreichischen Fachhochschulrat in Auftrag gegebenen Studie wird unte...
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the variety of information and communication technology (ICT) applications at traditional universities and to integrate them into a holistic picture of the institution. Using the distinction of three key elements of scholarly activity (research, publication, education), it suggests a functional per...
One major research goal of this initiative is 'to give insight into eCompetences needed in higher education or addressed in eCompetence development programmes in Europe'. In this paper, we describe this part of the eCompetence Initiative and our analytical framework. This framework is based on the theoretical notions of social construction of commu...
ATTENTION: This is the un-edited pre-print version of a text, that will be published in: Huisman, Jeroen & van der Wende, Marijk (eds.) (2005) On Cooperation and Competition II. Higher Edu-cation Institutions' Responses to European Integration and Globalisation. ACA Papers on Inter-national Cooperation in Education, Bonn (Lemmens). (forthcoming) Le...
Ziel des vorliegenden Abschnitts ist es, den Einsatz Neuer Medien in der Lehre nicht als eine Aufgabe von Einzelpersonen oder Spezialabteilungen, sondern als eine Aufgabe der gesamten Hochschule (Universität oder Fach-hochschule) zu beschreiben. Aus der Perspektive der Gesamtorganisation werden sechs Dimensionen des Einsatzes Neuer Medien unterschi...
