Teaching with DOLCE: creating spaces for students to build object-related digital literacy

The Digital Object Learning Centre (DOLCE) aims to build digital literacy in dealing with collections and object databases. The project was developed at Goethe University Frankfurt as part of its Digital Teaching and Learning Lab (DigiTeLL) programme. It is run on the learning platform Moodle and focuses on the university’s collection database Collecting Objects and Data (CODA). The guiding principles for the development of the platform follow the approach of a self-paced, flexible, low-threshold, bite-sized, interactive learning design. After successfully completing the step-wise and asynchronous modules including tutorials, exercises, and challenges, the users receive a certificate.  After its first test-run in a seminar with Archeology students during winter semester 2023/2024, DOLCE is currently in its second project phase with the aim to make it available as Open Educational Resources (OER). Whereas a targeted application of DOLCE was achieved through tailoring the project to a specific seminar, making the platform available as OER requires a review of technical conditions, didactic methods, and scopes of application. In the beginning of the evaluation phase we identified components that are suitable for a standardized version of DOLCE. Next to focusing on these components and fathoming the users' perspectives, the success of the project relies on mediating the importance of object-based research and teaching with objects.

Johanna Sentef is an anthropologist with a background in interdisciplinary science and technology studies (MA, Goethe University Frankfurt) and works at the intersection of art and science. From 2021 to 2023 she contributed to the exhibition program at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden as curatorial assistant and co-curator. In 2024, she was elected as a board member of SUSTAIN, ICOM’s International Committee for Museums and Sustainable Development, where she is committed to making visible under-researched instruments and strategies for sustainable transformation processes in and through museums. She is currently developing the Digital Object Learning Centre (DOLCE) at the Coordination of the Goethe University Collections while also teaching at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology.