 Hello, here we are again with another video about the benefits of the digitisation of teaching and learning. Whenever we are involved in the benefit debate, we primarily have teachers and administrators in mind and for example talk about the new freedom we teachers gain through digitisation. We address aspects such as the new heights of quality assurance and we talk about sustainability effects and put forward that digitisation may help to solve a number of problems of teaching and learning. But what about our students? Are they interested in these aspects too? Do they really care whether digitisation increases the quality and transparency of our content? Does it matter to them what we do in the classroom as long as we are just there and they can get their credits? To be honest, apart from the new options of data access from anywhere at any time, which is no longer confined to the opening times of physical libraries, I can't see any real advantage for them. In fact, what we teachers call a benefit, namely content quantity assurance, you know, the web never sleeps, might from a student's perspective simply be interpreted as fewer cancellations, that is, fewer days off. In other words, in their eyes, not a gain but a drawback. Well, and what I call compactness of content may for them simply mean more content at the same time. And even the high degree of interactivity in multimedia environments could be understood as more work. So apart from the new options of data accessibility, we must conclude that the digitisation of teaching and learning from the student's point of view does not involve any measurable benefits. However, there is an obvious advantage even for them. Let me call it studyability. To illustrate this point, let me first list some problems. What happens, for example, if students are unavailable for whatever reason and cannot attend the in-class meetings of a classical teaching format, say a lecture. The reasons for their absence may be illness, pregnancy, timetable clashes, or even study times abroad. Well, in traditional scenarios, that's it. No participation, no credits. Okay, there can be given summaries in a PDF format or they can ask their fellow students for help via the respective groups in the social networks. But is that an alternative? Maybe for me it isn't. Here is another problem. In our current system, our students are bound to specific rhythms and deadlines. One such restriction is the length of term where class start and class end are fixed. And furthermore, within these bounds, in traditional classes, they have to adhere to another rhythm which depends on the number of units per class. A weekly rhythm, a rhythm of two units per week, and so on. What can we do about these two problems? Well, if our learning units are fully digital, we can do a lot for our students. For example, we can offer online courses as part of our curricula. With such formats, our students can continue their studies from any location at any time and can to some extent within the general term bound restrictions even apply their own rhythms. And in those online courses where the necessity of human tuition is reduced to a minimum, we can, at least to some extent, enrich the curriculum. With our special online classes, for example, we would not have been able to offer our successful MA program, Linguistics and Web Technology, let alone our online master web development for linguistics. But what about on campus formats? Here, even the most advanced inverted classroom formats have not been able to provide our students with a temporal flexibility beyond the weekly rhythm. Our students are, by and large, still bound to the classical scheme of a fixed rhythm. One or two units per week and an exam at the end. The only flexibility they have gained is the phase between the units. Instead of listening to someone in class delivering the content at a given time, they can now apply their own rhythm of content acquisition. Maybe that's already an advantage. But if you give them access to all units of a class, which we always do on the virtual linguistics campus, then you quickly find out that students want to be more flexible. They want to apply their own rhythm as our class evaluations clearly show. So what can we do for them? The answer is our flock concept, where flock stands for flexible on campus course. In such courses, our students can define their own rhythms within a term. As usual, one unit per week. Alternatively, one unit every five days. Or even one unit every three days. These options result in three different dates for the final exam. More exam dates are hard to realize since our electronic exams are written in computer pools, which are not freely available, but have to be booked a long time in advance. This new concept allows the students not only to apply individual rhythms, but more importantly, they can now remove their final exam from the busy end of term exam period. And the in-class meetings, which are in accordance with our inverted classroom mastery model, are primarily dedicated to practicing and deepening. Well, since the class attendance no longer have the same rhythm, we have to serve them individually. That may be a little bit hard, but it's manageable. Group one is the standard case. Students who have the weekly rhythm will be offered 13 in-class meetings plus the latest date for the final exam. Students who opt for a five days rhythm finish earlier and they will only have 10 in-class meetings and an earlier date for the final exam. And students who are on the fastest track only have seven in-class sessions and the earliest possible exam date. And to serve them with the appropriate practicing material, we do the following in-class. Sessions one and sessions 11 to 13 are not problematic at all. Here we only have one homogeneous group in class. In sessions 8 to 10, we have to serve two groups. And in sessions 2 to 7, even three. How can we do that? How will we manage? Well, in the cases where we have more than one group, the first part of an in-class meeting will be dedicated to the practicing with the material of the standard seven days rhythm. That's for all. The remaining part of the in-class meeting discusses topics and problems, if there are any, that are gathered via the class-related forum where students of all groups can post their problems and if there aren't any, we simply continue with our general topics. So, with online courses offered on campus and with the new flock format, we have two significant benefits as far as studyability is concerned. Our students can continue their studies even if they can't be part of the in-class meetings and they can within the standard curricular restrictions apply their own rhythms. And the prerequisites for these digital formats? Well, we need fully digital learning units. We have to make sure that the online options and the flock formats are fully in line with the study regulations and are communicated well to all our students. And we need a platform such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus that allows the management of flexible rhythms. Once we've got all that, we can improve the studyability of our degree programs considerably and we can adapt our course formats to our students' needs. More than ever before. A real benefit, isn't it? Okay, that's for now. Thanks for your attention and see you again soon.