DeMOOC: Basic course part 1

Christin Reisenhofer

Mag. Christin Reisenhofer MA is a research assistant at the Democracy Centre Vienna. Her assignments include designing and delivering workshops on political education, as well as developing the content, designing and supervising the DeMOOC. She is studying Educational Science (at Master’s level) and History, Social Studies and Political Education, as well as German as part of her teacher training degree. At the University of Vienna, she worked as a research assistant in the Department of Psychoanalytic Pedagogy, as a tutor for a wide range of courses, and as a writing mentor specialising in educational pedagogy. At Danube University Krems, she is an external lecturer on the eEducation academic course, where she shares responsibility for supervising the module on media education and didactics.

Gerhard Bisovsky

Dr Gerhard Bisovsky is Secretary-General of the Association of Austrian Adult Education Centres (vÖV). He studied political science and wrote a doctoral thesis on state policy on adult education. Bisovsky has many years of practical experience in adult education, has taught adult education at Austrian universities and in Germany, has authored numerous specialist articles and is active in the further education of adult educators. From 1996 to 2012, he headed the Vienna Adult Education Centre in Meidling, where, among other things, he established digital learning (e-learning). From 2008 to 2012, he led the network project “Bildungsberatung in Wien” (Educational Guidance in Vienna). He has several years’ experience in and with European educational projects and was a board member of the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA) from 2012 to 2017. Since 2012, he has been editor-in-chief of the magazine “Die Österreichische Volkshochschule” (http://magazin.vhs.or.at) and head of the Media Awards Office, which awards the Radio Prize and the Television Prize for Adult Education as well as the VÖV Science Prizes.

Gertraud Diendorfer

Mag. Gertraud Diendorfer is Chair of the Board of the Vienna Democracy Centre and served as its Director for many years until 2018. Her work focuses on democracy research, political education, (e-)participation, migration and integration, and gender history. She has curated several exhibitions, most recently “Democracy – The Foundation of Our Coexistence”, and possesses extensive expertise in the development of (online) teaching and learning materials. She is the founder of the Forum for Political Education and co-publisher and editor of the series Informationen zur Politischen Bildung.

Dirk Lange

Professor Dirk Lange is a professor of the didactics of political education at the University of Vienna. He has been head of the Vienna Democracy Centre since March 2018 and is director of the Institute for the Didactics of Democracy at the University of Hanover. For many years, Dirk Lange served as Federal Chairman of the German Association for Political Education (DVPB) and as Director of the Agency for Further Education and Continuing Education in Lower Saxony. He has extensive international experience, including as an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney (Australia) and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). His primary research focus is civic awareness. His current research focuses on the areas of inclusive citizenship education, digitalisation and political education, as well as global citizenship education.”

Ulrich Ballhausen

Ulrich Ballhausen is a research fellow at the Institute for the Didactics of Democracy at Leibniz University Hannover and a lecturer at the University of Vienna and Koblenz University of Applied Sciences. For 30 years, he has been active in non-formal political youth and adult education, as well as in numerous committees and expert groups focusing on (European) political education, international work and historical-political education. As chair of the Working Group of German Educational Centres, the largest association of educational centres and institutions for political youth and adult education in Germany, he plays a key role in shaping this professional field in Germany.