Innovating under Pressure

Qualitative Investigation of Transfer Barriers and Development of a Chatbot to Support School Practice Trials in a Teacher Training Program

Abstract

In the sense of “Educational Design Research” (Plomp, 2013), this paper describes the results of a systematic investigation of challenges in the transfer of technology supported learning environments in the context of school practice trials as part of teacher training with the aim of developing a chatbot to support action-oriented knowledge acquisition in situated learning. For this purpose, learning processes of teachers as learners were recorded by means of portfolios (n = 19) and evaluated with a qualitative content analysis. Key findings relate to practices of planning and preparation as requirements for professional teaching. Based on this, practitioners (n = 10) as well as experts (n = 6) used a knowledge exchange process with a prototyping approach to develop interdisciplinary possibilities for support and solutions. From these ideas, a chatbot prototype was developed based on the principles of “mobile learning”. The paper concludes with a presentation of the core elements of the chatbot, a framing of the results and considerations for future developments.