Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Agenda Overview |
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Keynote Session 5
Katrin Temmen (Professor at Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany)"Context Matters: Contextualising Smart Technologies and STEM Outreach in Technical and Vocational Education"The speaker: Professor Dr Katrin Temmen is a professor of the Didactics of Technology at Paderborn University, where she has led the Department of Didactics of Technology since 2010. Since 2023, she has also served as Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. From 2027 onwards, she will take over as chair of the German Faculty Council for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (Fakultätentag Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik). Temmen studied electrical engineering at TU Dortmund, where she completed her doctorate in high-voltage engineering and worked as a research assistant and senior engineer for several years. At Paderborn, she plays a central role in STEM outreach and recruitment. Her department runs the coolMINT.paderborn school laboratory and the coolMINT.forscht student research centre, where pupils can explore engineering and technology through hands-on experiments. She also heads the long-standing “Frauen gestalten die Informationsgesellschaft” project (“Women Shaping the Information Society”), which offers mentoring, taster courses, and “Spring” and “Autumn University” programmes to encourage girls to consider STEM subjects at university. Temmen has received multiple teaching awards at both TU Dortmund and Paderborn University. In 2025, she and her colleague Mesut Alptekin received first place in the GOLC Online Laboratory Award (Virtual and Augmented Reality Experiments category) for PEARL (Paderborn Electrical Engineering AR Laboratory), an augmented-reality learning environment that prepares students for practical electrical engineering lab work. The research focus of her group lies at the intersection of technical education, digitalisation, and STEM outreach. Key themes in her numerous externally funded projects include contextualised learning in engineering and technical teacher education; designing and evaluating innovative learning environments, such as lecture-hall and online/AR laboratories; using digital tools to support self-regulated learning in engineering; and developing learning concepts for universities, schools, and out-of-school learning venues using innovative media. | ||
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Abstract: Context is widely recognised as a key factor in meaningful STEM learning, yet it is often treated as an added motivational frame rather than as a core design principle. This keynote argues that context should be systematically engineered in order to make smart technologies and STEM education more relevant, engaging, and educationally effective. Drawing on research on authentic and contextualised learning, the talk discusses how different forms of authenticity—real-world, disciplinary, and personal—shape learners’ interest, motivation, perceived relevance, and, under well-designed conditions, their cognitive development. Based on examples from the University of Paderborn’s ecosystem, the keynote presents how contextualisation can be realised across a range of settings: outreach laboratories, mobile STEM programmes, research spaces for young learners, vocational colleges, teacher education, and engineering education. These cases show that effective contextualisation is not limited to placing content in a real-life scenario; it requires alignment of learning goals, learner characteristics, activities, materials, reflection, and participation structures. In this sense, context becomes a pedagogical design resource rather than a decorative background. The keynote concludes by proposing that smart technologies in education should not only be innovative in technical terms, but also in didactical terms. Their educational value depends on whether they are embedded in contexts that learners experience as credible, meaningful, and actionable. Thus, the central question is not only what technologies can do, but how educational contexts can be designed so that these technologies support authentic learning and sustainable STEM engagement. | ||
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