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Kick-off – LEAD:FUH has officially started
[24.11.2025]Full of enthusiasm, the newly formed team kicked off the LEAD:FUH project on November 19 with a launch event. The project is funded by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education Teaching with a budget of almost seven million euros.
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“LEAD:FUH – Learning Empowerment through Analytics and Data” aims to establish a new interdisciplinary teaching architecture at FernUniversität in Hagen. It is designed to offer personalized learning content and support self-regulated learning.
Project manager Michael Hanses gave an overview of the goals, benefits, and special teaching architecture. With nearly 80,000 predominantly digital students, FernUniversität offers the ideal conditions for such a project on learning analytics. LEAD is designed for an initial project phase until 2029 with the option of two additional years. After an initial pioneering phase to set up the infrastructure, various scaling phases are to follow until the end of 2029, culminating in regular operation with an open-access toolkit. This is intended to ensure transfer and nationwide relevance in university teaching. Michael Hanses: “With LEAD, we want to make educational resources more usable and thus ultimately contribute to greater educational equity and the future viability of our education system.”
Reflection and critical thinking
Numerous scientists from CATALPA are participating under the leadership of the research professorships Learning Analytics and Learning Sciences. Marcus Specht, Research Professor of Learning Sciences, emphasized: “With LEAD, we have the opportunity to create real added value. From a research perspective: In the age of AI, it is particularly important to promote reflection and critical thinking. Learning analytics offers great starting points for promoting active and responsible studying.”
