Was hat Carl Rogers Wirtschaftsinformatikern im Zeitalter des Internet zu sagen? Studie zur Einführung der Lehrveranstaltung „Personzentrierte Kommunikation” an der Universität Wien

The increasing influence of the Internet on higher education evokes the question: What effects will this cause? We employ new media in order to supplant traditional lecturing by intensive interaction among all participants. This shall lead to more motivation and deeper, more significant learning involving the whole person. In this article we share our experience in designing and facilitating a course called ?Person Centered Communication” targeted at exposing business informatics students to the Person Centered Approach. We offer a mix of theory, exercises, self experience, various online-reflection processes such as reaction sheets, self-evaluation, team-assignments, and peer-evaluation of the cooperative elaboration of a self-chosen theme in the scope of Person-Centered Communication. The current study follows an extended action research methodology and encompasses the motivation, planning, performing, evaluation, and learning from our experience. The main result was that whereas the encounter groups were perceived as highly challenging, students unanimously agreed to have profited a lot for their future job and private lives. They mentioned that the online reflections provided complementary means to deepen their experiences and to get into contact with themselves.