Back in the day, students would have had to scour the university’s website to try to ferret out the various courses, workshops and services they needed ― be it a time management primer; a Maths and Stats refresher course; or information on how to use the library and how to find, cite and evaluate electronic literature. And let us not forget the importance of academic writing skills, knowledge of the relevant disciplinary conventions and the savoir-faire to bring that all together when writing different types of term papers, theses and dissertations. Back in the day, finding the support one needed was no walk in the park. In some cases, the help many students needed was not to be found at all, such as support in improving one’s academic English, the essential and unassailable language of higher ed.
Enter studyFIT, in 2021. Under the watchful eye of Dr André Biederbeck, the new unit was established within the Centre for Learning and Innovation. A motley crew comprising several academics, a lawyer and a social worker were recruited, and steadily, the various subunits came into being, most notably English Learning Support.
The lawyer-cum-academic was soon running workshops to train students of Law in the niceties of legalese; the social worker got busy developing and managing a peer-support network for students with chronic illnesses and disabilities and a couple of guys were reviving the Maths and Stats courses and making forays into developing a new domain of ‘Data Literacy’ and learning with AI.
Over the years, there has been many a milestone. New colleagues joined as the team’s work began to bear fruit, including a new teacher for our synchronous IELTS preparation course, and more recently, an additional assistant in the Writing Centre.
Others moved on, sometimes on account of restructuring within the university or to pursue greener pastures.
Of course, the university has hardly stood still in all this time. We now have a new rector, a new chancellor and an AI Strategy.
One thing about being at a division within the Centre for Learning and Innovation is the way the forward-thinking mindset defines much of what we do. Not ones to rest on our laurels, we were soon bidding for and winning external funding for some ambitious projects, most notably BeCOIL whereby the English Learning Support Unit created a bespoke course on Collaborative Online International Learning for a consortium of Berlin universities, and a project on Learning with AI commissioned by the University of Koblenz. At English Learning Support we also ran a pilot course on leveraging AI for Learning, a virtual exchange with students from Spain’s Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).
We became an IELTS-recognising institution and a British Council affiliate, and we are currently busy working on a joint project on sharing virtual reality know-how with English teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Our work has not stayed behind the scenes either: The team has presented at conferences across Europe, with notable showings at the annual European First Year Experience and Innovating Higher Education ― the flagship conference of the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), most recently in The Hague. Because our student support measures are enacted with scientific rigour, we often conduct research alongside our work; thus, we have also put out several publications over the years.
Our blend of asynchronous self-paced format and live lessons, seminars and workshops has proved a hit. The next step is already underway: turning some of our outstanding courses into microcredentials that might be offered across the OpenEU Alliance.
Today, studyFIT supports around 12,000 students and counting, be it in self-paced courses, synchronous classes, workshops, study groups and individual consultations — a striking achievement by any measure. As the service marks its fifth year, it is also preparing for a new chapter: a move from the Centre for Learning and Innovation to the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Different offices and a new frame of reference await.
But we’ll bring our A-game, energy and commitment to helping students develop the skills they need to succeed in distance learning.
To mark our fifth birthday, we at English Learning Support will join the annual Schreibabend on Friday 20 November 2026. You are cordially invited to participate in our Zoom session, entitled Learning in the age of AI, from 19:00 -19:45. Please click here at the appointed hour.
To attend the other parallel sessions, the podium discussion or the main room, please click on this link.
We look forward to chit-chatting with you on the 20th, finding out what makes our distance learners tick in the age of AI.
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