The Association of Media Centres at Universities (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Medieneinrichtungen an Hochschulen e.V., amh) founded in 1991 is a voluntary association of media centres and media facilities from German universities.
Media centres at universities can look back on a long tradition in their central role as competence centres for media production and for the support of research, teaching and learning with media content. They cover an extremely broad spectrum of tasks and activities, which can vary greatly from university to university depending on their genesis and affiliation. The AMH has set itself the task of promoting professional exchange between the member institutions and, in addition, of taking up new developments in higher education and discussing them with its members in order to develop transferable solutions for future services. In this way, the process of digitizing teaching is best supported by the service institutions.
The AMH promotes science and research, teaching and study as well as scientific further education by supporting the media facilities at universities with regard to the development, production and organisation of the use of audiovisual information and communication media.
Amongst others, AMH’s services include:
- Organisation of scientific conferences, symposia and further education events. These include a spring and an autumn conference. In addition, regular workshops are offered, e.g. on media technology or lecture recording.
- Networking and exchange of information on research, development and production projects. This facilitates participation in joint projects founded by national entities such as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).This summer, for example, a BMBF joint project on “OER – Open Educational Resources” was successfully completed with the participation of six university media centres.
- Coordination and cooperation in the fields of information, documentation and distribution.
- Cooperation in media development and production. Here a professional exchange about local developments takes place to check the transferability to other institutions.
- Protection of interests within the framework of university and media policy.
- Representation in national and international umbrella organisations. For example, AMH is a partner organisation of the “German Initiative for Network Information” (DINI e.V.). It is also a cooperation partner of the Association for Media in Science and Research “Gesellschaft für Medien in der Wissenschaft” (GMW e.V.) and the “Forum neue Medien in der Lehre Austria” (fnma e.V.).
Author
Dr. Udo Kullik, chairman of the amh e.V.
