Informal Learning with Real Impact: How Professionals Develop Digital Skills through Informal Learning Opportunities

Chair: Karl-Heinz Gerholz (University of Bamberg, Germany) Discussant: Peter Slepcevic-Zach (University of Graz, Austria) The development of digital skills among professionals is currently an issue of global concern. However, at the same time, digitalization is transforming the circumstances how educators and professionals acquire skills. As future development cannot be foreseen, formal education comes to limitations and the importance of informal learning increases.. As informal learning – particular in work contexts – cannot be taken for granted, challenges arise. This symposium explores the circumstances how informal and workplace learning can best be supported in enabling professionals to develop digital competencies across different contexts and environments. The contribution ‘Skilling or Chilling: How AI Tools Transforms Teachers’ Digital Competencies’ by Karl-Heinz Gerholz and Nina Passlack (University of Bamberg) thematizes how teachers’ digital skills evolve through the use of AI tools. While discussions on AI in education often focus on formal training, many teachers already integrate AI into their daily practice (e.g., Bitkom 2024). However, this usage remains largely non-formal and informal, leading to shifts in professional competencies. Building on the Re-Skilling concept (Raffner et al. 2022; Passlack et al. 2025), teachers experience AI-driven Re-Professionalization in three ways: Re-Skilling (e.g. acquiring new technical knowledge about AI), Up-Skilling (e.g. refining skills such as context-sensitive prompting) and De-Skilling (e.g. losing skills, e.g., reduced creativity as AI assists in lesson planning) (Gerholz & Passlack 2025). To understand these skill transformations, we conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers (n = 28). Results indicate a mix of Re-Skilling, Up-Skilling, and De-Skilling effects. Notably, while teachers recognize the need for critical evaluation of AI-generated content, they rarely engage in such reflection in daily practice. This highlights a critical skill gap. These insights are crucial for designing targeted professional development programs that address both opportunities and risks of AI integration by teaching in schools. The contribution ‘Learning within crowdwork – digitalized workplace learning’ by Christian Harteis and Stephan Drechsler (Paderborn University, Germany) presents results of a literature review. The digitalization establishes new forms of work such as crowdwork (Bellesia et al., 2024; Idowu & Elbanna, 2021). A systematic literature review identifies learning opportunities within the crowdworkers’ workplace, ranging from work management via brand-building and technology-use to the engagement with the community interface, considering multiple constituents of the crowdworkers’ workplace such as locations and their infrastructure, as well as working hours and expectations by society. The degree to which such learning opportunities occur is shaped by the digital tools and workplace learning und such circumstances requires a high level of self-regulation (Margaryan et al., 2022). The contribution ‘Fostering the acquisition of conceptual skills in counseling with digital case tools’ by Josef Strasser (RPTU Kaiserslautern Landau) and Dagmar Festner (Paderborn University) explores the potential of digitalization for the professional learning of counselors. The investigation of digitalization’s potential for the professional learning of counselors is based on findings on expertise development in this domain (Boshuizen et al., 2020). Deficits in counselors’ professional development are explained with the specific conditions at their workplace like highly idiosyncratic cases and lack of adequate feedback (Strasser & Gruber, 2015). It is argued that these deficits can be overcome with digital learning environments that provide opportunities for systematic case based learning. In an explorative study, the effects of such a learning environment were tested. Results reveal that counseling novices (n=21) that were supported with a learning environment that provided a multitude of authentic cases and adaptive feedback showed superior case conceptualizations compared to counselors (n=24) that developed conceptual skills in a traditional case supervision format. Obviously digital case tools seem to allow counseling practitioners to integrate case-specific information and theoretical knowledge more systematically. Literature: Bellesia, F., Mattarelli, E., Bertolotti, F., & Sobrero, M. (2024). Algorithmic embeddedness and the ‘gig’characteristics model: Examining the interplay between technology and work design in crowdwork. Journal of Management Studies, 62, 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13130 Boshuizen, H.P.A., Gruber, H. & Strasser, J. (2020). Knowledge restructuring through case processing: The key to generalise expertise development across domains. Educational Research Review, 29, pp. 1-31. Gerholz, K.-H. & Passlack, N. (2025). Skillen statt Chillen! – Re-Skillingpotentiale von Lehrkräften durch die Nutzung von KI-Anwendungen. B. Gössling, H. Hautz, M. Thoma & H. Welte (Hrsg.). bwp@ Profil 10. Idowu, A., & Elbanna, A. (2021a). Crowdworkers, social affirmation and work identity: Rethinking dominant assumptions of crowdwork. Information and Organization, 31(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2021.100335 Margaryan, A., Albert, J., & Charlton-Czaplicki, T. (2022). Workplace learning in Crowdwork Questionnaire (WLCQ): Measuring self-regulated learning and skill development in online platform work. International Journal of Training and Development, 26(3), 495-515. Passlack, N., Gerholz, K. H., & Schlottmann, P. (2025). Reskilling Me Softly: Perceived Changes in Students’ Skilling When Using GenAI in Academic Research Projects. Rafner, J., Dellermann, D., Hjorth, A., Veraszto, D., Kampf, C., MacKay, W., & Sherson, J. (2022). Deskilling, upskilling, and reskilling: A case for hybrid intelligence. Morals & Machines, 1(2), 24–39. Strasser, J. & Gruber, H. (2015). Learning processes in the professional development of mental health counselors: The role of illness script formation. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 20 (2), pp. 515-530.