At first, it was just a matchmaking workshop bringing together partners from Universität Hamburg, Macquarie University in Sydney and Fudan University in Shanghai for joint research projects. My team in Hamburg had some advantage here because I have been working with Matt Bower at Macquarie for a long time. We were surprised and all the more pleased that Xuanjing Huang also wanted to join our team. Now, after exchanging ideas, presenting methods and techniques and developing a project plan at a second workshop, our goals have become even more ambitious.

Our aim of cooperation is to develop procedures for automated recognition and analysis of teaching and learning behaviour in the classroom, maybe also of lesson quality. Our experiences match perfectly: My team in Hamburg has several years of experience in video analysis of lessons and developing coding schemes. Our colleagues at Fudan have ongoing projects addressing the automated analysis of teaching and learning behaviour and Macquarie University is specialised in technology-based learning and instruction.

Writing research proposals, we have a great deal of work ahead of us!