Progetti di ricerca

The world is changing fast and it is vital that education keeps pace. Yet, at a time when innovation is most needed, the world of education is lagging: only 38% of recent entrants to the education sector believe their school/college… Leggi tutto is adept at adopting innovations, new knowledge or methods (Innovating Education and Educating for Innovation, OECD, 2016). InDo will support educators to rise to the challenge, helping them transform their teaching methods and bring learning to life through innovative and inclusive learning spaces. According to the Digital Education Action Plan (2021 – 2027), fostering the development of a high-performing digital education ecosystem and enhancing digital skills and competences for the digital transformation are the strategic priorities of European Commission. Based on the above, the InDo project outlines this vision for high-quality, inclusive and accessible digital education in Europe by upskilling the digital skills of educators in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) through high-quality learning content and user-friendly tools so as to have confident and digitally competent teachers to maximize students’ capacity in the 21st classrooms. InDo project underlines the need of fostering digital capabilities among academic staff of HEIs and academia representatives, so as to improve their teaching, through a blended Understanding by Design (UbD) and Differentiated Instruction (DI) teaching by obtaining essentials skills, attitudes and techniques, based on the development of a curriculum and instructional teaching model in the 21st century classrooms.

The rapid growth of communications technologies, the lowering costs of travel, increasing multilingualism and open borders have enabled greater transnational collaboration. Nobody has supported collaboration more than the European Union through projects and mobility grants. Yet as the scale of the… Leggi tutto climate crisis becomes evident and EU and national governments adopt more ambitious environmental goals towards a climate neutral EU by 2050, we can no longer ignore the environmental impact of our European project work. Moreover, the recent epidemic of Covid-19 has cancelled hundreds of events and shows that we need to find alternatives for face-to-face meetings. Hence, the objective of the ONE project is to strengthen the ability to engage in productive virtual collaboration within strategic and structured international projects, so as to reduce the travel and related environmental impact, specifically: a) reach 600 European Project Managers and Staff and encourage them to engage in more productive virtual transnational collaboration, through improving their environmental and digital/managerial competences, b) equip 50 HE leaders and project managers with knowledge and motivation to change project policies and significantly reduce travel, c) provide 24 stakeholders proof of concept and scalable approach through our own piloting of this approach: we will show that Erasmus Strategic Alliances can be run with only ONE Transnational Partner Meeting per project by achieving it ourselves and sharing the lessons. Following rigorous review and testing three outputs are produced: IO1 “The Business Case for ONE-meeting projects” – A high profile report with supporting materials that raise awareness about the importance of introducing more virtual/remote meetings, IO2 “ONE Virtual Collaboration Toolkit” – A toolkit with practical guidance on how to integrate meeting, project planning, creativity and collaboration software and tools, IO3 “All-you-need-to-know Guide to Running ONE-meeting projects” – A practical guide presenting a step-by-step strategy for converting projects into “ONE meeting only” format. Outputs are used with the target groups via piloting activities, multiplier activities and dissemination: 600 European Projects Managers & Staff receive the results and are invited to use them, 50 HEIs commit to introducing ONE meeting projects format as their preferred EU project deliver mechanism, 24 Stakeholder organisations commit to support and incentivise organisations who prioritise climate goals in their project delivery. ONE involves direct participation via 1) consultation for IO2 & IO3 by at least 36 representatives from organisations who participate in EU Programmes – especially Erasmus+Strategic Partnerships and Knowledge Alliances, 2) user testing, which involves 24 EU project stakeholders in the research phase and 12 stakeholders in the peer review of IO1 and 24 organisations (HEI, VET Colleges, NGOs) for testing IO2 and IO3, 3) multiplier events with at least 260 representatives of HEIs, VET Colleges, Education Stakeholders, Funders, public authorities and other stakeholders in the six partner countries. On completion, the project will have made it possible for European Project Managers and HE staff to access effective, practical resources on digital communication/collaboration/creativity and project management competences which they can directly apply to their (future) international projects. The long-term result will be improved knowledge of the environmental issues relating to transnational travel; Improved knowledge regarding the advances in digital technology that make substituting face-to-face meetings with virtual communication and collaboration equally productive and more efficient. The project will also generate useful results for partner organisations to develop the digital skills of their own staff in for academic (teaching and research) purposes. As impact, European Project Managers will be able to significantly reduce travel to Project meetings with a corresponding reduction in environmental impact. HE leadership will benefit from practical, easy-to-implement solutions enabling them to emerge as forward thinking, digitally proficient organisations showing climate leadership. HE & EU stakeholders will have their “Proof of Concept” showing that policy change is possible, aided by practical guidance they can share with their grantees/members. The impact at local and regional level is through the ability of Project managers and Staff to engage with the outputs of the project. It also provides a reliable means of advancing systemic changes in approaches to how transnational projects are conceived, planned and delivered at national and international level given the high relevance both of the climate crisis but also of digital skills to the demands of our contemporary European economy, and the involvement of key stakeholders in education in the project.