The Need: In the midst of rapid technological change, new approaches to education are being demanded. However, some academic staff still resist taking advantage of available technologies in their teaching, and several EU universities are much more technology enabled than others. Given evidence-based confirmation of benefits, robustness and academic rigour in digital education courses and resources, why do some educators act as change blockers to new digital technology initiatives in higher educational reform? Although some of the resistance is ingrained in academic staffs’ philosophical values and beliefs, the relevant literature and a needs analysis conducted with all DIG-IT partners also identified the cost of and time required to design and learn how to design online study units and resources are also major barriers. Some EU universities offer robust online education study-units and courses, while others lag behind offering few to no online learning opportunities for their students. The need for convenient, accessible, continuing education (CE) is not a problem exclusive to academic staff and the university industry. The healthcare sector has thousands of busy practitioners needing CE to ensure evidence-based practice while maintaining patient care and safety. CE is a form of lifelong learning that involves maintaining competence to practice by updating knowledge and skills related to one's professional life. University collaborations with other industries are manifesting themselves as a competitive advantage due to complementary core competencies matching work and study skills, versatile study paths, and ultimately, securing and maintaining better employment. Solution: DIG-IT will provide solutions to address the imbalance and inequity of digital education opportunities offered at EU universities - an aim consistent with the European Commission Digital Education Action Plan https://ec.europa.eu/education/education-in-the-eu/digital-education-action-plan_en. Immediate research is needed to understand how and under what circumstances, EU academic staff and healthcare professionals will embrace emerging technologies to enhance learning experiences and opportunities. There must be intentional development of educational supports to assist educators transitioning from traditional teaching methods to teaching with digital technologies. DIG-IT academic staff will collaborate with St. James hospital subject matter experts to produced accredited digital eBooks and apps to meet an unmet need of accessible, relevant training at the point of care. Target Group: Approximately 5000 academic staff in universities in Malta, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia, and Finland; and 1000 healthcare professionals in six St. James facilities in Malta, Hungary and Libya, who wish to collaboratively create, share, and distribute innovative training and teaching resources to support educators by reducing redundancy, time and cost. Outputs include: a quality standard framework and assessment toolkit to guide the design, delivery and evaluation of digital education; an online course to increase confidence and teach educators how to design, delivery and evaluate digital education; a train-the-trainer online course to develop digital education champions to support peers, and healthcare eBooks and apps enabling mobile learning at the bedside. The mixed methods evaluation of courses and resources will gain an understanding of how and under what circumstances academic staff and healthcare professionals learn and transfer learning to teaching, improve product quality, and enable sharing lessons learned and best practices. The delivery and evaluating of courses in a variety of EU countries will enable understanding with regard to geographic cultural and language impacts on digital education. A demographic survey, course transcripts, formative temperature checks, post training summative quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews will be used to obtain a full understanding of the interventions. This novel partnership design and delivery of education products is of international interest in that it resonates with the concepts of inter-ministerial collaboration, trans-sectorial cooperation and multidisciplinary operations with advocates. Each partner will exit DIG-IT armoured with – increased knowledge and skills, cutting edge resources and a collaborative international network in digital education. Beyond partners, DIG-IT will deliver an arena of quality resources beneficial at a regional, national and international level that uniquely spans healthcare and education, free of charge for public access from the DIG-IT’s open access repository. The partnership model of designing and delivering education products can also be expanded into future CE collaborations with additional healthcare entities and other industries such as tourism and gaming to improve teaching and learning in a digital world. (see Annexes for DIG-IT at a Glance diagram)
In essence, the overarching aim of the project was to inform, enable and support the development of knowledge, skills and competences of educators in eLearning in the educational entities and health entity participating in the project. Training programmes for educators and a training programme which seeks to enable educators train other educators regarding eLearning were developed and resources for guidance and reference were designed, tried and evaluated in this regard. The prevalent current state of digital education standards was sought and mapped through a systematic review of the related literature. following a comprehensive research work. In view of being cognisant of the the challenges of health care workers to pursue on-campus educational activities, eLearning opportunities through Apps for healthcare workers were planned and delivered. The project partners wanted to evaluate the activities, outputs and results which the project delivered. Research was therefore carried out n view of formally evaluating all aspects of the project and to disseminate all outputs in an evidence supported manner accordingly, including the publication of papers in academic peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
The project was proposed against a backdrop of identified need to enable and support educators, across Europe, to become more effective and efficient educators in e digital learning contexts. The terms digital education and eLearning are used interchangeably in this report as was the case with the project planning and implementation. The skills and competences to be an effective and efficient educator were addressed in the project through the design and delivery of education/ training programmes, alongside the development of quality standards ( a reference interactive framework) and a toolkit towards enabling the evaluation of the eLearning initiatives. In addition, the project sought to deliver eLearning resources for health care staff which may be use towards addressing the learning needs of busy health care workers who have little time and limited opportunity to attend on-site educational initiatives outside clinical working time.