Digital technologies have been shown to have great potential as drivers of improvements in all types of education, but they have a particularly important role to play in non-formal education for disadvantaged adult learners among many other benefits they: i. Empower individuals to take charge of their own learning and collaborate with others; ii. Offer flexible learning and interactive activities for different learning styles; iii. Increase access; free, online resources combined with smartphones widen participation, engage “hard to reach” learners and enable personalized support; v. Enrich assessment, evaluation and achievement recognition. There are enormous opportunities to increase the scale and impact of adult education, but many organizations struggle to integrate digital tools. A paradox occurs: we have generations of Europeans leading active digital lives on phones and tablets, expecting to use them to explore, create and learn; and a generation of community leaders and educators unsure of how to use the manifold technological resources at their fingertips. The overall goal of DISCOVER, therefore, is to provide community-based adult educators with high quality training on effective digital teaching techniques so that they may increase their use of digital learning tools in their everyday work and drive improvements in the quality and outcomes of their education programmes. In order to do this, we will: a) Develop and disseminate a Guide to Digital and Mobile Teaching (IO1) to educate the educators on the strategic importance of digital pedagogy and the competences required of them as 21st century educators. b) Create and share a practical, interactive Toolkit (IO2), presenting the most valuable digital and mobile tools and the innovative ways in which they overcome learning barriers among low-skilled adults. c) Develop and promote an online platform (IO3) to consolidate educators’ new digital competences, enabling them to practice in a supportive environment and receive peer support. The project involves the direct participation of 120 educators as part of the development and testing of the outputs. The immediate result of the project will be to improve access to high quality digital pedagogy training Adult Education teachers and trainers in community-based organisations. - 300 leaders from adult education stakeholders and community organizations will understand the value of digital pedagogic strategies in non-formal education, especially for disadvantaged groups. - 300 adult education teachers and trainers will embark on a personal learning path using the Toolkit and OERs & Online Course. 100+ will go on to deliver a DISCOVER course to and with their colleagues in their own organization. - Thousands of people, NEETs and those facing disadvantage will benefit from higher quality education services via community based organizations, specifically education that is more effective in producing learning outcomes and deepening transversal skills, as well as more flexible and attractive. - Project partners will deepen their knowledge of the real life obstacles regarding the integration of effective and innovative digital teaching into their education delivery, building their capacity to continue to innovate in this field and benefit more from European knowledge sharing. In terms of long term impact, DISCOVER will create change at local level, national and European level. Community-based education is, by definition, a local service. When delivered effectively the impact is felt not only by participants, but in the community as a whole; for example, increased levels of employment and inclusion lead to improved social cohesion, security, community pride and lower levels of deprivation, radicalization and/or violence. DISCOVER will contribute to this since teachers and trainers will have better tools to develop both the professional and personal skills of the people they work with. We also expect the project to contribute to national level policy and EU work in the fields of the New Skills Agenda for Europe and, in particular, the European Framework for Digitally Competent Educational Organisations. Specifically, the project will focus attention on the need for adult education to be prioritized or at least given equal status to other sectors in relation to investment in digital capacities. There must be greater awareness that digital pedagogies are not only important in schools and higher education, but have arguably an even more important role to play in the community and NGO sector given the need to achieve higher work place integration and breach the skills’ gap.
The Project should generate an increase in the use of digital teaching and learning strategies in community based learning settings, contributing to greater participation and improved learning outcomes for low skilled and lower qualified adults. This project will be driven by the input of community educators to ensure it meets their needs in an effective and impactful way, The project will take place over 3 phases the production of physical resources, encouraging usage of the resources by community educators and disseminating the learning garnered by this process. The project wanted to place peer led tried, tested and quality assured tools in the hands of community educators as well as providing the practical supports in the form of the online course to enable them to explore the tools in a supportive online environment to consolidate their learning. Community Educators would not only be introduced to digital tools they would also be able to find. evaluate, adapt and use them to improve learning outcomes for their adult learners. As the project gains momentum we will use the enable stakeholders to prioritise the professionalisation of adult educators in digital pedagogy to further underpin competences and transversal skills
The original concept came from New Lodge Duncairn CHP who had led on a Erasmus + Healthy Social Media project in 2017 to help make young people's use of social media a positive and life affirming one. In leading on this programme NLDCHP found that the adult educators delivering this programme struggled to manipulate content on basic digital programmes such as Nearpod & Kahoot - a real skills deficit which was replicated in UK charity sector with 52% lacking basic digital skills. Furthermore 90% of community educators were unaware of digital benefits. DISCOVER Digital identified with key learning objectives of EU 2020 Education & Training strategy to raise adult participation in learning by focussing on low skilled adult learners; community educators; community education managers & adult education policy makers and stakeholders. While schools as well as F & HE institutions have benefitted from investment in digital pedagogies unfortunately the same cannot be said of community and voluntary educators. To remedy this situation the Discover Digital project has sought to equip adult educators will the skills to find, evaluate, adapt & use digital learning resources to better meet the learning needs of the adults they serve.