This project will support educators to better motive their adult learners, and improve their use of digital technologies. It will directly reach 400 educators across the UK, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, and create a high profile educational platform to reach many more. These educators will facilitate ‘Digital Photo Stories’ projects with over adult 2000 learners. This will create a bridging of participatory education with new digital learning. The results of this project will be shared with formal adult education institutions and 2000 educators, and more broadly contribute to understanding of educator competencies. The project will be delivered in four phases. Phases 1 and 2 will focus on developing the knowledge and skills of educators to deliver more engaging digital learning. There will be a specific focus on understanding this in terms of competence – something that the partners will co-create - informed by both theory and practice. The theory will come from the project Guide, created by the project. The practice will come from the first international training, and the 6 in country ‘Digital Photo Story’ trainings. These will draw in a range of educators working with prisoners, non-native language speakers and adults with poor mental health. This will train educators in group facilitation techniques that engage and motivate learners. It will also train educators in digital storytelling, as a way of moving learners from passive to active users of digital media. Phase 2 will culminate in the production of 40 digital stories, available on the Educational E Platform. Phases 3 will involve developing and refining the Educator’s Toolkit. This will be a practical support to educators actually delivering digital learning, and share the indicators of competent digital teaching. The Digital Education and Participatory Adult Learning project will be showcased in an Educators Guide, Toolkit and Educational E Platform. This will be the subject of the dissemination phase – the project’s fourth and final phase. This phase is crucial as it will share the learning of educators, with trainees who will become the educators of tomorrow. Each partner will work closely with providers of formal education institutions to disseminate the Guide and Toolkit. This partnership is key to the sustainability of the project, as partners and universities will seek ways of embedding dialogue techniques into educator training. The activities will result in educators having increased skills to create safe spaces for adults to actively engage with digital media. Trainee educators will become aware of the need for critical thinking and have access to a relevant Teacher Toolkit resource. Partners will have increased their capacity to train others, and developed networks to share their learning. Crucially, the creation of the Educational E Platform will reach adult educators who otherwise are unable to develop professionally. This chain of activities and results will impact on the wider adult education sector. It will promote thinking about how to make adult education engaging and meaningful. It will also increase the practice of good digital learning. In doing so it will better prepare marginalised adult learners to take fuller role as 21st century global citizens.
Bearing in mind the above needs, the aim of the project was to develop the competencies of adult educators to better engage adult learners, and increase digital literacy of learners. To achieve this we defined the following objectives: 1. To know more about the adult education contexts of partner countries (specifically in dealing with learner engagement and digital literacy). 2. To increase educator competencies in engaging learners as active users of digital technology 3. To create resources that capture the practical experiences of adult educators, and the theoretical underpinning to their work. 4. To develop and disseminate online resources to support adult educators. Overall, project partners sought to develop capacity to engage adult learners and increase their digital skills. Through LTTs, partners sought to develop skills and understanding. Through in country ‘digital storytelling’ workshops, partners sought to cascade the learning to adult educators. Project partners then sought to create high quality, accessible and useful resources to impact on other adult educators. Through the DEPAL Education E Platform the partners sought to enable adult educators to network, get resoruces and share practice.
This project supported educators to better motivate their adult learners, and improve use of digital technologies. In the months’ leading up to the development of the application for DEPAL, partners spoke to adult educators and students about their learning. These were the four main areas of need that were found: 1. Sharing practice amongst adult educators. A lack of this has hindered the development of adult and community education. 2. Language and mental health issues as barriers to adult learning. This can be associated with adults experiencing poverty and social exclusion. 3. Bridging traditional approaches to adult education in the digital age. There was a need to bring together training in digital skills that retained a person centred learning approach. 4. The changing nature of employment. The changing demographic picture of EU citizens will require more employment to be drawn from older adult groups (ET2020 Working Group Report 2016-18). The effect of globalisation is changing employment opportunities for adults locally and globally, requiring new skills and competencies.