The COVID pandemic has restricted opportunities for face-to-face learning at higher education institutions (HEIs) not only at home, but also in study abroad exchanges. HEIs are trying to respond by offering their education largely online and in blended formats. While ICT offers many opportunities in education particularly for innovation and quality improvement, the current challenge is not to simply invent new technology applications, but to ensure that academics adapt and utilize techniques and tools in meaningful and effective ways to deliver curricula and content in virtual learning environments that are high quality, engaging, inclusive and safe for all participants. Many academics lack these skills or need improved skills and expertise; in particular, the ‘student agency’ concept [as defined in OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030] may be impacted by the instructor’s unfamiliarity with digital environments and lack of skills. The project will use the knowledge and expertise of the partners to develop the capacities of academics and students in high quality, engaging pedagogical approaches to virtual learning spaces in domestic and internationally diverse curricular settings. Project activities include: a comprehensive evaluation of a virtual and blended international exchange pilot program; a six-week Summer Learning Lab where students will work in multidisciplinary teams, solving real life education development cases; the design, piloting and evaluation of innovative pedagogical practices in digital learning and teaching; and a hybrid Professional Learning Community that builds on a community learning model developed by one of the project partners in their their successful Internationalization of Curriculum transformation. The project also includes the design and implementation of a sophisticated interactive virtual platform that will extend the audience far beyond the borders of the project, and create sustainable interaction. The project is an innovative response by a team, each bringing its own experiences to mitigate the impact of COVID through: (1) collaborating with students as the source of expertise and innovation in all phases of the project (2) enabling institutional cross-fertilization through an exchange of existing expertise not only across partner institutions but also within different institutional units such as International Offices, IT, Further Education Units, Special Education units, etc. and student units such as the Erasmus Student Network into the capacity building process; and (3) collaborating and developing learning ‘on the go’ in an innovative professional development format, the Professional Learning Community. The project team is multidisciplinary and multi-segmental with the aim of boosting cross-fertilization, encouraging ‘out of the box’ thinking, and enabling innovative solutions to learning and teaching issues. The team at each partner institution will target academic instructors, undergraduate and graduate students, university leaders and university units to bring this cross-sectional input into the capacity building process. The expected overall impact of the project is to enable the professional development of HEI stakeholders in quality, engaging pedagogical approaches to virtual learning spaces, and to empower them to install these curricular innovations in their home institutions. The project's dissemination mechanism combines a broad range of in-person and virtual formats together with social media. This diversity is designed to appeal to the wide range of target groups who will have different skill levels and different levels of interest in engaging in digital platforms and social media. The project's resulting interactive virtual platform will provide an opportunity to discuss and exchange best practices and invite stakeholders from outside the partner institutions and extend the project’s impact far beyond the project’s partner institutions. The high-quality outputs developed by experts in digital, inclusive and international education, in attractive formats (webinars, podcasts, videos, and networking discussions etc.) will be freely available. It will provide a place where professionals can “shop” for specific ideas, expertise and inspirations and interact with the community of experts involved in this project. This critical infrastructure will enable dissemination of the project to go beyond the usual static format of workshops and written material. It will ensure that the project outcomes will be sustainable and available beyond COVID, and contribute to new methods and tools in teaching and learning at all HEIs
n response to Pandemic, we wanted to develop the digital competencies of academics and students in virtual teaching and learning. Our project was based on the following approaches: 1)working with students as a source of expertise and innovation at all stages of the project with the intention of improving virtual teaching and learning. 2)enabling institutional cross-fertilization through the exchange of existing expertise not only between partner institutions but also within different institutional units, 3)collaborating and developing learning "on the fly" in an innovative professional development format, the Professional Learning Community, and developing a virtual platform as the backbone of this learning space, providing an interactive platform for upskilling the learning community, for discussion, networking and competency development. We wanted the dissemination mechanism of the project to reach a wide range of target audiences with different skill levels and varying levels of interest in getting involved, by combining a wide range of face-to-face and virtual formats along with the use of social media. The project's interactive virtual platform was intended as an opportunity for discussion and exchange of best practice.
In the spring of 2020, a pandemic affected more than 90% of students worldwide, triggering an emergency transformation to distance learning that required the agility of HIE worldwide. During the pandemic, online and distance pedagogy was adopted by teachers who were previously reluctant or even unwilling to adopt online methods in their teaching. It was a digital leap that no one in education could avoid. Initially, the focus was on getting some content to students, with the second priority being the learning community and quality. By autumn 2020, it was clear that the digital competencies of academics and students needed to be developed to enhance the quality of virtual teaching and learning and make it more rewarding, engaging and motivating for students. In our response to KA2 Covid, we focused directly on the quality of online learning. In addition, addressing the issue of inclusion was of particular interest because it is an important commitment to the visions of the four partner institutions. The aim of our project was to develop the skills of academics and students in a variety of high quality and engaging pedagogical approaches to virtual learning spaces in domestically and internationally diverse curriculum environments.