The corona pandemic has uncovered a number of systemic inequalities with regard to education and access to learning opportunities. Across countries and settings in the EU, the necessity to resort to the digital sphere with learning has shown that it is not equally possible for all members of a society to follow suit. Particularly vulnerable groups (including people with a migration background, people with a refugee background, non-native speakers), who were already having a difficult experience before, have now been even more strongly left behind in terms of education. For some it is the lack of access to equipment (Tablets, or Laptops and PCs) with necessary digital technologies, that prevents their engagement in a digital learning sphere. For others it is the prevalent distance to learning institutions and a perception of the education system as a closed space that prevents their engagement. Their educational opportunities remain unexplored and chances for societal participation limited as a result. Working with social workers as well as the newly emerged profession of cultural mediators who is acting as a bridge towards municipalities and local educational institutions such as schools, and extending their personal reach-out towards the digital sphere by means of chatbots, the SEEDS project proposes a combination of social and digital outreach as a means to mitigate this effect. Needed learning contents will be communicated in a new way by means of chatbots, where municipalities and educational institutions can create learning materials in a pre-defined way, and cultural mediators and social workers can provide the learning material in the backend in a pre-defined way. The server will send the learning material to the chatbot, where the user can access a variety of learning materials (based on classes but also on the material itself such as videos, PDFs, texts, pictures) and can also answer questions. The user receives feedback for the answers and can also track the learning progress. To achieve this, the SEEDS project takes a step-by-step approach, and: 1) identifies appropriate contents for learning materials in a participatory action research approach involving teachers, municipal officials, cultural mediators, as well as the target group of young and adult learners from socially and culturally diverse, educationally distant family backgrounds; 2) creates templates and guidance for content creation by cultural mediators; 3) conducts a networked evaluation across different learning settings in Europe, thus enabling the testing of the socio-technical system as well as the identification of ‘universal’ European application scenarios.
The project "Supporting Learnings and Education on the Fringe of the Digital Sphere (SEEDS)" was designed to research, develop, and evaluate a way to reach disadvantaged groups (students, refugees) electronically with support from teachers, social workers, and cultural mediators in the event of a pandemic. A connection between teachers and learners should be achieved or maintained using digital solutions even in the event of a pandemic. The solution envisaged in SEEDS has been developed easily understandable, so that population groups with a lack of media competence or social disadvantage also have an opportunity to learn. Software solutions are developed for standard devices such as smartphones, tablets or PCs, as this is one of the most effective ways to reach the target groups and where teachers can easily digitize their educational content, and students can access it remotely without complexity.
COVID-19 has uncovered a number of systematic problems in society. These include the lack of digitization in schools and the lack of media literacy in many population groups. Particularly vulnerable groups (including people with a migration background, people with a refugee background, non-native speakers), who have already had difficult experiences before, have become even more disconnected from education. For some, it is the lack of access to devices (tablets or laptops and PCs) with necessary digital technologies that prevents their engagement in a digital learning environment. For others, it is the prevailing distance from educational institutions and the perception of the education system as a closed space that prevents their engagement. Their educational opportunities remain unused and their chances of participating in society are limited as a result. The project "Supporting Learnings and Education on the Fringe of the Digital Sphere (SEEDS)" aims to reduce this perceived distance through the use of digital technology and create a learning opportunity with a low barrier to entry.