Countless educational institutions across Europe are enduring a period of rapid pedagogical transformation as teachers, trainers and other academic staff are increasingly having to rely on technology to deliver blended or online learning to their learning cohort. The same is also true of learners who have also had to make seismic shifts as a response to the Covid 19 pandemic, contact limitations and physical distancing measures. The crucial issues we now face are; are teachers appropriately equipped to deal with the shift in pedagogical or technical terms? And have education managers considered the end users' needs and perspectives? To switch effectively to online learning, three overarching requirements need to be fulfilled; access to the internet, the right technology, skills to use the technology. We have seen a rapid transition to online learning across the board, where professionals who might have been previously 'resistant' to using technology to support their teaching and learning, or lacked confidence to make the transition, have now been forced at pace to gain experience and expertise with a wide array of digital tools. To ensure that learning was disrupted as little as possible, educators had to quickly install, adopt and become experts with digital tools — Online learning management systems, video conferencing tools and messaging platforms etc — just to make sure students could access course materials and communicate with teachers. In many ways the pandemic and necessary safety measures have, and still are, forcing educators to 'flatten the learning curve' to the point where staff and learners should be more comfortable engaging with learning tools and online technologies. By managing the learning curve effectively we could see a shift in educational culture, and the ability or willingness for educators to collaborate, becoming agile agents of the technological change. But is this the case across the sector? The use of digital content in all levels of education was relatively uncommon before the Covid crisis. Only 20% of countries had digital learning resources in teaching, and only in some schools. Worldwide, a mere 10% of countries had robust digital learning capabilities offering some of the educational materials available outside of school. According to the World Bank, no country had a universal digital curriculum for teaching and learning. These numbers paint a picture of the efforts that governments and schools had to take to rapidly move to distance learning to ensure continuity of learning. (europeandataportal.eu/) Pre-pandemic, in 2019, only 8% of people aged 16 to 74 in the EU reported that they did an online course in the 3 months prior to the survey, a minor increase compared with 7% in 2017. Compared with 2010, the share of people doing an online course doubled from 4%. Young people, aged 16 to 24, were generally doing online courses more frequently than the average adult population. In 2019, 13% of young people reported doing an online course in the last 3 months, compared to 9% among adults aged 25 to 64. Among older people (aged 65 to 74), only 1% did an online course. Even larger differences between the age groups are observed in one further aspect of online learning activities: communication with instructors or students via educational websites or portals. In 2019, 28% of young people aged 16 to 24 reported to have communicated with instructors and students online in the last 3 months, while only 7% of those aged 25 to 64 were doing this. (ec.europa.eu/eurostat) Widespread and affordable broadband access is certainly one of the means of promoting a knowledge-based and informed society, in 2019, the share of EU households with efficient internet access had risen to 90% from 50% a decade before, while 73% of the most commonly connected mobile devices were smart phones, laptops and tablet computers. However, across all of the Learning Curve partner countries there is still a digital divide, although it varies significantly country to country. Given the existing digital divide, new shifts in education approaches and expectations might even risk widening inequality even further. In preparatory research, all partner countries reported less than satisfactory access to the internet with devices 'dedicated solely for learning'. The quality of online education doesn't simply depend on access to internet, it also requires the right technology, and the requisite skills to use and deploy them for learning. The digital divide could deepen if the effectiveness of education is directly linked to access to the latest technologies, and without special attention to the pedagogical theories and demands that underpin their use in the classroom. Learning Curve proposes a 'one stop shop' for educators to match theory with the new found technical demands and expectations, and take their next steps into delivering effective online learning and assessment that is critical in this uncertain time.
Learning Curve activities were aimed at strengthening key competencies across the VET and other formal educational curricula in digital readiness as a result of Covid 19. One objective of the Learning Curve project focused on the online activities from the perspective of eSafety, with the aim of teaching and promoting safer and more responsible use of digital technologies. The transnational approach allowed partners to explore new methods, albeit against what is often a shared, international theoretical model developed in pre-pandemic times. The project further strengthened collaborative working and networking of institutions across the EU, a trusted model in the sharing of resources and expertise. Capacity building of educators was also a key aim, and to add justification to the implementation of online teaching, learning and assessment. Whilst the direct target group for the outputs, actions and intervention was educators, enabling them to deliver high quality, inclusive digital education to the eventual target groups of learners was key. As we found out in preparatory research, it's not simply the take up and deployment of online and digital tools that was/is required, it's the applying of theoretical approaches to ensure a consistency on the results. The inclusion of educators from different settings and digital technology providers across educational also brought an extra dimension to the outputs by allowing us to develop bespoke solutions adapted to local learner needs, and it's fair to say the learner was at the heart of everything we wanted to acheive by further upskilling their teachers, trainers and coaches.
Across the EU, we recognised that the Covid 19 pandemic had affected learning across many sectors, and that young people and their teachers were some of the most impacted in society especially when it came to issue of the digital divide and exclusion. The Learning Curve project actions and activities were aimed at [re]deploying digital tools and methods consistently, to deliver quality and inclusive education virtually, including blended teaching, training and learning. Partners proposed and shared a common understanding of how to make online and blended learning and assessment effective, inclusive for all and engaging, whilst supporting the digital transformation of education at VET and 'teacher trainer' level. With activities to support teachers and VET trainers adapting to online and distance learning, we also aimed to investigate and share expertise in the use of new digital tools and view them through a 'theoretical lens' to ensure the pedagogical changes had a sustainable impact to be applied across multiple educational domains. Inclusion was at the heart of the Learning Curve project; and all of the partners were directly affected by the Covid 19 pandemic and despite eLearning, blended learning and online learning seemingly existing for decades, there has rarely, if ever, been an approach to delivering consistency, whether in online learning or assessment. We also intended to examine differences in educational access and inclusion in relation to under-represented groups who were more likely to be the hardest hit sectors. Activities that strengthen cooperation and networking between organisations are a priority of Erasmus+, as proposed by the European Commission in their priority - A Europe fit for the digital age, 'Online platforms are strong drivers of innovation and play an important role in Europe's digital society and economy... They increase consumer choice, improve efficiency and competitiveness of industry and can enhance civil participation in society'. (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-singlemarket/en/policies/online-platforms) We directly sought the voice of young people and VET teachers to assess how they accessed online education during the Covid crisis; as the eventual beneficiaries we knew their input as users was crucial and often lost among the louder voices. The oft excluded voice represented an innovative method and a driver of improvement in training, as countries recover from the COVID 19 pandemic by demonstrating responsiveness, adaptability and flexibility.