Digital Competences for Improving Security and Defence Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital Competences for Improving Security and Defence Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has a severe impact on higher education, and this impact is present also in the military academies, as universities had to close for some periods of time the direct teaching process in response to lockdown measures. Some universities or faculties had to replace classic teaching system with online or hybrid learning and these measures affected learning, teaching and examinations quality. In the same time, the international relations were also impacted by the COVID-19 situation. The main needs identified by the project consortium are: difficulties in operating available applications and programs adapted to remote learning; lack of methodological skills in the use of multimedia tools, methods, and techniques in the education process, problems with connectivity and security. The idea of the DIGICODE project was born during the meetings of representatives of Military University of Technology from Poland, Military Technical Academy „Ferdinand I” from Romania, “Artillery, AD and CIS” Faculty from Shumen of „Vasil Levski” National Military University from Bulgaria and University of Turin from Italy within Military Erasmus initiative (www.emilyo.eu/), as well as in connection with the emergence of an unexpected situation, which is the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The aim of the DIGICODE project is to improve the security and defence education quality by using digital tools in the didactic activities and by developing digital competences of teachers. The main objectives of the project are: to conduct a survey and collecting detailed information in a group of students and lecturers from international universities and to conduct a comparative analysis in order to compare the processes, strategies, and methods used by the respondents and to identify the best practices and competencies ensuring safe and effective online teaching in Security and Defence; to develop a Best Practices Handbook, including a collection of best practices and solutions used by universities in the times of COVID-19; to develop a teacher tool-kit including a toolkit for digital competences for teachers in the Security and Defence field and open online training courses to support teachers and trainers in using specific digital learning environments for education, different kinds of digital tools, and in adopting innovative and adaptive methodologies like problem solving, problem-based teaching, learning by doing, formative and data-driven automatic assessment with interactive and immediate feedback, collaborative learning, team working; to design and develop a curriculum for a summer school “Systems for Command and Control in Security and Defence Field” which plays a critical role in helping teachers to have an integrated vision of the security and defence education system; to apply the teacher tool-kit prepared especially for the digital education in order to explain the systems functionality, replacing the classic laboratory activities; to improve the digital competences and to improve the communication skills in online environment of at least 16 teachers and 16 students from security and defence education institutions; to build the critical mass of knowledge and resources in partner institutions in order to foster the use of digital education in military academies.
The main activities of the project will consist in 4 transnational meetings, 5 intellectual outputs, 2 multiplier events, 2 staff training editions for improvement the technical competences and communication skills for digital education and 2 summer schools in digital education for learners “Systems for Command and Control in Security and Defence Field”. The project activities will be organized in 8 work packages: WP 1 – Needs Analysis; WP 2 – Benchmarking digital competences in Security and Defence education and elaboration of Best Practices Handbook; WP 3 – Teacher tool-kit for digital learning in security and defence education; WP 4 – Summer School Design; WP 5 – Cybersecurity in Digital Education; WP 6 – Pilot Summer School Implementation; WP 7 – Development of Report on participants‘ experiences and lessons learned after the trial digital education; WP 8 – Dissemination.

As a result of the activities implemented, we expect to produce sustainable results among the participants and the organizations involved, that could be translates into a better capacity of the teachers to face the challenges of the digitalization and of the digital learning in security and defence education system. The Best Practices Handbook, the methodology for the cybersecurity requirements, the teacher tool-kit and the teacher digital workbook and all other outputs created within the project will support the context for the future organization of the staff training activities and summer schools for students in order to improve the teachers and students digital competences and communication skills in online environment applied to the security and defence education system.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 218122 Eur

Project Coordinator

WOJSKOWA AKADEMIA TECHNICZNA IM.JAROSLAWA DABROWSKIEGO & Country: PL

Project Partners

• ACADEMIA TEHNICA MILITARA “FERDINAND I”
• Vasil Levski National Military University
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO