Collaborative Course Design within the DigCompEdu Digital Competence Framework Erasmus Project

Project Title

Collaborative Course Design within the DigCompEdu Digital Competence Framework

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; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

The COVID-19 global pandemic has dramatically changed and created significant challenges for higher education. Most notably, higher education faculty members were expected to transition their face-to-face classes to a remote/online modality almost overnight. This urgency highlighted the need for faculty to develop a more sophisticated set of digital competencies to adapt to the changing demands of teaching at the universities. The typical /traditional approach to support faculty members in developing such digital competencies has been with training programs focusing primarily on developing technological skills or sharing digital resources created by experts. While such means of professional support are essential, they are not sufficient for developing advanced levels of digital competencies outlined by the EU’s digital competence for educators (DigCompEdu)* framework. It is necessary to have educators work on significant design problems and provide appropriate technological and pedagogical scaffolding to support their continuous professional development, especially given the rapidly changing nature of digital technologies (Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya; 2007; Putnam & Borko, 2000).

Professional learning communities, which afford the co-construction of professional knowledge, are considered very important for professional development and growth (Stoll & Louis, 2007). Online collaborative learning communities allow educators to focus on mutually significant professional problems and develop collaborative solutions irrespective of location and physical distance (Schlager & Fusco, 2003). More specifically, collaborative professional spaces can facilitate developing adaptive responses to the emerging educational needs in the COVID-19 and post-COVID era and developing digital competencies as a by-product of collaboration. However, it is essential to provide the necessary technological and pedagogical support to faculty to establish and sustain such collaborative communities. The primary PURPOSE of this project is to develop higher education faculty’s digital competencies by supporting the collaborative design of online courses (or course modules) utilizing and testing the Campus+ digital environment.

The project partners will recruit faculty as participants in their universities, inviting a range of disciplines. The project team will design and utilize the pedagogical and technological support necessary to create and sustain collaboration among faculty for collaborative course design and establishing professional networks. The pedagogical support will be based on the EU DigCompEdu digital competence framework. The technological space that will allow collaboration and course management will be implemented as part of the Campus+, which is the digital university infrastructure of the European University of Brain and Technology Project (www.theneurotech.eu). The courses jointly created by the faculty will be offered to their students, whose learning is the ultimate goal for all educational projects. All the digital resources and course materials will become open educational resources at the end of the project and be translated into local languages for broader impact.

After the test-case of an integrated platform for collaboration, course design, and management, this project may open up new possibilities for offering joint classes or degrees among universities. Once cooperation agreements are made, as suggested by the European Commission, universities may begin to co-design whole study programs whose coursework is distributed across different nations’ HEIs. Thus, the Campus+ platform may support such courses’ content delivery and the collaboration among faculty that will result in new models for degree programs in the post-COVID era. And since the platform will be free to use, it can reach a wider audience even after the project is completed.

References

*https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/digcompedu

Koehler, M. J., Mishra, P., & Yahya, K. (2007). Tracing the development of teacher knowledge in a design seminar: Integrating content, pedagogy, and technology. Computers & Education, 49(3), 740–762.

Putnam, R. T., Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4-15.

Schlager, M. S., & Fusco, J. (2003). Teacher professional development, technology, and communities of practice: Are we putting the cart before the horse? The Information Society, 19(3), 203–220.

Stoll, L., & Louis, K. S. (2007). Professional learning communities: Divergence, depth, and dilemmas. New York: Open University Press.

Project Website

http://colearn.boun.edu.tr/index.html

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 10410,68 Eur

Project Coordinator

BOGAZICI UNIVERSITESI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Stichting Radboud Universiteit
• RHEINISCHE FRIEDRICH-WILHELMS-UNIVERSITAT BONN