INCLUsive Disaster Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

INCLUsive Disaster 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: Research and innovation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic, which is a biological disaster, is defining global health crisis of our time and the greatest challenge for the world since World War 2. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, education sector has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. Due to the complexities involved in and due to peculiar nature of disaster situations, even before COVID-19, there were consensus among researchers that lifelong learning is an appropriate way of ensuring continuous education to the various stakeholders of disaster management. To support lifelong learning, a number of online, distance learning opportunities emerged in the field of DRR in the recent past. As such, many countries have launched remote DRR education activities, however, these opportunities possess many challenges. To tackle these challenges, our proposal entitled INCLUDE (INCLUsive Disaster Education) aims to reimagine online distance learning education so that it better supports the diverse DRR community. INCLUDE will develop a University-Industry digital learning platform to provide high quality inclusive digital education in DRR. INCLUDE consortium is composed of 5 partners from 4 different countries (3 programme counties and 1 partner country), representing HEIs involved in research and development of DRR with specific experience on online delivery. Partners were strategically selected based on a baseline assessment, considering the expertise that they can bring to the project, from their country perspective.

INCLUDE begins with identifying the currently available online, distance learning strategies in DRR, their success factors and associated issues and problems (O1). This will help to understand exactly where the gaps in remote learning exist, and how educators are coping, and their predictions for the future. To tackle the problems identified as part of O1, a framework will then be developed to reimagine online distance learning education that can support the diverse DRR community. It will outline different strategies to remote learning which suit different types of content and community groups. These strategies are guided by a concern for equity and inclusion and the need to ensure the design and delivery of distance learning do not exacerbate existing educational and social inequalities. Adopting new digital communication tools will be a key driver of change for strengthening collaborations across greater distances, as remote working has now become the new ‘normal’. Based on the framework that will be developed as part of O2, INCLUDE will strengthen university-industry collaboration in DRR in each participant country through the development of a digital learning platform (O3). It directly contributes to the objective of improving the quality of education and the relevance it has for society at large. INCLUDE will build and maintain a robust and a sustainable digital learning platform for University-Industry collaboration based on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) principle. The priority of the INCLUDE project is to make the student-centred learning more personalised so as to enhance the quality of students’ experience, enabling interaction with a wider range of cultures, personal encounters, knowledge systems, and beliefs. Accordingly, as part of the O4, case studies will be developed to explore the opportunities of the use of disruptive technologies [AI, AR/VR, IoT, drones, big data, Robots, blockchain] in online distance learning education in DRR. Validated case studies will then be integrated into University-Industry digital learning platform developed as part of O4 to provide high quality inclusive digital education to DRR community.

INCLUDE will also develop an online research repository with open educational resources (O5). Finally, a digital competence framework (O6) will be developed for DRR educators to help develop digital pedagogical competences which are responsive, adoptable and flexible. All these outputs will be developed through a rigorous scientific process and will directly contribute to the scientific theory of the domain. Based on these outputs, it is intended to produce a number of peer reviewed conference and journal papers and a journal special issue which will further enhance the knowledgebase of the DRR educators and scientists.

Two stakeholder seminars will also be organised, first, to disseminate the findings of the survey of online, distance learning strategies used in DRR education (O1) and the framework to reimagine online distance learning education that can support the diverse DRR community (O2); second to disseminate the digital competence framework for DRR educators to develop digital pedagogical competences (O6). In doing so, reach to target audience can be further ensured. In addition, the inclusive University- Industry digital learning platform developed as part of the O3 will be launched in Japan.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 288720 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD & Country: UK

Project Partners

• KEIO UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE
• LUNDS UNIVERSITET
• VILNIAUS GEDIMINO TECHNIKOS UNIVERSITETAS