Orientation and Mobility: Digital Education Readiness Erasmus Project

Project Title

Orientation and Mobility: Digital Education Readiness

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: Quality Assurance; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

In order to improve the situation for blind and severely visually impaired persons, the number of O&M trainers needs to be raised drastically to shorten waiting times and provide the users with the required amount of training to fully be self-sufficient in their mobility. However this can only be a second step, as first there needs to be a training option for the orientation and mobility trainers (OMT) themselves. Currently the only available courses are hosted in single institutes that provide only a small amount of education slots. These trainings are also very expensive either for the trainers themselves or the organizations that plan to employ them in the future. Also the coordination between the different educational institutes in different European countries is quite weak which leads to OMT being educated in one country often not being able to transfer to another country as the techniques are used differently and the education is often not seen as comparable.
Then there is the matter of the digital readiness in this specific situation. the projects want to analyse the different way to support the needs for frontal lessons during the OM path.
The goal of this project is to set up a common training curriculum for all European countries that can be implemented by tertiary educational facilities (Universities and Universities of applied sciences) and that will encompass all skills and techniques, also ICT skils, required to provide OMT to blind and severely visually impaired persons. Over the duration of the project we will develop training materials, educational guidelines and courses that in their sum constitute a fully educational program. These materials will be based on existing training materials for OMT and will be adapted to gather for the needs of different countries and thus allow graduates to offer their services anywhere in Europe.
Producing a curriculum is the first step towards a successful implementation of a train-the-trainer program in a defined curriculum. , we will also include the educational facilities that are supposed to host the newly developed program as well as public authorities who are later responsible for accepting the qualification of the OMT and subsequently are paying for their services. In order to involve these stakeholder groups we will conduct workshops and expert meetings in different countries represented in the consortium.
Eventually the developed course materials will be provided as open educational ressources (OERs) that should allow different educational facilities to take up the provided content and develop their own graduate courses upon them and also to enable representatives of other persons with disabilities to add their needs and training requirements to these materials so that the range of services for the graduates can continuously be increased.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 58876 Eur

Project Coordinator

ISTITUTO REGIONALE RITTMEYER PER I CIECHI & Country: IT

Project Partners

• HILFSGEMEINSCHAFT DER BLINDEN UND SEHSCHWACHEN OSTERREICHS VEREIN
• National Rehabilitation Centre for Blind
• Center IRIS- Center za izobrazevanje, rehabilitacijo, inkluzijo in svetovanje za slepe in slabovidne
• Quolity srl