Teaching – Page 20 – Digital Learning Dispatches

Over the past three-months our NIDL team has been successful in partnership with several other European universities and professional organisations in securing a number of new externally funded research and development projects. These new projects explore some interesting areas of innovation in digital models of teaching and learning, and we will share more information about each project in a series of blog posts over the next few weeks. However, to begin with a brief description of the Digi-HE project appears below.

About the DIGI-HE Project

The DIGI-HE project (Jan. 2020 to Dec. 2023) aims to develop a self-reflection tool that will help European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop and enhance their strategic approaches for digitalisation. Such a tool exists already for schools (i.e., SELFIE) but not yet for higher education, at least not at international level. The project targets different types of institutions (universities and colleges), at different levels of maturity in their digital developments. Through a survey to HEI, DIGI-HE will gather fresh data on the state of play of and strategic development goals and challenges in digitalisation – an update to a 2014 report, which is up until now largely the only source for comparably data on the issue in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This survey will inform the development of the self-reflection tool, and also help to identify participating institutions.

The tools arising from this project will be developed based on the SELFIE tool, and lessons learnt, the European Framework for Digitally Competent Educational Organisations, and other existing benchmarking and maturity tools geared to higher education institutions. It will attempt to cover the main missions and areas of activity where digitalisation plays a role, in a holistic way: learning and teaching, research and innovation, governance and management, and cooperation and outreach (including internationalisation).

The tool will enable the institutional leadership – without external support, steering or assessment – to explore perceptions and perspectives of different members across the institution (leadership, teachers, researchers, administrative staff, technical and IT staff, and students), and use these for self-review and self-reflection, and to enhance strategic institutional development. It will inform and stimulate intra-institutional strategic dialogue and collaboration processes, thus contributing to mainstream approaches, improving support and more transparent structures for digitalisation, and increasing the proactive participation of staff and students.

The project will also attempt to build a community of practice around the DIGI-HE, to foster inter-institutional exchange of good practice. This should contribute to an accelerated and more strategic take-up of digitalisation at European HEIs. It could also be used as a basis for interinstitutional cooperation and benchmarking, and in this regard could serve networks and associations of HEIs, and could contribute to the development of national approaches, by map state of play and needs for digitalisation.

The project is funded under the European Commission Erasmus+ KA3 strand. The Digi-HE project consortium consists of the European University Association (EUA – coordinator); Dublin City University (DCU); Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg (DHBW); Jÿvaskyla University (JYU); and Vytautas Magnus University (VMU). Associate partners include the European Distance and E-learning Network (EDEN); the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE), and the Irish Universities Association (IUA).

Ken’s successful journey with DCU Connected…

It was Saturday October 5th 2013 when I first visited the Dublin City University (DCU) campus in Glasnevin, Dublin. Strange as it may sound it was only on my third visit in March 2015 that I received my parchment for the degree I completed online through DCU Connected. Thanks to the Irish Government’s Springboard+ scheme and the help from DCU I received along the way. I had promised myself for a long time that I would go back and complete my studies someday, but time and money conspired against me to keep that from happening. With an unwanted redundancy I fixed the time problem and thanks to Springboard+ I did not have to worry about the cost.

That first day I was not at all sure what I was setting myself up for or the journey that I was about to embark on. Feeling like the proverbial rabbit stuck in the headlights I wondered was this “online learning” really something that I could do or was I really just setting myself up to fail. Can I do this? Will I have the self-discipline required? How will I manage my time and combine a demanding study schedule with the rest of my life? So many questions, but feeling like I had so few answers.Thankfully I had plenty of fellow students making the same journey and the help and assistance from my tutors and the DCU Connected support staff was always on hand. Clear expectations were set from the start and a very detailed timetable of assignments, notes, and online tutorials outlined exactly what I had to do and when it was that I had to do it. The online tutorials provided clear guidance on the standard that was expected in our assignments and offered us the opportunity to ask questions and get answers. The online forums in Loop, DCU’s virtual learning environment, were also hugely beneficial in this regard. The notes provided were excellent and very clearly laid out with lots of useful references and additional reading.

Online study has the potential to be lonely; however, I was glad to have new friends that I made on that initial day in DCU as we were able to offer support and guidance to each other along the way. The nature of the assignments was such that there was almost always some group or team component and that provided an opportunity to interact with other students also. Sharing the work but also sharing stories of our own experiences meant that you never felt overly isolated. All of the assignments also provided the opportunity to share a part of your work with your peers and to both give and receive peer feedback in the form of an online critique and this provided a yardstick of sorts to gauge your own progress through the programme.

The real measure however was provided by the tutors. For each and every assignment we received timely and comprehensive feedback, with really useful guidance on what could be done to improve the work for future assignments and what the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment were. Seeing the list of completed assignments grow and the list of remaining assignments shrink provided the motivation to stick the course and complete the programme. It was hard, but it was worthwhile and I have no regrets that I made that trip to DCU in 2013. Ken tells his story here…

At Dublin City University through DCU Connected and with the support of Springboard+ opportunities are available for people to study at no cost or 90% subsidised fees towards graduate certificates in:

• Management of Internet Enterprise Systems

• Management of Operations

• Management of Information Systems Strategy

These programmes are designed so that students can study part-time whilst they work. Students who start with the above qualifications can progress to complete a full Masters degree. DCU has a long history of online distance learning and through the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) has considerable expertise in designing online courses. Notably in November DCU will be hosting the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning.

DCU Connected also provides a range of undergraduate programmes through the Springboard+ scheme. If you are interested in finding out more, please see our website or contact a member of our team:

openeducation@dcu.ie