Tag: EADTU

Blended Learning, Digital Learning, Learning Design, Learning Futures, Online Learning, Teaching

Three forthcoming ‘Open’ Courses Available on Hybrid, Blended and Online Education

We are pleased to alert you to three forthcoming ‘open’ courses for educators on (i) synchronous hybrid, (ii) blended, and (iii) online education as part of the EU funded DigiTel Pro project.

The DigiTel Pro partnership brings together advanced “schools” in research, innovation, leading edge development and good practice in synchronous hybrid (KU Leuven), blended learning (TU Delft), and online and distance learning (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, The Open Universiteit (OUNL), UNINETTUNO). Each course will also focus on student readiness for hybrid, blended and online learning, drawing on Dublin City University’s experience through the NIDL’s development of a free course, A Digital Edge: Essentials for the Online Learner, for learners offered through the FutureLearn platform. 

Over the past year, members of the DigiTel Pro team have developed these online courses based on established models and validated guidelines for the design, development, and delivery for each of these three predominant formats in a post-COVID perspective. All three open courses incorporate the most recent research, theory and innovative practice.

Register to Join the Courses

The courses will start in the middle of March 2022. We invite you to register for one or more courses:

1. Synchronous and Hybrid Education…

This course explores settings that have in common that both on-site or ‘here’ students and remote or ‘there’ students are included simultaneously:

– Learn more about Synchronous and Hybrid Education on the DigiTeL Pro website

2. Blended Education…

This course explores a deliberate mix of synchronous and asynchronous methods: based on a course design with a conscious combination of online and offline learning activities:

3. Online Education…

This course explores course designs where there is a continuous physical separation between teacher and student:

As mentioned above, student readiness for digital education will be addressed in all three courses as well.

Join the Global Conversation

You can also join the global conversation about how institutions, educators and students made education ‘work’ in hybrid, blended or online distance modes during the pandemic and what lessons we can take for the future. From Wednesday 23rd February onwards follow #DigitelPro2022 on Twitter and discuss questions posted on different types of challenges in course design, which will be addressed in more detail in the above-mentioned courses.

Participation in the DigiTel Pro course programme is designed to enable you as an educator to make the transition from emergency remote online teaching during COVID-19 to fully embed new digital technologies as part of your reimagined teaching and learning ecology. 

Please find more information on the courses and the registration on the DigiTeL Pro website.

Blended Learning, Development, Digital Learning, Learning Design, Online Learning, Projects, Research, Teaching

Three New Online Professional Learning Courses for Educators

On Thursday 18th of November, the official DigiTeL Pro launch took place. This collaborative European funded project began earlier in the year with the aim of bringing together a team of experts from several universities, well-known for their research and leading-edge innovation in digital education.

A major feature of the launch was an overview of three new online professional learning courses designed for higher educators. Each course, listed below, explores a different mode or dimension of digital education. Together they aim to support European educators to build their teaching skills and professional capabilities for digital education relevant to their particular interests and institutional contexts.

Course 1: Synchronous and Hybrid Education

Learn more about the course, view a brief presentation and complete the registration form

Course 2: Blending Your Education

Learn more about the course, view a brief presentation and complete the registration form

Course 3: Online Education

Learn more about the course, view a brief presentation and complete the registration for

We invite you to register for these course and/or to share relevant details within your professional networks.

As part of the DigiTeL Pro launch event, we also provided a brief update on DCU’s free course, A Digital Edge: Essentials for the Online Learner, offered through FutureLearn. This course, co-facilitated by students and originally supported by IUA and the DCU Students’ Union, has so far attracted over 10,000 students worldwide with a completion rate of over 50%. Over 2,000 DCU students have claimed full certificates of completion. The course was a direct response to the COVID crisis and focuses on developing student readiness for online learning. It completes the suite of offerings supported by DigiTeL Pro.

To further infuse a strong student readiness dimension across and throughout all four courses, the NIDL team has undertaken a literature review to help answer the following questions:

  1. What research has been published reporting student readiness for online distance learning during the COVID crisis?
  2. How strong is the “learner voice” in COVID-related research reporting on student readiness for online distance learning?
  3. What lessons can be taken from the COVID-related literature on student readiness for new models of digital education?

A report of this research will be published in the New Year, but we can already conclude from our analysis that there is limited evidence of previous literature on student readiness informing the COVID response. Secondly, although numerous national and institutional surveys have been published over the past 18 months, which report on the COVID experience, the vast majority of this research does not adequately convey the student voice. Hence, this suggests that, with a handful of exceptions, an important gap remains in the literature which tells the students’ lived experience in their own words.

The above video provides a full recording of the DigiTeL Pro launch event. We look forward to sharing further information in 2022 on this project which is being led by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU).