ENhanced Learning and teaching in International Virtual ENvironments
Unipi Team Leader: Francesco Marcelloni, Vice Rector for International cooperation and relations and Marco Abate, Vice Rector for Teaching
The pandemic and the emergency shift to on-line education, without time for teachers and learners to adapt to the new learning environment, made evident the increased need for flexible learning paths for learners in all phases of their lives and for better digital competences for learning, teaching, research and life in general. The partners experimented these difficulties and decided together to address the challenges and opportunities of the COVID and post COVID phases, united by their desire to offer innovative, inclusive, interconnected opportunities to learners of all ages in an international context. They addressed together the following needs emerged from internal surveys on the response to the pandemic:
- to train teachers on how to facilitate learners effectively in an on-line environment
- to train students on how to utilize, also for practical activities, new learning modes in a virtual classroom environment, with social interactions necessary for their intellectual and social growth
- to increase digital skills of learners, teachers, and administrative staff
- to exploit virtual environments for making the virtual mobility closer to the physical mobility and giving the possibility to experience mobility to everyone.
We aimed to build on the experience of the quick shift from in-presence learning to virtual learning during the pandemic for improving digital learning experiences. In particular, we wanted to:
- develop modules for increasing the digital competences and skills of everyone, regardless of her\his background and age, to allow him\her to completely exploit the potentialities of the virtual learning environments
- increase inclusion by boosting relevance and attractiveness of digital upskilling
- innovate by providing learning/teaching approaches better-tailored to virtual formats
- develop approaches for carrying out practical activities and laboratories in virtual environments
- create new forms of international virtual mobility
- make the experience of virtual mobility closer to that of physical mobility in terms of interactions with the other students and local environment, and to give more learners the benefit of an international experience.
We implemented activities aimed at producing short and flexible course modules to develop digital competences of students, academic and administrative staff, also offering reskilling and upskilling opportunities in a lifelong learning context. These modules have been developed in video and video-podcast, pdf or even webpage (html) formats, or created in LMS (Learning Management System) platforms.
We also implemented activities (survey, semi-structured interviews) aimed at analysing the main difficulties met by students and teachers in using digital platforms and the solutions implemented to face the COVID emergency in the six universities. From this analysis we developed e-modules specifically tailored for the university world and the educational context, simulating real scenarios of the higher education learning process using digital techniques.
To produce the Guidelines we made available to the entire academic community we carried out a requirement analysis and a document focusing on the social dimension of intercultural learning and living, and collected and described best practices that support practical online activities/experiments in virtual environments in partner universities.
Three Intellectual Outputs are the main project results:
IO1) Short and flexible course modules to develop digital competences; IO2) Progressive sets of course modules to be able to exploit the full potential of virtual learning;
IO3) Guidelines for creating inclusive international learning environments.
Under these three Intellectual Outputs the ENLIVEN project produced different open educational resources available at www.enlivenproject.eu: the Digital Survival Kit for digital literacy in learning/teaching in 6 languages; 5 webinars on “Living and Behaving in a Digital World” on security and data protection; 3 micro-modules on the tools for communication, collaboration and engagement; 6 videos and audio-podcasts on how to create good podcasts and to do good interviews; 1 Mastering Learning Management Systems Course; 2 progressive sets of e-modules (one for learners, one for teachers) on Virtual Learning; 4 virtual training courses to facilitate intercultural learning in digital environments; 1 video to explain virtual exchange; 1 video and 5 podcasts on gender, diversity, and inclusion topics; 6 modules on European Competences; guidelines “Creating inclusive international learning environments” (ebook and downloadable pdf).
Coordinator: UNIVERSITA DI PISA
Other participants:
TALLINN UNIVERSITY (Estonia)
UNIVERZITET U NOVOM SADU (Serbia)
UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA (Portugal)
UNIVERSITAET HAMBURG (Germany)
PARIS-LODRON-UNIVERSITAT SALZBURG (Austria)
Start date: 01-03-2021
End date: 28-02-2023
EU Grant: 288.040 €
Project website: https://www.enlivenproject.eu/
Project results also available on Erasmus+ Platform
