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Status: ongoing Period: March 2021 - March 2023Funding: 292.450 € (54.880 € for Nexa) Funding organization: European Commission (Erasmus+ Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices / KA226 - Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness) Person(s) in charge: Juan Carlos De Martin (coordinator), Giacomo Conti (Project Manager), Anita Botta (Senior Researcher) |
Executive summary:
Building upon the experience previously obtained through the EduHack project, and run by Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (Spain), Coventry University (UK), Knowledge Innovation Centre (Malta), MEDEA (Belgium), and Association Europeeenne d’Instututions de l’Enseignements Superieur (Belgium), Strategyhack aims to build skills for mid-level institutional leaders to accelerate the digital transformation of their areas of competence.
Background:
It’s been two years since COVID19 led to the closure of education and training buildings, campuses and other sites and a forced shift to emergency modes of digital education. In many Member States, most institutional leaders, in particular those in mid-level positions, had little if any experience in organising online teaching and learning and in the different infrastructural, human resource and administrative challenges associated with it. The gulf between the responses of different institutions to the crisis has shown that leadership is one of the most important enabling factors for a successful digital transition. Moreover, it has become clearer that these leaders, along with their institutions at large, need to be knowledgeable on the opportunities and risks of this new digital-centered era. Institutions that had previously invested in building the digital capacity of their management were better prepared to adapt teaching approaches, keep learners engaged, and continue the education and training process. Strategyhack aims to build skills for mid-level institutional leaders to accelerate the digital transformation of their areas of competence.
Objectives:
StrategyHack supports the priorities of the Digital Education Plan, focuses on capacity building on mid-level institutional leaders since a resilient transformation requires strengthening the connecting tissue between the high-level management strategy level and the digital-pedagogy level which these personnel provide. It intends to:
• accelerate digital transformation of staff, programmes and institutional processes within Higher Education;
• promote and nourish high quality self-directed personalised learning environments with a strong digital component;
• lock in gains made to perceptions of digital learning during the COVID crisis, and using these to promote more sustainable models of digital education.
Results:
The following results are expected upon completion of the project:
• A Capacity Building Course on Digital Education Strategies for Institutional Leaders.
A total of 25 courses have been created, all based on the effects, risks and opportunities that digital technologies, as well as the digital transformation itself offer to Higher Education Institutions. These courses will be provided to the participants of the various hackatons that every partner will organize.
• Providing a Peer-Learning Methodology for Institutional Strategies based on Hackathon-Style Events.
Inspired by the idea of hackathons, StrategyHack will propose and design intensive online events, with partecipants over several sessions identifying a problem, sharing best practices on potential solutions and then working in small groups to propose solutions.
• A strategy-guidance document, Model Management System for digital education, that will give institutional leaders a map to build ther institutional strategies meant to integrate digital learning into the institution’s identity and brand, to provide strategic approaches to manage risks and sustainability, methodologies to manage resources efficiently and to provide tools and techniques to tackle the most challenging operational activities in digital education.
