PR2 (Digital Empowerment: Training program for higher education teachers, trainers and educational leaders) aims to address the need for resilience and increased capacity of HEI teachers to manage an effective shift towardsdigital education, to use emerging technologies up to their full potential while employing instructional design strategies, especially in cases of emergencies such as the pandemic or other disruptive events which can undermine the social dimension of learning. It will provide HEI teachers with knowledge and skills for successful and innovative use of emerging technologies in teaching, but also barriers and negative effects of technologies on inclusion and diversity will be addressed. This result stretches throughout almost the entire project as one of its main outputs.

PR2 aims to develop a module-based e-learning for educators for each of the required competencies. It starts by analyzing the shifting role of a target group in the digital transition affecting education and existing attempts to implement emerging technologies in HEIs around Europe, leading to a description of competencies that make up the digitally empowered teacher in a society of permanent and quick technological change.

Beyond the immediate output, the following impact is expected:

  • Enhanced capacity of educators to self-analyze the needs for adequate training in relation with new technologies;
  • Fostering higher education and training with adaptation and mainstreaming of the use of emerging educational technologies, in order to augment and extend learning, while also maintaining its human dimension and social relevance;
  • Increasing ability of the target groups to respond to changes in learning systems of HEIs;
  • Enhanced capacity of educators to understand how different groups of students (e.g. underprivileged or underrepresented) experience and benefit, or are excluded from digital education.