PR4 (Digital competence, fluency, intelligence and engagement of HEI students) is organized around four main digital pillars: competence (confident and appropriate use of digital technologies to engage in society), fluency (appropriate use of technologies and application of digital skills to enhance one’s own learning, work-readiness or everyday life), intelligence (a set of social, emotional and cognitive abilities that enable individuals to face the challenges and adapt to the demands of digital life) and engagement (appropriate use of digital tools to find, listen to and mobilize a community around an issue). Overlapping these attributes with the digital competences specified in the JISC (2019) and DigComp 2.0 framework (Vuorikari et al., 2016), following skills will be taught as part of PR4: critical use of digital content, digital participation, selfactualising, creative production of digital content, problem solving, digital learning and development.

PR4 aims to equip students with skills to fully participate in digital education, but also with pedagogical skills to make connections with local communities and sensitize students towards digital inclusion and digital empowerment of underprivileged and underrepresented community members.

The MOOC will be assigned 2 ECTS credits according to the workload of 50- 56 hours and predicted learning outcomes. This is a self-paced course, which allows students to move from one module to the next at their own speed.

The result will have a strong transdisciplinary dimension, since target groups are undergraduate and graduate students with diverse study backgrounds who want to possess the four attributes of a digitally competent person. The additional emphasis will be on selecting students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups (cultural, social, economic, migrant background, educational or geographical obstacles) to take the MOOC.

Expected impact:

  • Enhance the ability of students to organize, exploit and communicate information in an agile way and critically evaluate digital content;
  • Foster confident and appropriate use of digital technologies to engage in society;
  • Enhance students’ capabilities to create and share best practice on emerging technologies and service-learning that are tailored to the needs of their local community;
  • Promote inclusion by addressing the special needs of disadvantaged social groups;
  • Develop a sense of appreciation and care for the local communities;
  • Foster communication, leadership, critical thinking and collaboration skills for digital engagement.

To encourage involvement of students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups (cultural differences, social, economic & geographical obstacles, with migrant background or educational difficulties) they will be provided with opportunities in the form of MOOC badges and ECTS credits for their success in completion of the MOOC. The gamification in the MOOC will be used specially to help them develop their self-esteem and confidence in their abilities to achieve progress. A special part of the MOOC (module 8) will be devoted to find collaborative ways to support their digital inclusion through service-learning.