https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5638-9057
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ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic positioned digital education in a new light. The need for educational institutions to develop strategies, standards and establish quality assurance across digital education became even more evident. This paper describes the four-step process of designing an interactive European Union (EU) Digital Education Quality Standard Framework and Companion Evaluation Toolkit to guide the design, delivery and evaluation of effective digital education. (1) A review of literature of existing digital education frameworks and models is presented. (2) Variables and sub-variables inherent in designing, delivering and evaluating effective digital education are identified. (3) Next the variables and sub-variables in the framework are defined. (4) The process of designing the interactive framework diagram is described with the companion evaluation toolkit outlined. The proposed framework is flexible and applicable to entities and audiences regardless of where they are in the online learning adoption process.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
4. Interactive framework: http://project-digit.eu/index.php/digital-education-quality-standards/.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
CJ MacDonald
Colla J. MacDonald won the titles of Distinguished University Professor and Professor Emeritus from the University of Ottawa prior to taking early retirement in 2016 and accepting a role as Senior Researcher at the University of Malta. She has demonstrated a cutting-edge vision for education that is recognised around the world.
She has collaborated with the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, The National Board of Medical Examiners in the US, The Ontario Nurses Association, The Neurotrauma Association, and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa where she was Director of Faculty Development for three years. She is currently the Principal Investigator in an Erasmus+ research grant, working with Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia, and Finland to develop an EU Digital Education Quality Standards Framework and Companion Evaluation Toolkit, a nine module online course for academic staff on how to design, deliver and evaluate online study units, a train-the-trainer course to scale up the delivery of the 9 module course, and healthcare apps in collaboration with Saint James Hospital to offer training to healthcare workers, residents and students at the bedside. [[email protected]]
Insa Backhaus holds a PhD in Public Health from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. She received her BSc in European Public Health and her MSc in Healthcare Policy, Innovation and Management from the Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Her principal area of interest, as well as recent research, has been in the field social epidemiology. Her research is focused on college student mental health, with a particular interest in the association between social capital and depressive symptoms. With collaborators at universities across world, Dr. Insa Backhaus is conducting a two-wave panel study on the influence of social capital and college student mental health. Dr. Backhaus also works on projects related to LGBTQ college student mental health. [[email protected]
Evangelia Vanezi (M.Sc.) is currently a Researcher at the Software Engineering and Internet Technologies (SEIT) Laboratory at the Computer Science department of the University of Cyprus. As a member of the laboratory she is involved in numerous EU funded projects, and in research and academic publications. She is also involved in the development of software systems, tools and applications. She holds a graduate (B.Sc.) degree in Computer Science from the University of Cyprus and a post-graduate (M.Sc.) degree in Internet Computing, from the same department. She is currently pursuing a PhD degree. Her research interests and expertise include web-based software engineering, user management systems development, privacy in software systems, data protection in software systems, formal privacy verification in software systems, formal methods in software engineering methodologies, privacy by design in software development, and process calculi modelling. Her skills include programming in several languages, and development of web and mobile applications, software systems modelling and verification with formal methods, and experience with software engineering methodologies. [[email protected]]
Alexandros Yeratziotis (Ph.D) is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the SEIT laboratory, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Cyprus. He is also a Lecturer at the Multimedia and Graphic Arts Department of the Cyprus University of Technology. He is co-founder of the Connect Deaf startup that offers accessible communication and educational mobile applications for users who are deaf. His postdoctoral topic was Usability and User Experience User Interface Design Heuristics for Deaf Users, which was funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) and conducted at the Cyprus University of Technology. He received his doctorate from the School of Information and Communication Technology at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), which was co-funded by the NMMU, South Africa - Finland Knowledge Partnership on ICT (SAFIPA) and the German Academic Exchange Service/DeutscherAkademischerAustauschdienstDienst (DAAD/NRF). He has published in the field of HCI and has served as a reviewer in well-known journals and was involved in a number of European research projects. His research interests are: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), user experience (UX), accessible computing, user-centred design and usability inspection methods. [[email protected]]
Debra Clendinneng is an expert in online and hybrid educational program planning, curriculum development and program quality assurance. As a nurse and educator, she has been involved in creating and delivering undergraduate and masters level healthcare professional education. Dr. Clendinneng is a published researcher with special interests in online learning to teach technical and non-technical skills and to promote patient safety as a top priority for interprofessional healthcare teams. She currently serves in an editorial capacity for two international, peer reviewed journals. She sits on the Scientific Committee for Saegis Safety Institute and is a member of the European Union Erasmus Dig-It Project. Her current Canadian professorial affiliations are with Algonquin College, University of Ottawa, and Yorkville University in Canada. [[email protected]]
Leena Seriola is Senior Lecturer at the JAMK University of Applied Sciences in Jyväskylä, Finland. Her expertise is in health care education with a focus on nursing education. Mrs Seriola is a Registered Nurse, with a long career in intensive care nursing. Her teaching expertise is in public health nursing, medical nursing practice, evidence based nursing and critical care nursing. Mrs Seriola also works as a pedagogical mentor in her organisation, coaching colleagues on the building and use of digital eLearning solutions. Seriola is helping educators at the JAMK University of Applied Sciences to combine their pedagogy with digital skills. She is an experienced and innovative online educator valued by her students and colleagues. Mrs Seriola has international project experience in AHIC (Addressing challenging health inequalities of children and youth between two Karelias), ISPAD (Innovative Simulation Pedagogy for Academic Development Erasmus project) and Expert Tasks in Global Education Services from a Master Class on Pedagogical and Methodological bases for a joint Kazakh-Finnish dual-diploma Master´s program in nursing conducted at Almaty’s Kazakh Medical University of Continuing Education. [[email protected]]
Sanna Häkkinen is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Health and Social Studies, Jamk University of Applied Sciences, Finland. Her key competencies are educational support and guidance, digital client work in rehabilitation and educational technology as well as eLearning including online pedagogy, hybrid teaching and blended learning. She also works as the pedagogical mentor for university lecturers and staff members, which means the digitally competent colleague familiar with blended learning methods and building eLearning environments. The pedagogical mentor helps teachers to unify their pedagogy and eLearning. As evidence of her innovative touch in combining technology and work life challenges, she directed the eFamily Coach Project (2009-2013) which developed mobile assisted solutions for family work and won the Talentia Union of Professional Social Workers’ Good Practice -Prize in Finland in 2013. [[email protected]]
Maria Cassar is a nurse and Senior Lecturer, at the University of Malta. She pursued undergraduate education at the University of Malta, and completed M.Sc. and PhD programmes in Nursing at King’s College London, and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She completed a masters programme in online teaching at the University of Illinois, US. Her research interest lies with curriculum development in the field of health and social care. In the international context, she has regularly presented and published academic papers over the last two decades and has been engaged in Erasmus+ projects; CALOHEE, TUNING-MEDA, iSPAD and is currently committed to the DIG-IT and New Nurse Educator Projects. Dr. Cassar is the Co-ordinator of the Masters Programme in Nursing Studies at the University of Malta and Head of the Department of Nursing. [[email protected]]
Christos Mettouris (Ph.D) is a graduate of the Polytechnic School of Computer Engineering & Informatics Department at the University of Patras, Greece. He holds a masters degree of the same department and a PhD from the University of Cyprus. He has been a member of the e-Learning sector of the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (RACTI) in Greece. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Cyprus and a member of the Software Engineering and Internet Technologies (SEIT) Lab of the Computer Science Department. He has been involved in a number of projects (CVN-AAL, Asterics-FP7, idSpace-FP7, B3Regions, InnoFun, Prosperity4All-FP7, SCIChallenge-H2020, V-ALERT LLP, VeLoCiTy Erasmus+, World-of-Physics Erasmus+, INFORM and others) and has also been involved in the organisation of a number of conferences in Cyprus. His research interests include Recommender Systems, Ubiquitous Computing, Model-Driven Development and Context-Aware Computing. Personal web site and publication list: www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~mettour/. [[email protected]]
George A. Papadopoulos (Ph.D.) holds the (tenured) rank of Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus. He has participated in a number of international and national projects both as a researcher or partner, and as a co-coordinator. He has been involved in the organisation and program committees of more than 100 international conferences and workshops. Professor Papadopoulos’ research interests include component-based systems, mobile computing, multimedia systems, e-learning, open and distance learning, parallel programming and high-performance computing, GRID technologies, electronic commerce, workflow management and CSCW. He has published over 100 papers as book chapters or in internationally refereed journals and conferences and he serves on the editorial boards of 5 international journals. He has been involved or is currently participating, as coordinator or partner, in over 30 internationally and nationally funded projects (with a total budget for his participation of about 7m EURO). He is the Director of the SEIT Lab. More information can be found at his personal web site, http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george. [[email protected]]