Digital Transformation in Humanities

The project aims to develop a set of tools and guidelines addressed to higher education educators/professors in the field of humanities (literature, history, geography, philosophy etc.) with the goal to improve their ICT skills, teaching performance and consequently the attainment of their students and motivation. Ultimately the project seeks to renovate the classic ways of teaching humanities subjects which are the least likely to be affected by the digital transformation, yet are those that can benefit the most, bringing our cultural heritage to a stake of European economy in different field. As stated by the Working Groups on the Modernisation of Higher Education and Digital Skills and Competences last January 2017 in Malta: “Rapid technological development is transforming the way in which higher education is delivered and students participate. The diversification of the student population requires individualisation of learning, more flexible delivery and a greater focus on pedagogies that provide support for learners.”Although more academic contents and tools are becoming available openly and freely, students will continue to require local support for learning, which underlines the importance of teachers’ pedagogical skills along with field-specific competence. Teaching staff will also need stronger frameworks for assessing students’ learning outcomes as well as the value of different technologies and how or when to use them. Teaching staff needs skills in both digital pedagogy and discipline specific digital competences. Authorities and institutions should prioritise flexible approaches that allow context and discipline specific responses rather than one-size-fits-all solutions. The approach was already stated in the Framework for digitally competent educational organisation (RC 2015) which entails that “teaching and learning is ‘redesigned’ to incorporate digital technologies. Building on relevant research, the organisation promotes a diversity of technology-enabled learning and teaching practices that are flexible, adaptable and engaging”.In the context Humanities and Social Sciences ICT has a valuable role to play. It enriches student’s education and promotes the occurrence of deep and authentic learning (Gilbert & Hoepper, 2014 pp.158). Therefore, the project will investigate on the main challenges faced by teachers in humanities field, find out the most useful and practical tools available and adaptable to different subjects and provide the right training contents and tools to help teachers develop their teaching strategy adopting ICT tools.Objectives/Goals-To improve teachers’ ICT skills and competences-To provide user friendly and adaptable tools to teachers to improve their teaching performances-To improve students’ motivation and engagementTarget groupDirect: teachers of Higher Education Institutions in the field of humanities studiesActivities-Selection of practices and database of available tools-Development of the training plan and contents based on basic programming and coding skills addressed to the target group needs-Pilot test which includes also a mobility experience for teachers-Evaluation of the pilot both from the teachers and students’ point of viewExpected results-A set of guidelines on how to include ICT tools in teachers’ pedagogy-A training course on basic programming and coding for teachers-A database of tools to be used by teachers.The project consortium has been selected following the principle of having inside the partnership all the different competences to achieve project results and represent the different European cultures, thus to have enough point of views and achieve outputs with a strong potential of adaptability and transferability. Notably there are four HEIs representing the different fields of the humanities studies from UK, SI, RO, EE. Moreover, there are three different European wide network which represents the HE sectors, Geographers and Digital Education; finally, there is one technical partner which will support the partnership in developing the necessary tools.