European Digital Education Hub

We are contacting you with the first newsletter of the European Digital Education Hub, which you signed up to when you registered. We are very happy to see this open, inclusive, supportive, and practice-oriented community growing so quickly day after day and we are proud to share with you our plans for the upcoming weeks.

There are currently over 1,300 people that registered to the Hub since our launch in June. It is great to see members are already pro-active in sharing their expertise, suggesting topics to work on, supporting and commenting on each other suggestions. Our aim with the Hub is to help together overcome the fragmentation that we see in digital education and to bring together the diverse and rich community of digital education stakeholders, to create a place for connecting with like-minded education enthusiasts.

In this newsletter you will find information on different activities that are currently ongoing or being planned. You have here the chance to register to some upcoming events, to have a say on issues related to digital education, or just to read news items or outputs from other community members. You are the one deciding on your level of engagement.

If you would like to suggest topics or activities for the Hub, you can also do so. The Innovation Funnel is open for submissions at all times. Our aim is to make this place an arena for exchange and cooperation and we count on all of you to make this happen.

Last but not least, tell us what you think about this newsletter by dropping us a line to the Digital Education Hub.

We are looking forward to seeing you on the Hub!

Your European Digital Education Hub team

The Hub’s design thinking workshop on 21 and 22 November 2022 aims to develop new concepts, learning designs, tools, practices, or offers. In other words, usable solutions to problems faced by stakeholders in the field of digitalisation by actively engaging actors, stakeholders, and experts. This 2-day workshop will take place in a state of art campus in Potsdam, Germany.

Register for a spot until 30 October 2022, 23:59 CET. For further information visit the Design Thinking Channel.

After the workshop, all Hub members will further have the opportunity to join a dedicated online Working Group (or ‘Squad’) on this topic from the end of November 2022 to January 2023.

You are interested in more events? Check out all upcoming events in the Hub calendar.

In the week of November 21, 2022, you are invited to the first online clinic of the Digital Education Hub which will focus on micro-credentials.

An online clinic offers a personal consultation with a high-level European expert on an action, topic or challenge in digital education for which you want targeted expert advice.

If you would like to sign up for a two-hour clinic session on micro-credentials, you can register via this registration form. You can be joined by colleagues of your institution if you wish. Twelve consultation moments of two hours each are available during the week of 21 November.

There will be more online clinics (on topics that you can define):

• 28 November 2022 – 2 December 2022 
• 12 December 2022 – 16 December 2022 

For further information visit the Mentoring and Online Clinics channel.

Monthly knowledge building webinars bring together interested education practitioners and experts from various fields. The webinars combine panel discussions with interactive elements. Discussed are issues, such as linking research and practical digital educational challenges.

• 28 November 2022 – 14:00 – 15:30 CET, Online: Expert roundtable on “Digital Innovations and Transformation through Research, Practice and Policy Perspectives”

The Knowledge Building Webinars are taking place in the Knowledge Building channel.

The Teachers as Researchers activities are based on the Teachers as Researchers methodology to guide educators from all sectors of education to collaboratively investigate their educational practices and create practice-based knowledge about the best means to address their challenges related to digital education.

• 16 November 2022 – 18 November 2022 
• 30 November 2022 – 2 December 2022 

For more information visit the Teachers as Researchers Wiki. The events are taking place in the Teachers as Researchers channel.

One way to grow a meaningful and relevant Community is by collecting and sharing expertise, best practices and innovative solutions for digital education and promote co-creation and the effective implementation of digital education.

If you have best practices you’d like to share with the Community members or you'd be interested in contributing as a national expert to a Europe-wide mapping of good practices, please access the EU Survey which will be shared in the Sharing is Caring channel. For additional information, questions and comments, you can also message us in the dedicated Sharing is Caring channel.

The Hub community has grown fast since its launch in June 2022. As of now, the Hub has welcomed over 1,300 members. Regular Onboarding Webinars in the Support channel enable new Hub members to connect and find out how to navigate the Hub.

As part of the lively European Digital Education Hub, community members were encouraged to suggest the upcoming Hub theme. Among different suggestions from the community the topic “Creating an Interoperable International Digital Education System” was chosen through a voting process in the Hub News channel. Join the next Community Workshop and / or Thematic Working Group (“Squad”) to work on this topic with other community members.

In a Knowledge Building Webinar on 20 September 2022 community members and education experts collectively discussed how the Hub can facilitate successful and sustainable knowledge building.

At the end of September, Teachers as Researchers held its first workshop week. In the discovery events participants took part in collaborative writing and peer-reviewing of digital education challenges. Teachers as Researchers weeks are being held monthly. Education practitioners from all sectors are welcome to join.

This year’s Digital Education Accelerator cohort started its journey in September 2022. Seven innovative digital education prototypes will be scaled up during the 6-month intensive training and testing programme. The seven teams selected are:

• Datorium, Latvia
• d.teach, Belgium
• Edumus, Estonia
• Futuclass, Estonia
• Levebee, Czech Republic
• Praktikal, Estonia
• Visions Galaxy, France

Keep your eyes peeled for more news to come from the acceleration journey of these teams!

What is your role on the European Digital Education Hub?

I am one of the Hub Community Managers, meaning that I try to have an overview of what’s going on in the community as well as fostering exchange and discussion on the Hub. I am also involved in the Squads and to some extent in the Community Workshops.

What is your experience in digital education?

I previously worked for Hochschulforum Digitalisierung, a German organisation promoting digitalisation in higher education in Germany.

Which topic on digital education are you most invested in?

This may not be a very surprising answer, but I find the post-Covid world very exciting. There are many questions that will need to be answered in the coming years. How much of the day-to-day education should be done face-to-face when there is no Covid around? 100%? 90% 50%? Should there be a difference between different sectors? Should we have some blended version in some sectors? Which good practices that were more or less chaotically developed in 2020 or 2021 are worth keeping?

Apart from that, I also have a personal interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). I find it absolutely amazing that we all can have access to fantastic courses at a very low cost, just a few clicks away.

What is your vision for the Hub?

In three years, the Hub is the go-to place where anyone interested in digital education goes to get inspired, to find resources, to meet colleagues for cooperation, and so on. In addition to the moderated activities, several ad hoc projects, working groups and other initiatives are regularly initiated by the participants themselves.

For which requests, questions or concerns can Hub members contact you?

For any requests, really. If I do not know the answer, I can pass it on to one of my very competent colleagues.

A new Thematic Working Group (“Squad”) will start working in late November 2022 – early 2023, online, on the topic of An Interoperable International Digital Ecosystem for Education. A call for participants will be launched in November 2022. The topic will be related to that of the third community workshop.

For further information visit the Working Group 3 channel.

Link to Hub News channel

If you are new to the community of the European Digital Education Hub and want to learn about us, our goals, what to do next and how, then you are more than welcome to join today’s onboarding call.

• 7 November 2022 – 11:00 – 12:00 CET, Online
• 15 November 2022 – 15:00 – 16:00 CET, Online
• 5 December 2022 – 11:00 – 12:00 CET, Online

Join us in the Support channel or join via the direct links on the dates.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

If you do not have the time to join the call, but still need some more information about how the Hub works, you will also find useful information in the Hub Instruction Manual.

In case you are experiencing technical difficulties please consult the information provided in the Support channel. Here you can find the Support Wiki.

In case the provided documents do not address your specific technical issue please explain the difficulties you are experiencing in the channel (if possible, please add screenshots).

If you are experiencing issues accessing the Hub on MS Teams, please send an email to edeh-support@stifterverband.de. We can help you best if you explain the issue in detail and provide screenshots.