India - Digital literacy skills training – University of Delhi - UKEIRI
In 2012-14, Edinburgh College worked in partnership with the University of Delhi on a UKEIRI-funded project to develop a programme to improve digital literacy among learners and the digitally excluded, such as low-income workers, disadvantaged communities, and those with low levels of educational attainment. The key aim of the programme was to equip individuals with the digital literacy skills needed to prepare for future employment.
Edinburgh College’s role was primarily to provide teacher training in digital literacy skills and principles for UoD teaching staff. A cascade approach was intended, with participating teachers encouraged to cascade their learning to colleagues and students, thereby developing sustainable communities of digitally literate practitioners through a bespoke continuing professional development (CPD) programme.
The project sought to teach, support and facilitate practices including:
- Developing a programme for educators and employers for the continuous improvement of learners and employees.
- Understanding how to address the digital divide and its impact on the most disadvantaged groups in workplaces and communities.
- Utilising technology to enhance learning and challenge traditional classroom practice.
- Sharing best practices between partners in India and the UK.
- Exploring how e-learning and the use of mobile devices can be utilised to benefit teaching and learning within their subject discipline(s).
- Engaging learners in motivating, authentic, culturally relevant and challenging experiences and using a personalised learner plan to do this.
- Understanding how to work flexibly to ensure that the integration of technology is relevant and controllable by both the learner and teacher.
- Enabling materials to be flexibly adopted across diverse learning contexts, and understanding how to adapt a blended learning model that complements the offline activities of a classroom.
- Encouraging staff to use a specially created area on a Digital Literacy Moodle (VLE) in order to familiarise themselves with the technology and develop their own ideas.
Through this project, staff from both institutions attended a five-day workshop to agree on criteria for educational soundness and accessibility, and to develop the curriculum. This criterion was rigorously applied through a quality-assurance-based project management system that ran throughout the project. Project staff tested the agreed criteria by undertaking market research to ensure that the curriculum content and materials appealed to learners and would be useful to teachers.
The course then proceeded, with staff from Edinburgh College delivering training on digital literacy practices in both India and Edinburgh, as well as online. An online course was developed to supplement face-to-face teaching and learning, and to encourage participants to engage further with supported self-directed study.
The end of the project saw a workshop for University of Delhi colleagues delivered in Edinburgh to ensure the programme's ongoing sustainability. This was followed up 5 months later by the project team from Edinburgh College visiting the University of Delhi to support the sustainable implementation in practice.
The partnership programme enhanced and accelerated educational experiences for staff and students, enabling them to share resources and develop future sustainable courses. In addition to sharing expertise and best practice between India and the UK, it also raised awareness of the importance of digital literacy skills for learning, life and work.
