Digitalization in European Education: Realizing Equity and Inclusion with Living Learning Materials (DigiLLM)

An international Cooperation Partnership under the Erasmus+ funding line of the European Union

International Consortium

  • Bielefeld University (Coordinating Institution)
  • University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  • Örebro University, Sweden
  • University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

Contacts

  • Prof.in Dr. Michaela Vogt & Marlene Pieper, M.A. (University of Bielefeld)
  • Prof. Dr. Katja Andersen (University of Luxembourg)
  • Ass. Prof. Anette Bagger, Ph.D. (University of Örebro)
  • doc. PhDr. Zuzana Sikorová, Ph.D. (University of Ostrava)

Duration

September 2022 – August 2025

Funding

The project is a Cooperation Partnership co-funded with 400.000€ from the Erasmus+ funding line, Key Action 2 (Cooperation among organisations and institutions) of the European Union.

Project description

Starting points

In the context of education under conditions of digitality, Open Educational Resources (OER) are of particular importance. This refers to educational materials that are published under an open licence and are thus freely accessible and usable, shareable and modifiable. They are thus seen as having an inherent potential to promote inclusive education.

However, inclusion and inclusion-sensitivity in teaching and learning settings is not exhausted in the accessibility and adaptivity of materials. At the same time, there is a lack of quality criteria for inclusion-sensitive digital educational materials in general and OER in particular. There is also a lack of information on how teachers can modify and adapt digital materials to make teaching and learning (more) inclusive. Thus, when OER are contextualised with inclusive education, this relationship is characterised by ambiguities and research desiderata.

Targets

The aim of the DigiLLM project is to establish and expand this discourse on inclusion sensitivity in the context of OER and to anchor it internationally. This is done by building a comprehensive digital ecosystem:

A digital portal is currently being set up that will become the central point of contact on the topic of "inclusion and OER" and offer teachers, teacher trainees, learners and researchers a space to critically engage with digital educational materials and OER.

Hereupon, first explorative reflections of different OER platforms of all project countries as well as an international literature review are made accessible. Interviews and group discussions will be used to capture teachers' and learners' perspectives on OER and their sensitivity to inclusion.

Based on these initial explorations, a catalogue of criteria for inclusion-sensitive Open Educational Resources will be developed, which will form the basis for an in-service training module for teachers and teacher trainees. These results will be made openly available.

By setting up an openly accessible, interactive rating function on the digital portal, teachers, students, pupils and parents will be able to evaluate existing OER along the newly developed criteria. In this way, a broad public is invited to enter into a critical discourse on the topic of inclusion sensitivity in OER. Teacher trainees are also particularly encouraged to use these tools and digital spaces to reflect on the connection between inclusion sensitivity and learning materials.

This participatory component in turn feeds back into the academic discourse, as the assessments and reviews designed by teachers and learners become the basis for meta-reviews from a researcher's perspective. These meta-reviews will be published in a new peer-reviewed journal, which will consolidate the discourse on inclusion sensitivity in OER at an international level.

This portal is currently under construction.

Contact: marlene.pieper@uni-bielefeld.de

Registration for the newsletter: digillm@uni-bielefeld.de


Zveřejněno / aktualizováno: 19. 01. 2023