DIG-IT - Digital Education Initiatives and Timely Solutions for the Universities and Healthcare Industries

DIG-IT will provide solutions to address the imbalance and inequity of digital education opportunities offered at EU universities - an aim consistent with the European Commission Digital Education Action Plan. Immediate research is needed to understand how and under what circumstances, EU academic staff and healthcare professionals will embrace emerging technologies to enhance learning experiences and opportunities. There must be intentional development of educational supports to assist educators transitioning from traditional teaching methods to teaching with digital technologies. DIG-IT academic staff will collaborate with St. James hospital subject matter experts to produced accredited digital eBooks and apps to meet an unmet need of accessible, relevant training at the point of care. Target Group: Approximately 5000 academic staff in universities in Malta, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia, and Finland; and 1000 healthcare professionals in six St. James facilities in Malta, Hungary and Libya, who wish to collaboratively create, share, and distribute innovative training and teaching resources to support educators by reducing redundancy, time and cost. Outputs include: a quality standard framework and assessment toolkit to guide the design, delivery and evaluation of digital education; an online course to increase confidence and teach educators how to design, delivery and evaluate digital education; a train-the-trainer online course to develop digital education champions to support peers, and healthcare eBooks and apps enabling mobile learning at the bedside. The mixed methods evaluation of courses and resources will gain an understanding of how and under what circumstances academic staff and healthcare professionals learn and transfer learning to teaching, improve product quality, and enable sharing lessons learned and best practices. The delivery and evaluating of courses in a variety of EU countries will enable understanding with regard to geographic cultural and language impacts on digital education. This novel partnership design and delivery of education products is of international interest in that it resonates with the concepts of inter-ministerial collaboration, trans-sectorial cooperation and multidisciplinary operations with advocates. Each partner will exit DIG-IT armoured with – increased knowledge and skills, cutting edge resources and a collaborative international network in digital education. Beyond partners, DIG-IT will deliver an arena of quality resources beneficial at a regional, national and international level that uniquely spans healthcare and education, free of charge for public access from the DIG-IT's open access repository. December 2nd, 2019.