Want to make creations as awesome as this one?

Transcript

Digital Education Guideline

START

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

D2S Courses Guidelines for Educators

MENU

What are Digital Soft Skills?

D2S Framework & PROGRAM intro

The D2S Framework

The D2S Courses

How to access the D2S courses?

How to log in?

+MORE

What are Digital Soft Skills?

“Digital Soft Skills are competences that allow individuals to successfully be, act, learn, work, and engage with others in a digital context. They include personal, social and methodical competences and can be acquired through a range of different learning experiences and methods.” (D2S 2022)

From this definition, you can immediately see the main characteristics of the Digital Soft Skills.

Are important 21st century skills

Apply to all of your life contexts

Include very different types of skills

Can be learned and practiced in different ways

WHAT IS THE DIGITAL SOFT SKILLS (D2S) Framework & PROGRAM for educators?

We have created resources that will allow you to:

Find out what digital soft skills are important for you (in your workplace and in everyday life)

The D2S program can help you understand and develop your own Digital Soft Skills, as well as suggest ways to incorporate these skills into your teaching, to help students to develop their Digital Soft Skills competences too. The framework alone offers a synthesis of Digital Soft Skills themes which can be used as a guide for educators and education providers to develop their own Digital Soft Skills resources.

Develop your skills through the D2S course offering

Receive recognition for your learning with digital badges.

Assess for yourself what you already know and what you don’t know

THE D2S FRAMEWORK

This core skill category focuses on digital interactions. It consists of the following soft skills:

  • Digital Collaboration: Individual’s ability to work together with others in a digital environment.
  • Digital Communication: Interact and engage in citizenship through digital technologies while adhering to netiquette and managing one’s digital identity.
  • Digital Influencing: Ability to engage and build relationships online.

This core skill category focuses on the development of digital identity and wellbeing of a person. It consists of the following soft skills:

  • Digital Literacy: Individual’s ability to use information and data available effectively and ethically online; competences involving browsing, evaluating, and managing digital content.
  • Digital Identity: Being aware of one’s digital footprint.
  • Digital Wellbeing: Taking care of one’s health and safety in a digital environment by knowing about safety and security measures and having due regard for reliability and privacy.

This core skill category focuses on the action-oriented skills that one needs in a digital environment. It consists of the following soft skills:

  • Critical and analytical thinking in the digital space: Individual’s ability to carefully evaluate and interpret information available online.
  • Problem-solving: Solve problems in digital environments and use digital tools to innovate and keep abreast of the digital evolution.
  • Creativity: Ability to generate new idea by employing digital tools.

This core skill category focuses on the future skills that one may need to envision changes and innovation. It consists of the following soft skills:

  • Digital Citizenship: Using online tools/media to participate in societal causes, address issues, and raise public awareness.
  • Digital Skills for Sustainable Development: Using digital environment for envisioning sustainable futures.
  • Design and Future Thinking: Ability to change and be forward-looking, to develop the currently given situations into other, new, and unknown future concepts and to approach them creatively.

These are higher-level competences that are essential for anyone to operate successfully in today’s globalized and fast-moving world. They include being flexible, reflective, and empathetic (also in an intercultural context), as well as awareness and intentional pursuit of personal growth and learning. Observe the following screen capture and reflect on the questions below: How does this image make you feel? Angry? Disappointed? If you had to teach online during the covid-19 pandemic, you probably saw a lot of this. What is your reaction? Do you force students to turn on cameras? Do you cancel the session? The D2S cross-cutting competences MOOC discusses situations such as this and, and asks us to think about how empathy can help us to deal with them.

This section describes the D2S Framework for Educators:

  • First, click on the different skills areas (in the center) and competences (in the circles) to see an explanation of what these are about.
  • Then click on each of the four outer boxes to find out in more detail what these skills are and why you should bother learning them. Here you can also find examples of how they can help you in your own study, work and life.

“Developing Me” focuses on your ability to live and act in a digital space. The skills in this area focus on the development of digital literacy, identity and well-being, and are centered on awareness and competence at an individual level.

“Engaging with others” consists of skills that help you interact and work with others in the digital space. This includes communicating and collaborating with others digitally, but also being able to relate, negotiate, and lead in virtual settings.

“Creating the future” is about skills that are strategic and forward-looking, and help you understand and shape a changing world. There is a strong focus on learners and educators as key agents for sustainability and citizenship in a digital era, and the proactive design of desirable futures.

“Acting Now” are action-oriented skills that help you make effective use of digital opportunities in study, work and life. These skills include critical analytical thinking, problem solving, and creativity in digital settings or using digital tools.

D2S COURSES

Acting now

Cross-cutting Competences

Educators

Developing me

Educators

engaging with others

Educators

Creating the future

5

1

Educators

3

Educators

4

2

6

START WITH THE INTRODUCTORY MOOC

Educators

Passport

CLICK ON EACH COURSE TO SEE THEIR DESCRIPTION.

YOU MUST FULLY COMPLETE THE COURSES AND OBTAIN A PASSING GRADE TO RECEIVE EACH RESPECTIVE BADGE. yOU WILL OBTAIN THE PASSPORT ONCE YOU HAVE COMPLETED ALL THE COURSES.

Description: The course Acting Now is aimed at educators interested in the topics of critical and analytical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. The course will be organised in three modules, addressing the three skills: critical and analytical thinking, problem solving and creativity. It will help educators to understand the relevance of each skill in learning and for learning. In addition, for each skill, tools, strategies, and innovative teaching methods will be provided. Through your active participation in this course, you will be able to:

  • Describe the digital contextualization of critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem solving and creativity;
  • Reflect on the importance of critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem solving and creativity for an effective learning;
  • Reflect on how these skills can be taught in your teaching activities;
  • Identify the most effective strategies to implement these skills during class activities.
Go to course

Description: The course Creating the Future focuses on topics that have been identified as important future skills and competencies to help educators feel more comfortable with the ever-changing digital technologies, become more active participants in society, and work toward a better world and a fairer society for all. Through your active participation in this course, you will be able to:

  • Describe key concepts on Experiential learning, design thinking, digital citizenship and sustainable development;
  • Apply these concepts in digitally-enhanced learning scenarios and online communities;
  • Integrate into your teaching and learning practice real-world projects linked to digitalisation and current socio-environmental challenges;
  • Embed education for sustainable development approaches into curriculum and course design, teaching and assessment.
Go to course

Description: The course will cover the 3 skills of the Cross-Cutting Competences of the D2S framework; concepts that will help you navigate a digital teaching and learning setting. It will introduce higher education instructors to reflective practice for themselves and how to develop this in students. It will then use the reflective skills to think about flexibilty and intercultural empathy, two important comptences in our increasingly globalised world, and especially, in the context of Ulysseus university. Working with diverse teams and student cohorts, in a digital environment, means adapting our current practices and ways of working. Through your active participation in this course, you will be able to:

  • Develop reflection as a continuous professional development tool;
  • Explore interculturality and empathy, particularly in a digital world;
  • Evaluate your approach to teaching and learning online;
  • Develop tolerance to the changing nature of online teaching, learning and digital technologies.
Go to course

Description: The course Developing Me is aimed at everyone who is interested in Digital Literacy, Digital Identity and Digital Wellbeing. In the first section, we will look at copyrights and licenses. Also, ethical use of information will be discussed. In the second section, we will focus on Digital Footprints and Digital Reputation. In the third section, we will concentrate on looking after your digital wellbeing in digital environments and charting your technology use. Through your active participation in this course, you will be able to:

  • know the basics of copyrights and creative common licenses
  • know the basics of open educational resources
  • understand the meaning of managing digital information and data
  • understand the meaning of research data management
  • being aware of one’s digital footprint
  • creating a successful digital identity / profile for different learning contexts
  • managing a positive digital reputation
  • understand the meaning and different aspects of digital wellbeing
  • chart your personal technology use.
Go to course

Description: The course Engaging with Others is focused on three main topics that have been identified as important future skills and competences that teachers should develop: Digital communication, Digital collaboration and Digital influencing (leadership). Within this course, you will discover tools and mechanisms that safely facilitate digital communication. In addition, we will address content that helps you find, evaluate and select tools that allow collaborative work. Through your active participation in this course, you will be able to:

  • finding, evaluating, selecting and using appropriate communication tools;
  • being able to adapt one’s message to different digital media, audiences, and purposes;
  • ensuring accesibility and inclusion of all learners and responding to their digital expectations and abilities;
  • finding, evaluating, selecting and using appropriate collaboration tools;
  • managing own and team priorities (staff teams, classroom, etc.);
  • moderating and facilitating online interaction;
  • engaging and building online interaction;
  • empowering learners through fostering their active and creative online engagement.
Go to course

Description: The aim of this course is to present an overview of Digital Soft Skills. This Introductory MOOC course will introduce you to concepts of Digital Skills and Digital Soft Skills that will help you navigate a digital teaching environment. In this course, you will learn:

  • what are digital soft skills;
  • what are core skill categories for students and teachers identified by D2S;
  • what are must-have digital soft skills;
  • what tools can be used;
  • tips to improve your current digital soft skill level;
  • some useful links for self study, if you are interested in the topic.
Go to course

Digital Soft Skills Passport Description It aims to equip all learners with digital transversal skills to live, work, learn and thrive in a world increasingly mediated by digital technologies. The D2S Passport attests to the successful completion of the full Digital Soft Skills programme, and to the acquisition of essential skills for personal and professional development with digital technology: intercultural empathy, flexible thinking, digital literacy, digital identity and wellbeing, communication, analytical thinking, problem-solving, design & future thinking. Terms Have completed the entire Digital Soft Skills course programme and passed the validation tests with a pass rate of over 80%.

How to access the D2S courses?

Here is what you need to know in order to access the D2S courses:

02

03

01

It is possible to choose the completion times of the course

The courses can be followed remotely, without the need to be present in person.

The D2S courses are online and hosted on a platform.

04

You can enroll into the D2S courses using the ULYSSEUS Moodle platform.

Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system that helps managing training and education in different contexts, using for example blended learning or distance learning in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors. You can access the Ulysseus Moodle using your institutional account.

01

How to log in?

The first time you try to access, you need to follow the steps described in the box on the right.Click on each step in order to see helping illustrations.

02

03

Step 2

Click the “Login with your institution” button, located in the upper half of the page

+ info

Go to the Ulysseus Moodle website

+ info

Step 1

Step 3

Click the black arrow pointing down to show a list of institutions, then select yours.

+ info

Go to the Ulysseus Moodle website Link: https://ulysseus.eu/learn/login/index.php

Click the “Login with your institution” button, located in the upper half of the page

Click the black arrow pointing down to show a list of institutions, then select yours

Going further

info

info

info

1

2

3

Why digital soft skills are essential in the future?

How to keep your digital soft skills updated in the future?

Future trends

Focusing on your Digital Soft Skills shows that you are thinking about how your knowledge, skills and attitudes impact your professional performance. Digital Soft Skills are essential to cope with current and future changes and demands in education. Digital Soft Skills will be able to improve your confidence to use digital technology, in the classroom and outside it, to facilitate the learning of your students and your own, to coordinate projects, to communicate and understand the ideas of others with assertiveness, etc. Educators, to fulfill all their responsibilities, today need Digital Soft Skills. Remember to include Digital Soft Skills in your CV as well!

You are now well versed in Digital Soft Skills. It is hoped that you will be able to apply these skills to the workplace in any situation. Practicing is key for integrating them into the daily activities. But pay attention to the fact that technology will evolve. The skills now acquired will have to be further developed as new tools and applications become available. Participating in digital environments like social networks or communities of professionals could be a good strategy to improve the continuous learning of Digital Soft Skills.

The most successful teachers in the future will be those with digital soft skills. Teachers require these skills to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technologies to relate, collaborate, share knowledge, etc. Digital Soft Skills will allow teachers to quickly adapt to different environments and modes of teaching and learning. At present, this is already very well valued. As professionals, teachers need to stay updated. Digital Soft Skills empower teachers for teamwork and knowledge sharing which is important to facilitate innovation.

Click on the button below to go back to the main menu

Enrol in our courses now!

Official website

d2s.ulysseus.eu