Digital Area for Networking Teachers and Educators (DANTE)

DANTE - Digital Area for Networking Teachers and Educators is created to support of higher education institutions (HEI)' education through supporting digital competences among teachers, academic staff, HEI education providers and university students and establishing a cooperative network among educational institutions.

Outputs will be aimed to these objectives and will help us to increase the quality of teaching and attractiveness of study.

As understood by the European Commission, the digital competence and digital skills are considered to be a part of the basic skills and key competences of all people to live and participate in a technology-driven world. It is therefore necessary to learn from the COVID-19 crisis as it pushed all of us to use the digital technologies in a massive way and we should be prepared for the future.

The European Commission also puts a great emphasis to the infrastructure, connectivity and digital equipment, effective digital capacity planning and development, education of digitally competent and confident teachers and development of high-quality teaching content, user- friendly tools and secure platforms.

The key area of the project is to support the skills and competences mentioned above and this is where the partners of the project (universities from 5 different countries) aim their activities. Although the universities are ready to provide high-quality education to their students, thanks to the situation we all are facing now with the coronavirus pandemy, the education strategies, approaches and methodologies had to be adjusted to this situation. It is necessary to provide university teachers with the necessary knowledge, skills, equipment and sources needed to smooth switch from the face-to-face teaching to digital (online) education.

The primary target group of the DANTE project are university teachers, IT staff and university management. The secondary target group are education providers, policy makers and university students.

The objectives of the project mainly are:
1. contribute to the fulfilment of the Digital Education Plan 2021-2027 of the European Commission (EC)
2. respond to the underprovision of digital education within HEI programmes.

This will be achieved through the development of a set of guidelines for digital education that will:
a) raise awareness for the importance of digital education at HEIs,
b) create a state-of-the-art understanding among teachers and students for relevant digital skills and competences,
c) facilitate and catalyse the integration of digital learning experiences into HEIs programmes
d) provide guidelines complemented with short instruction videos to inspire and support teachers in teaching.
e) implement innovations in communication between teachers and students and in evaluation that motivates in DE
f) design of necessary IT infrastructure and processes readiness for DE

The project is co-funded by Örebro University and EU (KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices & KA226 - Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness).