According to the ‘New EU education strategy (2018), the EU “Considers it critical that teacher training involves digital literacy and skills, both at university level and for professional training throughout teachers’ careers”.
Welcome to the first step for creating a learning and development strategy for professional training in your context. This guide is aimed at team leaders,educational planners, directors, heads of departments or anybody working in a position which involves leading and planning. This framework will take you through the steps. First we ask you to reflect on your current state with some questions about digital strategy and competence in your context. Your responses to these questions will form the basis of a SWOT analysis which can then guide you in building your strategy.
Begin with a short reflection. Note any thoughts that come to mind.
RAISING AWARENESS OF DIGITAL COMPETENCE
- How would you define digital competence?
- How does it relate to your work as a leader or planner?
- How visible is it in your context (organisation, colleagues, teachers)?
- How digitally competent are you?
Now familiarize yourself with the DigCompEdu- framework (link to word DigCompEdu -framework https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/digcompedu) to broaden your horizon before moving on. Then continue the analysis and make notes that will support you doing a SWOT analysis on your current state.
ANALYZING DIGITAL STRATEGY
- Do you have a digital strategy in your context, institutionally and/or in your department?
- How does your digital strategy align with the mission and in your context?
- Are you following the digital strategy?
- Are you satisfied with what you are doing when it comes to digitalization?
- What is your final destination, and how quickly would you like to reach it?
- What technologies and devices can you integrate with the current infrastructure in your context?
DOCUMENTATION
- Do we have a learning and development policy (see example)?
- How do we account for digital competences during the recruitment processes?
- Do we account for all of the digital competences in CPD (Career and Professional Development) processes and in documentation for development meetings?
- Have we gathered the documentation on institutional level to showcase our digital competence? What does our digital competence portfolio look like?
NETWORKS SUPPORTING DIGITAL COMPETENCE
- What are your networks? Do you need to widen them?
- Who are the main drivers and stakeholders? Who has leverage? Can you use them to create impact?
- Who can you benchmark?
- How are you visible digitally and is your profile positive?
SUPPORT AND FUNDING
- What type of support and funding do you have? Are they sufficient?
- Have you allocated funding from your annual budget for developing digital platforms and competence?
- Who can you ask for support within our organization?
- What funding is available to support a digital literacy strategy and a learning and development plan?
- How can you apply for more money? Who can you encourage to apply for funding?
TEACHER SKILLS
- Do your teachers have solid digital competence skills? Where are they now? Where do they want to be based on their personal development goals (see CPD)?
- What diagnostic tools can you use to assess their digital literacy?
- How can you motivate, scaffold and incentivise the teachers in your context?
- Is digital literacy documented and taken into account in the recruitment process and in the development discussions?
STUDENT SKILLS
- Have you listened to what students have to say?
- How is students digital literacy supported?
- How do teachers embed digital literacy to facilitate student development of digital competence to empower, faciliate, and promote self-regulated learning?
- What steps do we take to support accessibility, equality, and ethics?
Now move on to STEP 2