Te.A.M- Technology and Methodology

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transition. While teleworking and distance learning have become a reality for millions of people in the EU, the limitations of the current level of digital readiness have also often emerged. The pandemic has exacerbated the existing digital skills shortage, while new inequalities are emerging due to the fact that many people do not have the required level of digital skills or they work or study in contexts that are lagging behind in terms of digitization. Digitization has been and will, undoubtedly, be the central element in managing and overcoming the emergency, and the crisis will probably act as an accelerator of some training processes. Indeed, if online teaching has allowed millions of students in Italy and around the world to continue their studies, graduate and continue to do research, universities are, therefore, called upon to develop comprehensive strategies for the full integration of e-learning and online tools, involving the didactic mission and the entire academic body. It is, therefore, necessary to promote innovative and quality teaching and learning methods through new technologies and digital content, helping universities, teachers and learners to acquire digital learning skills and methods, supporting the development and availability of Open Educational Resources and mobilizing all interested parties (teachers, learners, families, economic and social partners) in order to change the role of digital technologies as catalysts of didactic, content and methodological innovation of higher education at European level. There are, in fact, diverse challenges for the European University 4.0 accelerated and induced by the epidemiological crisis from COVID-19 which involve the evolution, in a digital key, of the forms, methods and opportunities of teaching/learning and which call the teaching staff to personally evolve towards the role of adaptive teacher, able to govern hi-tech teaching tools and to introduce web-based teaching methods that look at the use of audiovisual and gaming as experimental grounds for introducing elements of flexibility, simplicity, accessibility, interactivity and personalization, which are key indicators of quality in open learning. In line with these evidences, the project strategy foresees the implementation of the following activities: the co-elaboration of a Learning programme, as a didactic framework for train-the-trainer to develop teachers' digital, methodological, planning and communicative-relational skills; the creation of Open Educational Resources that will support and expand over time the learning of the didactic contents foreseen in the learning program; the conception of methodological innovation manual; the holding of a mobility session to encourage a methodological, technical and didactic upskilling process on the methodological innovations proposed; experimentation by beneficiary teachers of the methodologies acquired.