University professors involved in a digital skills development program

Pestalozzi-EIC

On November 18, over 30 university professors, members of the implementation teams of the project Promotion and development of intercultural education (EIC) in the initial training of teachers (phase II), participated in an online training for the development of digital skills, facilitated by the trainer with advanced experience in the field, Mr. Valeriu GORINCIOI.

The topics on the training agenda included topics such as distance learning and hybrid training, the use and creation of open educational resources, but also the updating/acquisition of online teaching-learning-assessment tools. The trainees were placed in different learning situations, in which they analyzed the advantages, trends, problems of virtual training, they had the posibility to identify various opportunities to make it more efficient. We were glad to see qualitative contributions from colleagues and effective debates, learning from each other, but also reflecting on the quality of the educational process in these conditions and the results obtained.

Finally, through assessment tools, we operatively collected the opinions of colleagues and found that they were satisfied with the investment for their self improvement, emphasizing that they learned new things, clarified some issues, are gaining more confidence in managing remote teaching and learning. The performance of the trainer was also highly appreciated. Obviously, several contextual problems related to the pandemic situation were identified: chronic overwork of teachers, superficial capitalization of some platforms and tools, limited possibilities of interaction with many students, poor quality of results, etc.

However, we hope that the openness and increased motivation to involve colleagues from higher education institutions in the project will help us overcome the multiple challenges and critical conditions of activity, and that the project supported by the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation in Switzerland will achieve the objectives proposed for the 7 partner institutions.