CIVIS guidelines to create digitally enhanced courses (2024)

“Hybrid classes”, “video conferencing”, “gamification”, “collaborative tools”. The list of terms related to digitization that have entered the everyday language of teachers is almost endless. To a greater or lesser extent, almost all of them use learning management systems to share material, communicate with their students and evaluate their performance. Today those are familiar words to everyone, but it was not so long ago. The sudden need to continue courses remotely during the pandemic accelerated a process that would have occurred more gradually. This may have had a positive aspect: in only two years, almost all teachers, even those who would have been more reluctant to do so, became capable of using digital tools for educational purposes. But it certainly had a negative one: the changes were made in such an accelerated manner that has barely allowed us to take enough distance, as a society, to decide what the digitization of education is, or should be.

Despite all the questions about the impact that digitization may have on teaching and learning, there is one thing that nevertheless seems undeniable: this process does not have to do (or not essentially) with the use of gadgets that allow us to reproduce the dynamics of the on-site class, but with the very social and cultural impact that digital technology has on our lives. Three examples may serve to illustrate the idea.

• First, the forms of social interaction, which, as a result of the popularization of the use of smartphones and internet connectivity, are increasingly spontaneous, global and multimedia.
• Second, the way of acquiring and processing information, which, following the very logic of the internet, is more fragmented and visual today than it was before.
• Third, the fact that people are no longer mere consumers, but also producers of information to be shared with their social networks.

 This change of habits, which particularly concerns the young population, is not disconnected from the learning spaces. The development of new forms of communication, the globalization of cultural referents and the overwhelming amount of information to which students are exposed, only to mention some of them, have an inevitable impact on the classroom ecosystem. In order to reduce risks and enhance potential learning benefits, it is necessary to integrate this reflection into the design of the courses themselves, as it can raise essential pedagogical questions:

• Should the multiplication of information sources, many of which are not reliable, change the role of the teacher in the classroom?
• Should the irruption of artificial intelligence change the way in which student performance is assessed?
• Can the possibility to communicate beyond geographical borders be used with a positive learning impact?
• How can a teacher take advantage of the learners’ ability to produce and share content in social networks?
• And how does all this change the traditional role of the classroom itself, traditionally understood as the space where learning occurs?

This does not mean that technology should be introduced into the classroom in an uncritical manner. The fact that society is progressively moving towards a digital culture does not imply that the use of digital resources has a positive impact on student learning. The risks that digitalization entails in terms of data protection, reliability of information, loss of student attention and even sustainability are well known. However, it seems clear that the classroom space should not remain oblivious to what is certainly a major cultural shift. The European universities alliances represent a unique opportunity to collectively reflect on what this process should involve. On the one hand, because of their international composition, which ensures that experts from different national realities and backgrounds consider not only pedagogical factors, but also social, technical and political ones. On the other hand, because these alliances also work as platforms for experimentation that allow for testing formats, approaches and tools that explore how to use digital elements in an effective way.

CIVIS is a good example of this. One of the main initial objectives of the alliance was to develop an educational offer that would promote physical mobility among students, academics and staff. However, COVID-19 imposed a reality that obliged the academics, as well as the pedagogical support teams, to adapt courses that had been designed for a face-to-face format.

This is the context in which the CIVIS Moodle was launched, in order to facilitate the digital component of the alliance's courses and programmes (Martín & Touzot, 2022). Four years later, and with more than 300 educational activities behind, we want to share what we have learned along the way. This document provides guidelines that, hopefully, will allow CIVIS academics to develop courses and programs in which digital is used for the benefit of the student.

1. The first section, entitled "Pillars of digitally enhanced teaching", describes the particularities of digital and hybrid formats with respect to face-to-face teaching, about the new roles of teachers and students focusing the pillars of digitally-enhanced learning.
2. The second section, "Creating online courses: an instructional design approach" focuses on the essential aspect of designing a course in which digital resources are at the service of the learning objectives. To this end, a short guideline is provided to ensure the coherence of the course from needs analysis to evaluation.
3. The third section, "The co-creation of digital enhanced courses" revolves around the collaborative aspect of designing and implementing a course. It should be remembered that any educational activity organized in CIVIS must be coordinated by at least three universities, which means academics from at least three different countries and, very often, different disciplines. In this section we share some conclusions of this experience during the last few years.
4. The fourth, "CIVIS Moodle: instructions for a digitally enhanced course" integrates all the previous reflections and provides some indications on how to use the platform at the service of the student learning.
5. Finally, the section called "CIVIS support to strengthen the digital component", presents the CIVIS roles and bodies that could support academics who wish to design and implement digitally enhanced educational activities.

This report by Anisoara Dumitrache and Enrique Martín Santamaría presents CIVIS'guidelines for digitally enhanced courses.