Over the past two years, the Learning Planet Institute (representing Université Paris Cité) has been part of a consortium in an Erasmus+ project entitled HEIDIDigital Actions at HEIs as a catalyst for social change in the COVID-19 crisis. The project came to an end this spring, and this article summarizes its achievements and main results.
It all began - as the project name suggests - in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the Learning Planet Institute and its partners wanted to assess how higher education institutions were engaging with and supporting communities in their response to local challenges, and to build the skills of students and staff to enable and lead “digital actions” (citizen science, hackathons and makeathons) with the community.
Together with its’University College London (United Kingdom), the’University of Malta (Malta), from Citizens in Power (Cyprus) and Web2Learn (Greece), the Institute's research team has been working to help external and internal groups use digital skills and services to solve problems important to local communities. The HEIDI project uses the definition of digital skills provided by the European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens, where “digital skills include the ability to use knowledge and know-how to perform tasks and solve problems.”(DigComp 2.0, 2016).
In particular, the project explored digital skills in the context of change. In this case, change is defined as organizational or societal change that occurs over time, transforms cultural and social institutions, makes a positive difference and has profound, long-term consequences. In the context of higher education, it includes the following elements: social entrepreneurship, social innovation, civic engagement and social justice. The HEIDI project was interested in any form and process of social change that can result from bottom-up, inclusive participatory processes aimed at solving social problems.
The Learning Planet Institute research team worked specifically on the following three stages of the project:
- Roundtables to understand the needs and challenges of staff and students as they engage in digital action
- Support for the design and implementation of digital actions within the institute and/or in collaboration with NGOs or community groups
- A second series of round tables to determine the impact of our interventions
Through HEIDI, the Learning Planet Institute supported its own ongoing activities that it was already implementing - for example the SDG Summer University or the hackathon organized in collaboration with CorrelAid, initiatives led by current and former students in programs hosted at the Institute (including the AIRE Master, FIRE Doctoral School programs at Université Paris Cité), and the SDG School organized in Senegal by HOME Association (co-founded by students following educational programs at the Institute). We also organized and hosted a multiplier event and a workshop that welcomed numerous collaborators and stakeholders interested in HEIDI (see more details here).
More information on the HEIDI project can be found at this short video prepared by UCL partners and/or in collaboration with subscribe to the HEIDI project newsletter (the final project report will be shared on the website and via the newsletter in summer 2023).
The Planet Learning Institute would like to thank all those who contributed to the HEIDI events and collaborated with the Institute on this project!
HEIDI partners: University College London (United Kingdom), University of Malta (Malta), Citizens in Power (Cyprus) and Web2Learn (Greece)
Find out more about the HEIDI project: https://heidiproject.eu/
