A SELFIE of digital education in the SEET region
Digital and online learning used to be considered forward-looking, innovative, special. Not anymore. In just the first months of 2020, COVID-19 wiped away their aura of exclusivity and made them the new status quo – overnight.
The European Training Foundation has been supporting partner countries through the COVID-19 lockdown, both through its own projects and in cooperation with other partners. As part of this response, the ETF organised a series of three online events discussing how countries in the SEET region have approached digital distance learning.
The self reflection tool SELFIE has been used in the region to assess the digital readiness of schools and education systems. The tool has been developed by the European Commission in partnership with the European Training Foundation (ETF), the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) and UNESCO's Institute for Information Technologies in Education, and it is undergoing continuous updating. Piloted in 2017 with 67,000 users in 650 schools across 14 countries, among which Georgia, Serbia and Russia, SELFIE has been used, to date, by 671,329 people in 7,383 schools across 57 countries – and counting. Of these, 29% of the schools and 37% of all users are from SEET countries, according to JRC data.
The SEET region has been one of the early adopters of SELFIE, with pilots and in some cases scale-ups running in Turkey (starting March 2019), Montenegro, The Republic of North Macedonia, Kosovo* (starting May 2019) and Albania (starting November 2019).
The three online events run by the ETF consisted in a status update from the SEET countries regarding their experience with SELFIE, an overview of regional cooperation actions and opportunities, and a glimpse into the future of SELFIE, from the point of view of its patron institutions.
“There has been a massive and unprecedented shift that has turned all teaching into emergency remote teaching, and put digital learning at the centre of education”, said Deirdre Hodson, DG EAC, in the first of the three online meetings.
Throughout the three events, participants were in agreement that countries with prior experience in digital learning at system level had an advantage going into the COVID-19 crisis. But all partner countries taking part in SELFIE also agreed that the results of the survey are helping them create better suited policies and better quality assurance, even though the school lockdowns. For an even clearer understanding of the current status, however, and for more sustainable follow-ups, all countries expressed an interest in accessing the anonymised aggregated data from SELFIE.
“Community”, “networks” and “regional cooperation” were words used in all three meetings. The need for more support for both teachers and students when taking the SELFIE survey, and for more sharing of expertise were re-stated by countries as well as regional organisations, such as the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and Education Reform Initiative of South Eastern Europe (ERI SEE).
“Our next job at the ETF and with the support of the JRC and the European Commission is to address these needs highlighted by the SELFIE countries. It is important to use this momentum and take on a multi-country perspective: we can be much more effective in facing these big challenges if we have regional cooperation”, said Alessandro Brolpito, ETF, in the third meeting.
In spite of the current fragmentation of policies addressing digital skills in the Western Balkans, as highlighted by the RCC, new initiatives are taking the form of regional multi-stakeholder working groups, which involve policy makers, the private sector, academia and international organisations.
At the Commission level, a commitment for digital skills had already been made before the pandemic started. It now got reinforced when the Digital action plan was included into the greater scheme of the Recovery plan for Europe – a financial instrument of roughly €1 billion for 2021 – 2027, as confirmed by Georgi Dimitrov, DG EAC during the third event.
“SELFIE never stops, and if we didn’t have SELFIE, we’d want to build it now”, stated Deirdre Hodson.
Hodson confirmed that new questions (among which several regarding blended learning) as well as new resources are being added and are expected to be released in August 2020. A new sister project for teachers is also being developed.
Other news included the upcoming SELFIE Forum, planned for March 2021, announced by Nikoleta Giannoutsou, JRC, and the development of SELFIE for Work-Based Learning, announced by Ralph Hippe, JRC.
“We can consider pre-conditions, like infrastructure, availability of devices, security of environments. We can consider the capacity of schools and teachers to use digital technologies for the best learning. But what I find most relevant is how we can bring learning to citizens, using digital technologies”, Anastasia Fetsi concluded in the final meeting. “Digital technologies are making it easier for teachers to step into new roles as facilitators of (peer) learning. And the role of teachers to really understand and use these tools for the learning process is an essential one.”
(*) This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence
Cover photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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