Gathering (civil society) initiatives to
develop digital skills
A contribution by the HEIDI project
Katerina Zourou, Ph.D., Web2Learn, Greece.
DigComp Community of Practice Consultation, May 14, 2022
Digital action at Higher Education Institutions as a catalyst
for social change in the COVID-19 crisis (HEIDI project)

Several informal learning situations we analyze from a digital skills
perspective:
● social hackathons (UK)
● integration of migrant/refugee populations (Cyprus)
● voluntary sector organisations partnered with university students (UK)
● educational hackathons (DigiEduHack -pan European)
● environmental NGOs (Malta)
● maker communities (Paris)
=> a fruitful conversation between university students & staff and the
outside world eager to commit to digital action for a social purpose.
Context

How feasible is to depict and assess digital skills across several informal
situations/ third sector contexts?
What kind of methodological tools for digital skills identification &
assessment to use across various contexts/countries/understandings of
“digital skills”?
Questions

Several
frameworks
dealing with
digital skills
potentially
developed in
informal digital
action
Zourou, K., Oikonomou, S., (2022).
O4A4: Methodology, Survey on digital
skills assessment. HEIDI consortium.
https://heidiproject.eu/

Depicting and analyzing digital skills : method
Zourou, K., Oikonomou, S., (2022). O4A4: Methodology, Survey on digital skills assessment. HEIDI consortium.
Digital Competence Framework for Citizens 2.2
Competence areas Digital Competences
Communication and
collaboration
2.3 Engaging in citizenship through digital technologies
2.4 Collaborating through digital technologies
Digital content creation 3.1 Developing digital content
3.2 Integrating and re-elaborating digital content
3.4 Programming
Problem solving 5.2 Identifying needs and technological responses
5.3 Creatively using digital technologies
5.4 Identifying digital competence gaps
● Choice of DigComp 2.2 as unique, common methodological tool across contexts
● across all competence areas, of DigComp 2.2, Identification of those more *likely* to occur
in digital actions

Next steps
Edulearn 2022 paper
● Release of a common survey on digital skills across the
several civil society contexts : September-November
2022
○ assessment method: declarative knowledge from
participants
● conducting the research
● publication of evidence-based research: early 2023
Current status
● Mapping of digital competence frameworks: Edulearn
2022 paper out.
● Refining the methodology
Zourou, K., Oikonomou, S. 2022, Framing digital skills acquired in social participation and civic
engagement actions inside and outside universities. Proceedings of the 14th annual International
Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies. doi to be issued in July 2022

https://heidiproject.eu/
https://web2learn.eu/ @web2learn_eu
katerinazourou@gmail.com
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are the sole responsibility of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.
Thank you for listening!
With the support of the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union under Grant
Agreement no. 2020-1-UK01-KA226-HE-094667.