This Monday, 24 January, during International Education Day, the seven partners of the Erasmus DESTINE project met to celebrate the day that marks the starting point of an innovative proposal that aspires to become a benchmark for inclusive, diverse and tolerant online education.
The covid-19 pandemic has brought about a paradigm shift in traditional education. The digitization of the education system requires specialized knowledge on the part of teachers and other relevant staff.
The Erasmus project DESTINE (DivErSity and Tolerance IN E-Environment) was created with the aim of promoting online Professional Education that guarantees support for diversity, inclusion and tolerance, providing the necessary tools so that all professionals and students can adapt to the e-learning methodology. DESTINE also targets Professional Training students, and in particular learners with fewer opportunities, who need a learning environment that is tolerant of diversity.
The project will respond to the following needs
– To introduce ways of efficiently adapting traditional classrooms to the new digital learning environment, focusing mainly on safeguarding the values of diversity and tolerance.
– Train Professional teachers/trainers/educators to acquire the skills and competences to develop innovative educational activities and methods that promote diversity and tolerance in the virtual classroom environment.
– Promote the attractiveness of Professional Training by fostering the innovative transformation of online teaching and distance learning.
– To provide education that embraces diversity and tolerance and is inclusive for all.
Transnational collaboration project
With the duration of two years, this project is supported by transnational collaboration between entities from different European countries. OSENGO (France), as project coordinator, is joined by SIMPLEXIS and AKMI (Greece), BK Consult GbR (Germany), the FINNOVA Foundation (Spain), Future in Perspective Limited – FIPL (Ireland) and Centrul Pentru (Romania).
In the course of the project, project outcomes, multiplier events and a teaching, learning and training activity will be designed and implemented.
– An online learning platform will be created containing material focusing on tolerance and diversity methods applied in traditional classrooms and how this material could be transferred to the online classroom environment.
– Innovative activities, tools and educational methods for diverse and tolerant learning in the e-classroom environment will be created in the form of Open Educational Resources (OER). The OER will be presented and shared with teachers/trainers/educators through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
– A toolkit containing all the material produced regarding methods and techniques for tolerance of diversity in the virtual classroom. The toolkit will be uploaded on the E-Learning Platform and will be freely accessible to teachers, trainers and mentors as well as interested learners.
– A new environment for cooperation between training institutions will be developed, creating a widely available online repository of OER available to their members and their trainers/teachers/educators. This increases the potential for sustainability, creating added value for the Professional Training system at the EU level.
The launch of the project coincides with the European Year of Youth, through which the European Commission recognizes the courage and resilience of young people, one of the groups most affected by the pandemic. DESTINE aims to provide quality education free of discrimination to increase opportunities for these young people.