Making digital higher education more accessible and inclusive for all – The eTeachers project
According to a survey conducted by the European University Association in September 2020, 95% of Higher Education Institutions opted for distance learning during COVID pandemic. This has led to new challenges for higher education institutions that have had to re-adapt and re-design their teaching programmes to include digital tools and to increase their capacity to engage with students in order to offer valuable online content. However, the provision of high quality digital learning materials in an effective and engaging way will only happen if the whole digital education experience is inclusive, accessible and easy to understand and use for all students, regardless of their abilities, digital readiness and cultural background.
The eTeachers project is led by the Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) and will bring together representatives from European higher education institutions and the private sector to make digital higher education more inclusive and attractive to all. The main objective of the project is to develop an online toolkit that will support and empower higher education teachers in creating inclusive education materials, helping to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and contribute to the digital transformation of education.
“University teachers require easy to use online resources and sufficient support in order to be able to make online teaching environments more inclusive and accessible for all students” says Valentín Salinas-López, Project Manager of the eTeachers project for JKU. “This is what we aim to provide through the activities in the project”.
With funding from the ERASMUS+ programme, in addition to the online toolkit, the project team will also identify good practices on innovative methods and tools for the provision of inclusive digital education and develop a set of guidelines containing recommendations to promote inclusive digital education that can be implemented in other universities throughout Europe.
Project title: eTeACHERS - Electronic Toolkit for eAccessibility in Higher Education
Consortium: Johannes Kepler University Linz (Project leader), Funka, Masarykova University Teiresias MU, UNED
Project period: April 2021 – March 2023
Budget: 237.144 EUR