Digital Wellbeing Educators:A compendium of best practices

Royo, Carme and Sicilia, Miguel Angel and Sime, Julie-Ann and Themelis, Chryssa (2019) Digital Wellbeing Educators:A compendium of best practices. In: 51st EUCEN Conference University Lifelong Learning to Live a Better Life, 2019-06-052019-06-07, Universidade de Aveiro.

Abstract

We live in a highly digitally connected Europe where people of all ages use the internet to connect, communicate, explore and learn through digital media, however a recent JISC study reported that educators in Higher Education institutions are concerned about the wellbeing of their students in digital settings. In addition, the Opening Up education report shows that 70% educators in the EU understand the importance of digital literacy but only 20-25% students are taught by digitally confident educators. Improving the digital literacy of educators is required particularly in the area of digital wellbeing. Higher Education institutions are becoming increasingly aware of the consequences of digital overload on mental health of individual students, the societal impacts on relationships such as cyberbullying, technical issues such as cybersecurity and the addictive design of technology, fake news and the controversies surrounding radicalisation and challenges to democracy. The Digital Wellbeing Educators Project (funded by ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union) aims to increase the capacity of educators in Higher Education institutions to integrate digital education to promote the wellbeing of their students. The first step towards this has been to publish a Compendium of good practices that collects a number of materials showing how the challenges of the digital era are addressed by others so teachers are inspired and find solutions that can be transferred to their students. During the presentation we want to show the main points of this compendium and present the next steps that the project has prepared, which includes the development of an app and teacher’s digital pedagogy toolkit to support educators in developing their own digital competences and making their teaching more digital.