OnlineHE – eLearning Practical Guide in Higher Education- Cyprus

Digital skills for distance higher education 

In recent years, the need to improve the quality of higher education programs and meet learners’ needs, overcoming spatial barriers, has boosted the uptake of digital technologies. (OECD, 2019; EU, 2019). With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of distance learning worldwide was deemed necessary. However, the transition to this new reality from one moment has not been smooth, in the absence of appropriate measures, training and early preparation.

Get to know the OnlineHE project

The OnlineHE project – "A Practical Toolkit for Integrating eLearning in Higher Education Curricula" – was an Erasmus+ KA2 project implemented between May 2021 and April 2023 by a consortium of seven partners (universities, organisations, research centres) from six European countries (Romania, Cyprus, Lithuania, Greece, Spain and Serbia), coordinated by Universitatea din Pitești (Romania). The project aimed to develop the pedagogical and digital skills of academic, teaching and support staff in higher education, to design and implement effective online and distance learning programs.

A toolkit for university staff was developed as part of the project. The toolkit included a Pedagogical Framework – Online Design and Teaching Methodology, an eLearning Preparedness Checklist, based on the European Commission’s SELFIE tool and a set of 30 good practices (online tools/software, past projects, EU initiatives, online archives/portals, training/courses/MOOCs and guidelines) that helped University staff to teach online.

In addition, a Training Programme for university staff was developed and offered to implement innovative interactive online courses and a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the same topic, freely accessible to everyone from the project’s e-learning platform. The interactive version of the Toolbox can also be found on the platform. The consortium also prepared a set of guides for policy makers with proposed measures for the effective implementation of distance programmes in higher education.