AULA VIRTUAL RURAL EUROPEA

Our focus has been on rural education. Rural education faces significant challenges: - Geographic isolation of the centres. - Students: small numbers, grouped by zones, multi-grade classrooms (a very specific aspect of rural education) which makes it difficult to propose certain tasks and receive public resources. - Facilities: adapted in community spaces. - Materials: limited/shared among relatively nearby rural units. - Didactic elements: scarcity of curricular material and low innovation rate in classrooms. - Teachers: high turnover (difficult to retain them), limited continuous training. The complete absence of teachers in certain subjects can be experienced, resulting in curricular gaps and deficiencies. Currently, rural teachers and students are quite distant from the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu 2017), the European Digital Education Action Plan 21-27, and, particularly for students, the Competences and Skills for the 21st Century. We have created a technological collaborative learning environment that helps to align rural schools with the European educational agenda, and we have initiated a vibrant rural educational community which already includes 135 associated schools.

Our project offers an innovative approach to addressing educational deficiencies in rural areas: a collaborative virtual educational space where rural schools can support each other, addressing shortages of teachers, content, and activities in an immediate and dynamic manner. We aimed to create a technological environment populated initially by schools and subsequently by relevant entities in the educational and rural development sectors. The objective is to provide rural schools with immediate connectivity, resources, and improved quality of education. Indirectly, this will benefit public and private entities involved in rural development by supporting their educational initiatives, as they participate in the environment and provide content and solutions promptly to the schools. It would also serve as a unique space for research, as the movement of supply and demand for educational resources offers researchers both qualitative and quantitative insights into the situation in each participating region. The idea is scalable to any educational level; in this project, we are focusing on primary education, but it is available for any educational level.

We implemented the following activities: - An inventory of best practices based on a systematic review of the scientific literature, research projects, and training programs of the European Commission. - Designing of logical and functional framework of the Collaborative Rural Learning Space with three working areas: 1. Collaborative exchange area for the development of educational projects. 2. Area for delivering online multi-grade classes/workshops. 3. Professional development and resources area for rural teachers. - Developing technological and functional development of the product and testing - Piloting an educational project among the associated schools, involving multi-grade primary school students learning English. The activity was collaborative, cross-curricular, and used materials provided by the schools. - Initial, intermediate, and final dissemination actions aimed at the rural system - Launching a virtual community around the space. - Space integration into the rural educational fabric and to hold multiplier events to present the results, raise awareness of the virtual space, and attract more members to the created community. Currently, we have 135 associated members.

We have created a European rural educational virtual space for collaborative learning for rural schools (initially targeting primary education), comprising: a) An area for exchanging offers and demands for collaborative educational projects. b) A section for delivering structured real-time workshops/classes tailored for multi-grade classrooms. c) A professional development area and resources for rural teachers. We have trained 17 teachers, representing 5 schools and 4 institutions, in the use of the platform. We piloted an educational activity using the space with 67 students, 8 teachers from European schools, and 9 observers. We initiated a community around the created space with current and growing membership of 135 individuals (schools, entities, and professionals/entities in the educational and rural development sectors). The space is multilingual, and schools can freely agree on the language in which they will conduct their educational projects. The entire space is governed by European data privacy regulations, and only schools and official entities can register on the platform. The community is already active, and as of today, they have begun creating projects among themselves within the virtual space.