HE Teachers and Institutions and Instructional Technology (HIIT)

The recent sudden shift to online and distance learning requires a different approach to instruction (especially when it comes to practice or lab-based courses). While it is important to enable HE teachers to develop digital competences; this is not sufficient. HE STEM teachers must change their perspective to ensure that learners are not left behind. HE teachers are predominantly research focused and specialists in their specific domain. They are currently ill equipped with the skills, competencies and capacity required to absorb the principles of good educational design needed to create bespoke materials in short time frames. HE teachers need wider support to help them to be ready to embrace the technologies to their full potential. While these needs already exist, they have become more acute due to the COVID pandemic, which has rapidly accelerated the transfer to on-line learning.

HIIT aims to equip HE STEM teachers with the ability to integrate instructional technology into their courses by teaching them how to design, develop, use, manage, and evaluate the process of learning mediated by technology applications. More specifically, HIIT aims to equip he stem teachers with: - the self-efficacy, competencies and skills needed to understand the principles and constructs of instructional technology and rapidly leverage these to mitigate the impact of closure and safeguard the inclusive nature of learning opportunities. - the ability to integrate instructional technology into their courses by teaching them how to design, develop, use, manage, and evaluate the process of learning mediated by technology applications. - knowledge on how instructional technology can increase the inclusiveness of students with learning barriers.

- Conducted desk research to ensure that we synthesised and digest the state of the art in the domain. This comprised analysing including 40 papers/journal/books on Instructional Technology (IT); - Conducted focus groups with 41 third level teachers to identify and classify real user needs; - Collected further feedback, insights and needs from 143 third level teachers via a survey; - Generated a curriculum/syllabus based on good practice and specifically designed to meet the needs of he stem teachers; - Created an ontology to ease navigation and help map tools to requirements; - Mapped the requirements for the online repository (comprising digital tools, good practice examples…) and e-learning space; - Development of the e-learning space to allow teachers to integrate IT into their courses and enable HE STEM teachers to rapidly pivot to teaching online - Curated and described 45 tools were added to the e-learning space, with easy access by using filters - Three modules with 12 learning units (We started with 15, but during the review process and feedback, a few slides got unified) - Internal test of the platform with the teachers within the partners - Pilot test involving outside teachers - Pilot test using teachers and students - Analysis of the results and transformation into recommendations - Final version of material and e-learning space was generated - Elaborated an exploitation strategy and impact evaluation report - Translation of the material in all local languages - Generated reports on all the results Regarding project management activities, we created a team charter, project plans, articulated rules of engagement in project and quality management manuals, facilitated one face to face and 6 online meetings. We generated 18+ posts on facebook /Twitter /LinkedIn. We also created a Dissemination strategy and a quality evaluation report. Created 4 newsletter and disseminated the project.

HIIT developed an e-learning space providing HE STEM teachers with the theoretical material and tools to improve their self-efficacy, competencies and skills to understand and use the principles of instructional technology, aligned with their course's pedagogical objective and ensuring student motivation, skills attainment and assessment in the most adequate and efficient way, safeguarding the inclusive nature of learning opportunities. The e-learning space hosts 12 learning materials and 45 tools descriptions, accessible by filters based on the scenario of the teacher, to support STEM teachers with how and when to use and supplementary material. The material is available online on HIIT website: https://www.hiitproject.eu/ . HIIT also produced: - a pedagogical curriculum approach. PR1 HIIT Instructional Technology (IT) Curriculum & Syllabus. - an assessment method. PR2 HIIT IT Learning Content & Assessment Method. - a set of 4 recommendations reports. PR4 Recommendations showing HEI, HE STEM teachers and stakeholders how to use and uptake the PRs in a coherent way. - an exploitation strategy and impact evaluation report. - and a broad dissemination of project results. Through a collaboration between HEIs and teachers, HIIT embeds a knowledge sharing and mutual learning process, building synergies and ensuring the quality, inclusiveness and adequateness of the proposed outcomes.