The digitalisation of education has gone through a massive increase during the Covid-19 pandemic, one that showed the unpreparedness of different actors (school leaders, teachers, parents, students themselves, etc.) in meeting the challenges associated with this development.

From learning management systems and communication software to teacher dashboards and adaptive learning technologies, more schools have adopted the use of digital solutions. These digital educational tools and resources collect various trace data and learning data that could be harnessed for the benefit of education. Several dimensions need reflection, each dimension bringing its own implications and questions. The following are some examples:

 

Pedagogical use

How can student data be used and interpreted to make meaningful decisions about learning? What are the competences needed by teachers to use student learning data purposefully?

Trust and safety

Which actions are needed to keep data safe against security breaches? What is the impact of data ownership on schools depending on who owns and/or processes data?

Equity and inclusion

How to ensure equal access to and equitable use of digital educational tools that harness data, such as teacher/student dashboards and adaptive learning? Students benefit from these tools and resources equally, regardless of socioeconomic background and proficiency level?

Data exchange and comparisons

How to use these data to monitor developments at school, local/regional, and country levels? How to facilitate data analysis and exchange between platforms collecting data at these different levels?

Ethical use

What rules should govern the use of artificial intelligence in schools? What regulations are needed in the exploitation of school data by digital tool providers and third parties? Should parents be able to see everything a student has done online?

These are the sort of questions, which the Agile EDU project is addressing to identify the key success factors for supporting the implementation of inclusive and high-quality digital education as envisioned by the EC Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027.

Agile EDU is a 3-year project that started in January 2023. The project is coordinated by European Schoolnet and includes a mix of partners representing public authorities, local authorities, universities, and civil society: University College Copenhagen (Denmark), University of Oslo (Norway), Portuguese Ministry of Education (Portugal), Foundation Empieza por Educar (Spain), and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (Sweden). The French and Slovenian Ministries of Education are associated partners.

Agile EDU investigates the questions above in two strands, combining (1) evidence from research on digital education, assessment and governance through case studies and learning stories; with (2) evidence from policy and practice through a structured dialogue involving the main stakeholders concerned.

The structured dialogue is realised through events called Dialogue Labs that brings together teachers, policy makers, education leaders, students, parents, and EdTech suppliers to discuss the purposeful and ethical use of data in learning and assessment and share views on how to establish high quality and inclusive digital education, and on its extent and desirability.

Planned outputs include (1) learning stories showcasing good practices from the perspective of practitioners; (2) more detailed case studies exploring the evolution of digital education practices and lessons learned by actors in digital education; (3) a teacher professional development resource that includes the content necessary to run a MOOC, and the run of the MOOC; and (4) a final report providing guidelines and recommendations for education stakeholders.

If you would like to have more information on the Agile EDU project, or if you know an innovative use of data for learning and assessment (for instance through an application or a software), we would love to hear from you! You can contact Mr Alex Kirchberger, Agile EDU's Project Manager, at alex.kirchberger@eun.org.

What makes the project "agile"?

The name of the project is inspired by the Agile Manifesto. The project does not develop software but tries to apply the manifesto to the development of case studies, recommendations and other outputs. The project will achieve this by developing its outputs through many iterations of validation events that involve the collaboration of project partners and all the stakeholders of the digital education ecosystem. The project will develop case studies, learning stories, recommendations and teacher professional development resources at the early stages, which will enable experts and project partners to review them in multiple rounds of Dialogue Labs and expert validation workshops. Thanks to this iterative process, the project outputs will be continuously changed and refined, and validated based on both research evidence and the perspective of practitioners.

 

Partners

European Schoolnet

European Schoolnet (EUN) coordinates the Agile EDU project partners. EUN is a consortium of 33 Ministries of Education created in 1997 to bring about innovation in teaching and learning to Ministries of Education, schools, teachers and researchers. EUN is coordinator of the eTwinning Central Support Service with more than 1 000 000 registered teachers in the eTwinning community. EUN brings to the partnership not only its experience in European cooperation, innovative pilot project management but also in comparative analysisnotably: • Project management: leading large-scale trans-national projects in ICT and European co-operation • Teacher CPD: running a European MOOC platform for teachers and developing and delivering around 10 MOOCs each year, offering numerous webinars, short courses, workshops, etc. for teachers in the context of European projects and the professional development offer of eTwinning and the European School Education Platform. • Research: managing the Survey of Schools: ICT in Education for the Commission, research projects (Creative Classroom Lab, KeyCoNet), an annual survey of MoEs, advisory boards • Technical development: developing, managing and hosting websites, a MOOC platform, online questionnaires, systems and tools used by teachers and teacher trainers, including the eTwinning platform. • Field trials: managing pilots with schools and teachers, e.g. iTEC (2,500 classrooms), INSAFE, SCIENTIX.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Empieza por Educar (EXE)

Empieza por Educar (EXE) works with multiple stakeholders of education in Spain and is a partner of the "locally-rooted, globally informed" Teach for All network aiming at sharing solutions to accelerate impact, innovate in diverse contexts and ensuring all children fulfil their potential. EXE works with communities, provides support and development, shares and adapts solutions. They have long standing experience in tackling the complex challenges faced by children in disadvantaged communities, and address the problem in all its complexity, including in digital learning.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

University College Copenhagen/KP

University College Copenhagen (KP) is one of Denmark's main providers of teacher education, social, nursing and social work education. More than 20,000 students are currently enrolled at KP, and around 2000 staff members are working at KP. KP provides Bachelor programmes, post-graduate diploma studies and professional development courses. KP adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to learning, uses modern technology in the classroom, and works specifically with research-based knowledge that reflects on and interacts with practice. The Department of Didactics and Digitalisation and the Department of Teacher Education (both part of the Faculty of Teacher Education) bring their long experience in digital innovative teaching practice and the use of digital tests and data for adaptative tests, introduced in Denmark since several years and pointing to interesting issues for the present project (e.g., the impact of adaptive test on students' -decreased feeling of- self-efficacy during the test).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

University of Oslo

The Department of Education of the University of Oslo has a long track record in all aspects of digital education research. Only to mention a few research activities directly relevant for Agile Edu, the Department is involved in: the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), the international study that maps students' digital skills conducted for the first time in 2013 and to be conducted again in 2023; runs the Living and Learning in the Digital Age (LiDA) multidisciplinary research group that explores children and young people's learning, use of technology and socialization in formal and informal learning contexts. The department is also involved in the national digitalisation strategy, highlighting learning analytics, and in particular in the Activity Data for assessment and adaptation (AVT).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

SALAR

The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) is an employers' organisation and an organisation that represents and advocates local government in Sweden. There are 290 municipalities in Sweden, self-governed by local authorities, responsible for different sectors and activities, i.e., the school sector. The fulfilment of the national action plan for the digitalisation of schools in Sweden (2019-2022), therefore, is, to a large extent dependent on the local authorities. All of Sweden's municipalities, county councils and regions are members of SALAR, which is a member of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) and the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). SALAR represents the local authorities in the continuous cooperation with the Swedish Government Offices and the Swedish National Agency for Education. In an agreement (2018-2019) between SALAR and the Swedish Government, SALAR (in cooperation with the local authorities in Sweden and the school sector overall) developed the Swedish National Action plan (2019-2022) for digitalisation in the school sector. The national action plan consists of different suggested activities for both the government and the local authorities to implement. One of these activities specifically focuses on digitally processed data for learning and monitoring. The Agile Edu project hence is linked to an already existing national initiative and goal within the national action plan for Sweden.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Directorate-General for Education – Ministry of Education, Portugal (DGE)

DGE is the Directorate-General for Education (Direção-Geral da Educação) of the Portuguese Ministry of Education. DGE's specific purpose is to make sure that national policies are implemented regarding the pedagogical and didactic components of pre-primary, primary, lower and upper secondary education, as well as the provision of education for children not attending school.

DGE oversees designing, developing and evaluating initiatives and projects related to the use of digital tools and resources in education. It fosters the effective use of computers and the Internet by all educational agents. The Educational Resources and Technologies Team (ERTE) works within the Directorate-General for Education of the Portuguese Ministry of Education. It's a multidisciplinary team whose mission aims at supporting schools on the use of ICT at a national and/or regional level and the participation in national and European projects. This team is also responsible for the dissemination of good practices on the use of ICT.

The team is based in Lisbon and has twelve regional Competence Centres, covering all the country, based in in-service Teachers Training Centres, polytechnic institutes and/or universities. Each centre supports the schools of its geographical area, or elsewhere, whenever the projects and activities are directly related with the subjects of expertise of the Centre of Competence.

The Educational Resources and Technologies Team is also responsible for the national open educational digital resources repository and an educational blogs catalogue.

 

Associated partners

Ministry of National Education and Youth of France

As an associated partner, the Ministry of National Education and Youth of France brings a centralized education system perspective in contrast with Denmark. It brings experience from the project "Partnership for innovation and Artificial Intelligence (P2IA)" developing and testing the writing and spelling AI tutor tool Kaligo. The project is a partnership between research institutions and EdTech providers. France also has experience with a diverse range of AI tools and adaptive learning technologies such as Navi, Adaptiv'Math, Lalilo, and Mathia and teacher/student dashboards e.g., Smart Enseigno. France also has good examples of digitisation projects in rural schools, which can bring a valuable perspective on implications for digital education governance and infrastructure.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Ministry of Education of Slovenia

Slovenia has their own digital education action plan that also aims to address data use related issues. In 2021, the Ministry of Education established a new division specifically dedicated to digital education, whose mission includes establishing collaboration with all stakeholders (e.g., NGOs, industry, experts) as part of a national digital coalition. The Ministry also has a dedicated expert working group and website for computational thinking, offering practice examples. Taken together, the interests of Slovenia make them an important associated partner that can benefit from the project and make important contributions to it.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Swedish National Agency for Education

The National Agency for Education is the central administrative authority for the public school system, publicly organised preschooling, school-age childcare and for adult education. The Swedish National Agency for Education is tasked with ensuring that all children and students have access to the same high-quality standard of education and activities in secure environments. Our mission is to create the best conditions for the children's development and learning and to help improve the students' learning outcomes.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Finnish National Agency for Education

The Finnish National Agency for Education is a national development agency working under the Ministry of Education and Culture. The Agency is responsible for early childhood education and care, pre-primary, basic, general and vocational upper secondary education as well as for adult education and training. More information about our organisation and our authoritative, developmental and other tasks is available on our websites.