ACOMI, Nicoleta, ACOMI, Ovidiu, CHALATSIS, Xenofon, DALOSI, Anna, JARANOWSKA, Daria, SELDERS, Arndt, and XYLOURI, Ourania
Young people today inhabit a world that has been transformed by digital technologies, effortlessly enabling connectedness through social media and access to vast quantities of information. Making sense of this hyper-rich information and engaging effectively and responsibly poses a whole set of new challenges for educators as they seek to prepare young people as citizens, exercising their rights and participating effectively in the affairs of the community (COE, 2020). Teaching Digital citizenship is challenging. Nowadays, more than ever online education plays a decisive role in the future of humanity. The methods used for preparing the course materials certainly impact the learner engagement, the level of achievement as well as the lifelong impact of the developed skills. In order to propose educational tools adapted to youth needs, the authors consulted hundreds of references, conducted an online survey among European young people and interviews with youth workers. Creating an efficient and effective digital synchronous classroom requires online teachers to develop exceptional communication skills. Twenty-first-century teachers need all the skills required to develop lesson plans for traditional classroom instruction and they must be able to apply them to digital teaching environments. The challenge occurs while trying to create an efficient and effective digital asynchronous classroom. At this point, the teachers really need Instructional design skills. Instructional design is the creation of learning experiences and materials in a manner that results in the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills. Despite the numerous online courses and scientific articles that are available for developing and improving instructional design skills, very few addressed the teaching methods along with examples, pros and cons. This MOOC Canvas and Instructional Design Manual for Digital Citizenship Courses was created in the Strategic partnership to develop open educational resources for teaching digital citizenship project based on the results of the feedback survey (taking into consideration the youth preferences), the responses of youth workers and trainers to interviews and the vast scientific research literature. The Manual includes ten MOOC Canvases meant to introduce the reader to the online course environment offering an overview of the digital citizenship courses. These canvases were then supplemented by elements of instructional design which help developing stimulating and meaningful learning environments for digital citizenship learners. The MOOC Canvas and Instructional Design Manual for Digital Citizenship Courses represents the starting point for the development of ten online courses to improve the digital citizenship skills of youth: Access and inclusion; Learning and Creativity; Media and Information Literacy; Ethics and Empathy; Health and Wellbeing; e-Presence and Communication; Active Participation; Rights and Responsibilities; Privacy and Security; and Consumer Awareness. These courses are available in English, Romanian, Greek and German in the European Online Training Platform TrainingClub.eu. Therefore, this manual investigates the methods of teaching in an online asynchronous classroom, presents the best practices for creating learners engagement, as well as concludes be summarizing the main steps for creating an efficient and effective online course adapted to youth needs. With this manual, even the novice teacher will feel empowered to proceed to online course development., Grant Agreement 2019-3-RO01-KA205-078053, Strategic partnership to develop open educational resources for teaching digital citizenship (DIGCIT)