Ventspils University of Applied Sciences starts autumn semester with DIG.IT day event and measuring students' digital skills

October 30, 2023

In September, the first DIG.IT Day took place at Ventspils University of Applied Sciences (VUAS) for the first time, where several industry professionals spoke about automation of everyday processes, misinformation, internet safety, personal development using various digital tools, as well as showed practical demonstrations of creating various content with artificial intelligence tools.


Kristiāna Balode, Course and Skills Development Manager of the project, explains that the most important difference between this kind of event day and a separate professional development seminar is that at such an event people gain not only knowledge, but also inspiration, enthusiasm and curiosity to continue discussing and inquiring how to make their everyday lives more digitally skilled. Such an event covers a range of topics, so it creates a more colorful understanding and ideas are constantly looking for better solutions.


To address digital literacy, the project has developed a digital literacy measurement tool for the e-learning platform Moodle. The digital literacy levels are based on the European Commission's DigComp framework of 5 competence blocks and 8 levels of learning. The digital skills measurement tool is integrated in all project partner universities, including VUAS. The first students to complete the test at VUC were 66 students who are studying the courses developed in the project this semester. One of the project courses is the study course "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" developed by the University of Latvia. This course of study can be chosen as a free elective course of study by VUAS students and can be studied by self-study. This semester, 36 students from bachelor and master level programmes chose to study it. At the end of the semester, these 66 students will be asked to take the test again to judge whether they have managed to improve not only their knowledge of the course content, but also their digital skills.


At the end of October, a professional development seminar for lecturers was organized with the aim of improving the DigComp competence area "communication and collaboration", highlighting the fragmented communication between face-to-face and online communication nowadays. The seminar was led by Līga Ozoliņa, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Communication at Riga Stradiņš University. 103 lecturers from the VUC and other partner universities participated in the seminar.


In addition to these activities, the VUC and other partner universities continue to work on the development of various study courses and the setting up of hybrid classrooms. Ilmārs Dukulis, Professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (IITF) of the Latvian University of Biosciences and Technology, says: "We have to realize that education will never be the same again, as it is affected not only by pandemic-related restrictions, but also by geopolitical factors. By implementing a hybrid education approach, LBTU aims to provide learners with more opportunities for flexible and personalized learning, to increase the quality of teaching and to strengthen the link between academia and industry. Using virtual reality solutions, developing modern teaching materials, etc., it is possible to achieve an effect as close as possible to "live" classes, thus creating an opportunity to study also for those who cannot be in the classroom due to health, distance or other reasons,"

 

The activity is part of the European Social Fund project "Digitalization initiatives for improving the quality of studies in areas of strategic specialization of universities" (No 8.2.3.0/22/A/005), which has received REACT-EU funding to mitigate the effects of the pandemic crisis. The total cost of the project is EUR 2 052 269.47. Implementation started on 1 November 2022 and will end on 31 December 2023.

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