Page - 101 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

7 ProsumerisminHigherEducation… 107 equipping educatorswith the competences they need toworkwith students as co- collaborators. InNovember2017,TheEuropeanCommission’sJointResearchCen- tre,JRC-SevillelaunchedtheEuropeanCompetenceFrameworkfortheDigitalCom- petence of Educators (DigCompEdu).2 The Framework consists of 6 ‘competence areas’, eachofwhichcovers anumberof specificdigital competences—making22 competences in total. The competence areas that aremost relevant to prosumerism areArea3—TeachingandLearning;Area5—EmpoweringLearners andArea6— FacilitatingLearners’DigitalCompetences.Within theseareas, there areparticular competence thathaveasignificantbearingon theextent towhichstudents inhigher education institutionscanbesupported toplayanactiverole in theco-productionof knowledge.Thesecover thefollowing.Competence3.3—CollaborativeLearning— requires educators inHE institutions to enable learners to use digital technologies as part of collaborative assignments; competence 3.4—self-regulated learning— requires them to use digital technologies to enable learners to plan, monitor and reflect on their own learning, share insights and come upwith creative solutions; competence 5.1—Accessibility and inclusion—requires them to ensure accessibil- ity to learning and resources for all learners, including those with special needs; competence 5.2—differentiation and personalization—requires them to use digital technologies to address diverse learners’ needs, by allowing them to advance at different levels andspeeds; competence5.3—Activelyengaging learners—requires themtousedigitaltechnologiestoopenuplearningtonewreal-worldcontexts,which involvelearnersthemselvesinhandsonactivities,scientificinvestigationorcomplex problem-solving;competence6.3—DigitalContentCreation—requires themtouse digital technologies tosupport learners toexpress themselves throughdigitalmeans andtomodifyandcreatedigitalcontentindifferentformats,and,finally,competence 6.5—digital problem-solving—requires them to incorporate learning activities that help learners to transfer technicalknowledgecreatively tonewsituations.Akeyaim of this framework is to change the educator’s role froma ‘transmissive’ communi- cator of knowledge to a role inwhich educators workwith students to help them become ‘creative, collaborative participants in a knowledge-based, interdependent world’ (Caena&Redecker, 2019). Because of the recency of this initiative, there is no available evidence to show either that educators currently have the necessary competences to support co- collaboration or that the application of these competences in the classroom leads to the learningoutcomesattributed to co-produced learning, as cited above.Avery small(unpublished)trialcarriedoutbyJRC-SevillewithagroupofEnglishlanguage teachers which assessed their digital competences according to the DigCompEdu frameworksuggestedthatoverallthelevelofdigitalcompetenceswasrelativelyhigh. However,onanumberofthedigitalcompetenceslinkedto‘prosumerism’—likedif- ferentiationandpersonalizationandself-regulatedlearning—scoreswerelowerthan average.3 2http://europa.eu/!gt63ch. 3Internal JRC-SevilleReport, unpublished.