The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we can digitalise numerous processes and services, creating many formerly unseen opportunities. Digitalisation is now ubiquitous and universities have not been left out. On the other hand, the third objective of universities is to support the development of society and its communities by serving as a bridge between the scientific community and society. So, by merging these two elements we can identify that there are many challenges for higher education institutions to address.
The engagement with societal stakeholders usually takes place onsite through various activities involving city and regional actors. So, how can we bring community engagement to the digital world to reach more individuals? The DiCE Project has a solution.
The DiCE Project, titled "Digital Community Engagement Accelerator for student learning and socio-economic impact" (2022-1-SK01-KA220- HED-000087668), promotes digitisation and the third mission of universities concurrently.
We will provide concrete practices to educators and course directors on how to create their digital community engagement courses while making an impact on the entire community and enhancing the student learning experience. Using the accelerator approach, typically used in start-ups, we will create an innovative accelerator program to help them develop their digital community engagement courses.
DiCE is also the acronym for Digital Community Engagement. DiCE refers to using digital methodologies and tools when engaging with society (external stakeholders). It encompasses initiatives such as community-based research, place- based engagement, online hackathons, Collaborative Online International Learning, crowdsourcing, citizen science projects, and digital service learning, among others.
The project began in November 2022 and will continue until October 2025. Its consortium is made up of five partners from five countries (learn about us in the Meet the Partners section). To keep you informed, we are excited to present a series of project newsletters that will keep you up to date on the latest project and partnership developments. We will also feature new insights into digital community engagement. Let's get started!
Nina Hadidomova
Technical University of Košice
