According to the findings of the Third Civic Engagement Report (HIIG, 2020) in Germany, it is evident that civic engagement among young people (aged between 14 to 27) is quite prevalent. Specifically, 64.2% of young individuals in the age group engage in civic activities through clubs and associations, 30.3% participate in informal groups, and 21.9% participate in online civic engagement activities.
Based on the sample of respondents, 43.2% of individuals identified themselves as "digitally involved people." These individuals engage with others through various digital media platforms to varying degrees, with 26.1% engaging partly, 14.4% engaging predominantly, and 2.7% engaging exclusively through digital media.
According to the report, the key topics on digital civic engagement are data protection, the fight against hate speech and living together in a digitalized world. DiCE represents an excellent potential for public relations, charitable initiatives, personnel and programme development, recruiting of volunteers, funding, crowdsourcing, civic Tech, and SC, among others.
The interest in DiCE is a growing topic since "digital means expand not only the forms but also the contents of engagement. Digitalisation itself is becoming a matter of civic engagement" (HIIG, 2020, p.8). This change in engagement does not only challenge users but organizations promoting CE, obliging them to adapt their strategies, initiatives and processes. The COVID-19 pandemic became an eye-opener and an accelerator of digital changes worldwide. It became clear that "there are signs of a development towards a digitized civil society. Civil society actors are increasingly and actively shaping the process of digitalization in society as a whole" (HIIG, 2020, p. 9). The HIIG report (2020) found a wide variety of tools for civic and citizen engagement, mainly platforms and Civic Tech initiatives, which they define as the "platformisation" of digital engagement.
During the pandemic, efforts to advance methodologies for DiCE were made in Germany, such as the Practical Guide on e-Service-Learning (Albanesi et al., 2020). As a result, e-Service-Learning (electronic Service-Learning [eSL] or Virtual Service-Learning [vSL]) was defined as a course mediated by ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in which the instructional component, the service component, or both occur online or in a hybrid model (Waldner et al., 2012; Manjarrés et al., 2020; Albanesi et al., 2020). The recommendations for implementing eSL (Albanesi et al., 2020; Hoyer-Neuhold, 2020) are grouped into three types:
- Virtual pedagogies and specific course design: instructional design adjustment (preparation, action and analysis), preparation of guides, planning for pedagogical activities, and evaluation.
- Technological solutions: skills; technological capacities; support; synchronous and asynchronous tools; social media; digital collaboration, and engagement.
- Communication and interaction: definition of communication channels and expectations; continuous feedback; group work; and online discussion.
To better illustrate a panorama on the diversity of activities involving DiCE in higher education, the following cases present initiatives developed in Germany in different fields of study:
-Case 1 – Garten-Bestäuber (garden pollinator), Technical University of Munich and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (SC project): This project investigates how urban community gardens contribute to protecting wild bees. Citizens receive training for counting, measuring, and reporting, through digital means, the wild bees in their gardens.
-Case 2 - Corona crisis hotline, social commitment of psychology students, University of Kassel (e-health project): project developed in cooperation with the health department and the social department of the city of Kassel, which aimed at supporting (by phone or digital means) people psychologically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, who was unsettled, afraid of the future, suffered from loneliness or needed any phycological help.
-Case 3 - Women Entrepreneurs in Science, University of Wuppertal (entrepreneurship support): This support unit works with women interested in founding a company by integrating them with their entrepreneurial ecosystem. It uses digital resources such as online mentorship, workshops, and crowdsourcing on Slack channels with regional entrepreneurs.
-Case 4 - German-Brazilian EdTech Hackathon, Universität Münster (international online hackathon): students from Germany and Brazil work in digital-mediated environments with entrepreneurs, educators, policy-makers, mentors, and researchers to propose technological solutions to current challenges in digital education.
Want to know more about the topic? Consult DiCE Project. (2023). Digital Community Engagement. Perspectives from Five Countries: Germany, Italy, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7920413
