Skills & support

Staff and researchers

According to EUA’s 2020 survey on digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions, prior to the pandemic, digital skills training opportunities and technical support centres were available for teaching staff in almost 90% of higher education institutions. In addition, professional development and training were identified as the second most important enabler of digitally enhanced learning and teaching among European higher education institutions (see figure 1).

Figure 1 Survey report on digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions (2021), Q13: What are the top 3 enablers of digitally enhanced learning and teaching at your institution? (please select your top three choices), p. 11.

The content of training and support can be provided in-person or online, often by learning and teaching centres or ICT departments. In some cases, higher education institutions have dedicated e-learning departments, employing digital experts, assistants and educational technologists, to help teachers convert courses into digital formats. According to EUA’s Thematic Peer Group report, ‘Digitally competent teachers’, such training needs to be flexible, granular and respond to diverse needs, including general and sector-specific skills. Moreover, to ensure the training offer remains relevant, it also needs to be regularly assessed and updated.

However, a common observation among the 2021/2022 Thematic Peer Groups was that such training often focuses on technical and pedagogical matters but tends to give little attention to the legal and security issues pertaining to the use of digital technologies and the handling of sensitive data. See section on security and GDPR.

Moreover, while higher education institutions manage to provide many formal training opportunities, they often face difficulties in recruiting ICT support staff due to stiff competition with the private sector, who can offer higher salaries. Such difficulties were observed in Finland, Romania and Austria and are no doubt a reality in other countries.

With the growing importance of open science as a strategic priority for universities, attention has also been given to the upskilling and reskilling of the staff responsible for research data management. The EUA 2020-2021 Open Science Survey report provided interesting insights on the availability of research data skills at the institutional level. Over 50% of surveyed institutions noted that data-related skills were only partially available at institutional level. Researchers’ data management and data mining/visualisation skills were reported as partially available or missing by approximately 70% of the respondents. The highest proportions of full skills availability were instead reported for e-infrastructure and data management specialists.

Figure 2 2020-2021 EUA Open Science Survey Results (2021), Availability of research data skills at the institutions, p. 36.

As highlighted in the EUA report on research data practices in universities in Europe, which is a follow-up to the main EUA Open Science Survey, universities are progressively creating dedicated research data support services and hiring specific support staff. These include professional profiles such as data stewards, research (data) managers, data administrators and open science officers.

However, significant disparities still exist between countries and institutions. For example, in many universities, research data management responsibilities still fall largely to existing members of staff. These people are generally librarians, IT experts and research administrators and, in the absence of adequate upskilling and reskilling opportunities, they may not be able to offer researchers the right support and guidance. In many cases, specific technical skills are needed but only partially available, and new dedicated staff are therefore required.

At the same time, the absence of a shared recognition and definition of data professional profiles represents a major challenge. Progress is being made at the European level, in terms of defining commonly recognised research data managing and processing profiles. However, additional support will be needed to create a new framework for research data careers, including the identification of key skills, clear career paths and defined accreditation mechanisms.

The Framework of Actors in the EOSC Ecosystem developed by the EOSC Skills and Training Working Group co-chaired by EUA, can be a valuable source for universities to identify the specific research data role they need to address skills gaps in this field.

Peer support

Interviews with higher education leadership across Europe revealed that, In addition to formal training opportunities, individual staff members have sparked the digital transformation within their institutions, causing a snowball effect and encouraging other staff members and faculties to embrace digital transformation. In fact, higher education institutions who celebrate early adopters of digital technologies have reported high levels of success in mainstreaming their use throughout the institution. Sharing experiences among peers is also crucial and can prove highly effective.

Students

As for students, the 2020 EUA survey on digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions confirmed that most institutions addressed general and sector-specific digital, ethical, data literacy and data safety skills in their courses. These courses were sometimes compulsory and integrated into curricula and programmes, especially for digital literacy. But more often, they were optional, especially when it comes to ethics, data literacy and safety, or included in specific study programmes.

Figure 3 Survey report on digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions (2021), Q23: Does your educational offer comprise digital skills? (please select one option for each item), p. 25.

The provision of digital skills for students happens at different levels for higher education institutions, and the goals are quite different according to different groups of students. Higher education institutions educate many specialists who will work directly in the IT field in the future. Here, institutions have a responsibility to ensure that there is a diversity of graduates and that they are aware of key ethical issues beyond their technical skills. As pointed out in EUA’s 2019 learning and teaching paper on digital skills, specific disciplines are more likely to need knowledge about artificial intelligence, which will feature as an important element in the work of graduates. This could be the use of generative artificial intelligence in law or use of artificial intelligence for diagnosis in medicine. The largest group of learners will be those that will not necessarily employ advanced digital tools systematically in their work but need to have a basic knowledge of technical issues, for example where artificial intelligence can provide solutions or where there are cybersecurity challenges.

Regarding the integration of FAIR data and research data management skills in university curricula, the landscape analysis produced in 2020 by the EU-funded FAIRsFAIR project showed that the provision of teaching related to research data management, when available, is lowest at the bachelor’s level, low to moderate at the master’s level and strongest at the doctoral level. Data analytics and statistics, as well as compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks (data protection, privacy, intellectual property rights (IPR) and ethical issues), are the skills groups most addressed within the trainings.

To address the lack of FAIR data-related skills and training opportunities at institutional level, the FAIRsFAIR project developed different practical tools supporting the integration of FAIR research data management skills into university curricula at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels. These include a FAIR adoption handbook, providing ready-to-use model lesson plans, and a complementary FAIR good practice report, highlighting stories of successful integration of FAIR research data-related skills in university curricula and training.

In addition to institutional-level efforts, there are many examples of national initiatives promoting the development of digital skills within higher education institutions. Examples include:

• In Ireland, the Enhancing Digital and Teaching and Learning project (2019-2022) worked to mainstream digital in teaching and learning activities in Irish universities by addressing the professional development of all who teach or support teaching and learning. Outputs include a webinar on topics related to the development of staff/student digital skills in Irish higher education and advice for staff who want to use digital approaches in their teaching.
• In Romania, the Strategic Initiative for Digitization of Education SMART-Edu 2021-2027, aims to develop, among other things, digital skills at all levels of cross-curricular education, including higher education, through specialised subjects, formal and non-formal activities, and to support the initial and continuous digital training of teaching staff.
• In Finland, all higher education institutions are taking part in the Digivision 2030 programme, whose aim is to create a future for learning that benefits higher education institutions, learners and society at large. Digivision 2030 aims to produce a national digital service platform, guidance based on digital pedagogy, the learner’s path and shared data and support for change management in higher education institutions by 2030.

In addition to bringing forward a plethora of EU regulation on digitalisation that has a direct impact on higher education institutions (see EU Regulation), the European Union affirms the importance of providing digital skills in higher education institutions to achieve digital transformation.

The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp), originally developed in 2013 and revised most recently in 2022, provides a common understanding of what digital competence is. It covers five areas: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. This framework plays a central role in achieving the EU objectives regarding the digital upskilling of the population, including higher education staff and students.

Likewise, published in 2017, the European Commission’s European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) is a scientifically sound framework describing what it means for educators, including higher education educators, to be digitally competent. DigCompEdu describes 22 competences organised in six areas: professional engagement, digital resources, teaching and learning, assessment, empowering learners and facilitating learners’ digital competence.

In addition, the European Council published a proposal for a recommendation in 2023 on improving the provision of digital skills in education and training, which includes a dedicated section on higher education. This recommendation calls for many of the things deemed important by EUA, namely the need for more ICT specialists, wide-ranging digital skills as well as national-level initiatives on digitalisation in higher education institutions. The European Commission is also working on developing a European Digital Skills Certificate, which will be available to all citizens, including higher education staff and students, as part of the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027.

Many EU funded projects have also focused on the development of digital skills of higher education staff. For example, EdDiCo, ‘EMPOWERING EDUCATORS EXCELLENCE’ through the improvement of their digital competences” was an Erasmus+ project which ran from September 2019 to December 2022. It produced a competence meta-model for digital education competences, a learning maturity model as an organisational paradigm for digital education training content, a directory of 500 learning opportunities for digital teacher education, and a self-assessment and recommendation tool to enable educators assessing their current level of digital competence. In addition, the European Commission funded a study on the digital competences of academics in Spain, based on the European frameworks DigCompEdu and OpenEdu, which provides concrete recommendations for Spanish higher education institutions on this topic.

• The University of Turin (Italy) introduced a module on digital education in their IRIDI staff development programme. During this programme, teachers were given support to help them implement their new skills. The university noted: a general growth in the use of ICT in education, improved coping with the switch to online learning during the pandemic, teachers’ exploration of new teaching ideas after following the programme, and many teachers’ requests for a new digitally supported teaching training programme.
• An example of strategy with training opportunities for staff and students at its core can be found at UCLouvain in Belgium. Part of the strategy is to support the controlled use of digital technology to promote the creation, dissemination and acquisition of knowledge. The objective is to fight the digital divide by enabling everyone to use digital technology for educational purposes by ensuring that teachers and students feel comfortable with digital technology.
• The Central European University (Austria), offers a Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education for doctoral candidates, which covers digital competences in several electives (“online, hybrid and blended teaching”; “podcasting for teaching”; “game-based learning”) and the creation of a capstone teaching e-portfolio. CEU launched a new curriculum for this certificate in autumn 2022 (with new and revised courses addressing digital competences).