Training HE Educators to Upskill Students’ Basic Digital Skills for Labor Market Demands: The “ECCE Teachers’ Training Model”

The recent pandemic exposed a significant issue within higher education: many teachers were compelled to shift their work to online formats but they were not adequately prepared for digital environments. This lack of digital readiness led to numerous unsuccessful attempts to adapt to this situation, resulting in increased teachers’ workload and stress. Moreover, this problem highlighted a systemic flaw: if teachers are not digitally proficient, they cannot effectively teach vital digital skills to their students, which are essential in today’s job market. Our research identified the significant need to help higher education (HE) students develop digital skills to prepare them better for the future workforce. This should become a priority for universities worldwide. But how easy this process can be and how can HE educators achieve this goal? To that end, this paper proposes the “ECCE Teachers’ Training Model” which stands for “Explore-Create-Communicate-Evaluate” and aims to guide HE teachers on how to integrate digital skills in their courses’ content and teaching practice. It was developed based on a comprehensive literature review and two pilot programs conducted during the academic year 2023–24, one in Greece and one in Portugal, to test the model’s validity. The proposed model is a 4-step Training Model that includes four different phases: 1) “Exploratory phase”; 2) “Creation phase”; 3) “Community phase”, and 4) “Evaluation phase” and it is complemented by a set of “Content and Digital Skills Integrated” (CoDiS) Lesson Plans. Both the model and the “CoDiS Lesson Plans” primarily intend to guide Higher Education (HE) teachers in enhancing their students’ basic digital skills for the digital job market by transforming their traditional lesson plans into innovative digital lesson plans. By integrating interactive digital activities that cover specific digital topics, teachers can enhance students’ digital skills in parallel with the academic subjects they teach. This paper presents first the theoretical philosophy behind the design of the “ECCE Teachers’ Training Model”, its four phases as well as the tools and resources used, the five (5) thematic areas of digital skills to which HE students were introduced during the pilot courses, the “CoDiS Lesson Plans” and the first pilots’ results. The lesson plans that have been applied in different educational settings provided us with valuable feedback for the effective implementation of the proposed teachers’ training model.