Teaching basic digital competences for citizenship supported by learning platforms: the e-IRIS project

Abstract

The national digital skills plan approved by the Spanish government (2021) aims to train fifteen million people without basic skills for the environment created by technologies in all dimensions of life. To this end, it is funding one of its lines of action with almost 800 million euros and proposes, among other measures, a national network of digital training centres. The e-IRIS project has been designed to enable the digital inclusion sought by the Plan, based on an initiative of a group of universities, third sector foundations and companies. Therefore, the aim of this paper will be to describe the foundations of the e-IRIS project, the training actions and social innovation and participation actions designed, and the teaching-learning model proposed for its implementation, supported by a learning platform created specifically for the project. Taking the European Digital Competences Framework DIGCOMP[1] as a reference, and the Spanish public libraries as a learning framework, a training proposal has been designed that covers both the instrumental competences and those related to the critical and empowering use of digital tools, and a learning platform has been designed for its teaching and learning, and will be its benchmark. Depending on the degree of autonomy of the trainees, it will allow their initial assessment -with or without the support of face-to-face and online tutors-, the completion of activities according to different training itineraries, the obtaining of accreditations and the evaluation of results for the justification of the project. The project combines face-to-face training -for the purposes of social inclusion, citizen participation and attention to vulnerable groups on which it will focus- with the use of the e-learning platform as a tool to support the organisation, tutoring and learning of the contents. This will allow us to assess the effects that communicative and information ecologies have on learning processes in a networked society.