European Union digital education framework : a quality standard to guide the design of healthcare apps

Digital Education Initiatives and Timely Solutions (DIG-IT) is an Erasmus+ project collaboration between university academics, clinical educators, industry partners, healthcare professionals, and technology experts over 5 European Union (EU) states. The objectives are to create digital educational capacity for academic faculty and mobile learning opportunities for continuing professional healthcare education. The first deliverable of this project was the innovative European Union Digital Education Quality Standards Framework and Toolkit or EU-DEF. This framework can be used to consider all principle and secondary aspects when designing, delivering, and evaluating digital education resources. In this article we explore the framework efficacy in collaboratively developing two open access, mobile healthcare apps, ECG Interpretation for Nurses and Nurse Leadership and Management. We describe the teamwork needed and steps taken during this process, and demonstrate the adaptability, usability, and value of this tool for other online development projects. The EU-DEF is an evidence-based, comprehensive framework that can be used as a starting point for individuals or teams when developing digital educational projects. Considering all variables helps focus the expertise required to produce robust end-products.peer-reviewe

European Union digital education quality standard framework and companion evaluation toolkit

The Covid-19 pandemic positioned digital education in a new light. The need for educational institutions to develop strategies, standards and establish quality assurance across digital education became even more evident. This paper describes the four-step process of designing an interactive European Union (EU) Digital Education Quality Standard Framework and Companion Evaluation Toolkit to guide the design, delivery and evaluation of effective digital education. (1) A review of literature of existing digital education frameworks and models is presented. (2) Variables and sub-variables inherent in designing, delivering and evaluating effective digital education are identified. (3) Next the variables and sub-variables in the framework are defined. (4) The process of designing the interactive framework diagram is described with the companion evaluation toolkit outlined. The proposed framework is flexible and applicable to entities and audiences regardless of where they are in the online learning adoption process