Ukrainian German Teaching Network for a Digital Transformation of Environmental Education

Digitalisation of the learning and teaching surrounding to meet the expectations and needs of today’s students and lecturers is an effective way to adapt to the circumstances, irrespective of the challenges of crisis phenomena like COVID-19 pandemic or war in Ukraine. New technologies stipulate the implementation of e-initiatives in the learning and teaching practices as well as they become substantive catalysts for the transformation of higher education. 

Starting from September 2022 three partner universities – Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (Eberswalde, Germany), National Transport University (Kyiv, Ukraine) and Ukrainian National Forestry University (Lviv, Ukraine) – are jointly collaborating on a project which is targeted on the development of sustainable network for digitalisation in higher education. This project is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The objective of the project is to improve learning and teaching experience at the Ukrainian partner institutions by means of advanced approaches and tools in e-education for existing courses in environmental science degree programmes. The Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development serves as an interface and supports the conceptual design and implementation of high quality digital learning material for selected courses. The concept of the project includes the use of the LMS Moodle at HNEE as well as additional equipment and technical resources available at HNEE’s Digital Learning Lab. Through this joint approach, Ukrainian lecturers extend and strengthen their distance- and e-learning competences and contribute as multipliers to sustainably securing the teaching and learning opportunities for Ukrainian students.

Main tasks

• Analyzing and evaluation of needs in digital teaching and learning competences for environmental science degree programmes in Ukraine.

• Digitalisation and modernisation of selected courses considering European practices and challenges for socio-economic and environmental sustainable development problems in Ukraine based on HNEE expertise. Implementation of training courses at the Ukrainian partner institutions.

• Expanding professional competencies of Ukrainian lecturers with respect to distance- and e-learning concepts and tools.

• Strengthening interdisciplinary and international cooperation between partner institutions.

Key Activities

• Survey with students and lecturers of Ukrainian universities about their needs in digital teaching and learning competences.

• Training workshop for Ukrainian lecturers on the topic of digital transformation of educational environmental courses.

• Digitalisation, pilot introduction, evaluation and adjustment of selected training courses, namely: Adaptive Ecosystem Management, Methods of Environmental Information Processing, Corporate Social Responsibility, Geoecological Informatics