In February, a new European network was launched to facilitate the exchange of experiences and solutions between all education sectors. The HPI D-School is part of a "Community of Practice" for the European Commission's Digital Education Hub, which the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is setting up together with ten partner organizations.

In the future, the "Community of Practice" will offer a range of services, from mentoring programs for teachers and heads of educational institutions, to digital consultation hours as a quick "first aid" for digitization issues, to Design Thinking workshops and a joint accelerator program that enables an idea to be developed into an applicable educational solution.

This is also where the HPI D-School's contribution lies. As part of the practice-oriented network, the HPI D-School supports cross-sector networking and calls for the submission of ideas for digital education. Furthermore, once a year the HPI D-School team identifies a challenge for which new solutions are to be developed in a Design Thinking project. To investigate the feasibility of the developed design solutions, the HPI D-School will also organize and conduct Design Thinking workshops for and with representatives from all areas of the education system.

In the initial phase of the community, the focus will be on the gradual development and expansion of the formats and the associated platform. The first digital workshops and mentoring sessions will start in March, followed by face-to-face events in the summer, initially in Tallinn, Brussels and Berlin. The first design thinking project under the initiative will start in the summer semester of 2022.

The Digital Education Hub

The Digital Education Hub is an initiative under the European Commission's Digital Education Action Plan. As a think-and-do tank for digital education, it strengthens collaboration and exchange in the field of digital education at the EU level. Under the umbrella of the Digital Education Hub, a network of national advisory services ("National Advisory Services") and a resource center "Opportunities for Support, Advanced Learning and Training" (SALTO) will be established as European Commission offerings to promote digital education in Europe, in addition to the "Community of Practice" that the DAAD is building for the European Commission.

The participating institutions under the leadership of the DAAD

Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (DE); European Association of the Distance Teaching Universities (NL); EDEN Digital Learning Europe (EE); UEFISCDI (RO); Educraftor (FI); HPI School of Design Thinking (DE); European Schoolnet (BE); Knowledge Innovation Centre (MT); Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity (FR); Open Evidence (IT).

For more information, click here: https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/digital/education-action-plan