About the project

About the C-FLEX Project

GOALS

C-FLEX aims at delivering a first holistic analysis of digital education infrastructure in the context of the process of the digitalisation of education. The analysis conducted in C-FLEX aims to have a strong feedback into pedagogy, making the project’s learnings immediately available in the form of pedagogical materials.

The general goal of the project is to investigate the impacts and sustainability of the process of creating Europe’s Digital Education Infrastructure, exploring what possible futures we could have ahead, and discussing ways to steer our institutions and countries in one direction or another.

The highest priority is to make sure that future online education is open, accessible, and sustainable
in the long-term future.

The four main dimentions

The project sees its goal under four main dimensions:

Technological: discussing what makes digital education technologically functional and maintainable.
Environmental: quantifying the environmental impact of the process of digitalising education.
Social, ethical and legal: exploring ethical and legal considerations such as privacy, accountability, fairness and freedom of choice.
Pedagogical: piloting needed changes in the teaching and learning, both in results and processes, in assessment and administration.

C-FLEX wants to broaden the awareness to these problems, making sure that as many people as possible can understand that developing digital education infrastructure has wide-reaching impacts.

Main activities

C-FLEX is built around an explicit research-education tandem

From a research perspective, the project works on two items.

A “Requirements and impacts analysis”, delivered in the form of guidebooks and scenarios, that aids institutions in understanding the impacts (on the four dimensions) of digital education infrastructure.
A benchmarking tool prototype that can help institutions and teachers compare and evaluate the trade-offs that emerge from choices in education technology solutions.

Educationally, the project distills the research reflections above in a Challenge-Based Learning experience, empowering students to address the impacts and sustainability of digital education infrastructure.

Through an online course on the impacts and sustainability of digital education infrastructure, how to assess it, and the current challenges this educational space is facing.
Through an intensive interdisciplinary summer school, held in Summer 2023, where multi-disciplinary teams of students will work on solutions to challenges in digital education and developing its infrastructure.