Context:
Covid-19 abruptly transitioned online learning from a convenient option to a necessity. Higher education had no choice but to promote digital education in order to save students’ academic year and moderate institutional costs during the pandemic. Educators who lacked digital education knowledge and skill found themselves in a stressful situation. Sometimes out of desperation, and needing to transition quickly, online learning was not delivered as effective digital education, but as emergency remote learning.
Today educators must constantly learn in order to keep abreast of the most effective teaching and learning strategies and healthcare practices. Continuing education (CE) has not always considered the new realities of ever-busier academic and healthcare staff who have less time available for CE, and are sometimes subject to constraints preventing them from participating. Suddenly there is overwhelming pressure for administrators to offer intentional educational supports and staff training to ensure the quality of online educational experiences.

Objectives:
• Motivate and support educators to increase digital education readiness and competence
• Design, delivery and evaluate innovative, long-lasting resources to facilitate digital capacity
• Design high quality digital resources conveniently delivered via email and twitter and accessible via mobile devices
• Collaborate with universities, private industry, government, hospitals, and NGOs to reduce cost, time and redundancy and expediate the uptake and scalability of digital technologies
• Provide educators with the support and innovative approaches to improve online learning experiences and prepare students to succeed in a digital world.

Need:
There must be intentional supports to assist educators to gain the confidence, knowledge and skills to design, deliver and evaluate effective digital education in order to be successful and competitive in a digital era.

Solution:
TOVID will address an unmet need –relevant, practical, convenient CE accessible in mediums other than face-to-face. This is especially essential for busy academics and short staffed hospitals and long-term care staff where leaving the workplace can jeopardize patient safety and care. TOVID will provide solutions to increase educator’s readiness by designing, delivering and evaluating innovative, long-lasting mobile learning resources that will facilitate digital education capacity and support them to implement blended and online teaching. The project will produce creative, innovative, high quality digital content and best practices and conveniently make it accessible via mobile devices.

Delivering CE via videos has had positive results for both engaging learners and learner knowledge retention. This use of digital education acknowledges that :
(a) educators are busier now than they ever have been
(b) adult educators enjoy learning from peers. TOVID is unique, practical and innovative and implements new and exciting learning strategies that are timely and will fill a void – enabling CE that otherwise wouldn’t be possible – especially during a pandemic.

TOVID’s video digital education programs (Get Ready, Get Started and Get Online Teaching Tips) will increase readiness, knowledge and skills regarding using technology in educational experiences. The videos will be practical, relevant, entertaining, and easily accessible on mobile devices making the potential for outreach limitless.

Target Group:
Approximately 4000 academic staff in four universities in (Malta, Cyprus, Finland and Slovenia); Malta’s Ministry of Health’s 1000 staff and students at Mater Dei Hospital and the Malta Postgraduate Medical Training Centre; Learning Works’s 500 staff at 9 long-term care facilities, and 5000 nurses in the European Federation of Educators for Nursing Science NGO (FINE), who will collaborate to create share and distribute innovative resources to support educators and reduce redundancy, time and cost.