Project e-MeBe.

Objectives

Four universities work together to develop a joint new master programme about e-wellbeing and mental health in older adults. Due to increased life expectancy, the share of elderly people is increasing. However, many older people suffer from mental problems. The programme teaches how the mental health of elderly people can be affected positively by offering new, virtual interaction points to stimulate, inform and entertain them and thus increasing their mental health status positively.

Implementation

The project aims to develop a new joint virtual Master's programme. This requires defining the course content and developing a module manual with core and elective modules, preparing and testing virtual teaching methods and making decisions on the implementation of joint interaction and quality assurance processes. All these deliverables must reflect the nature of the programme: a virtual degree programme offered jointly by four universities.

Results

The main result is the implementation of a virtual master course on e-wellbeing and mental health in older adults offered jointly by four universities. The unique aspects of this project lie in the cross-European implementation of a new study course about a major issue in European societies, which can be studied virtually in its main parts. This allows a unique programme with high accessibility and a very inclusive teaching approach, while additionally avoiding travel to reduce emissions.

Funding: Co-funded by the European Union (Erasmus+)

Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.12.2024

Priorities

• Promoting inter-connected higher education systems
• Building inclusive higher education systems
• Supporting digital and green capabilities of the higher education sector

Topics

• Active ageing
• Creating new, innovative or joint curricula or courses
• Digital skills and competences

The project intends to involve HEI in international collaboration through build-up of a curriculum for a Joint Master e-Wellbeing and Mental Health in Older Adults. Each partner contributes with its expertise to the development of such a curriculum: DCU has broad expertise in mental health and well-being (School of Psychology), and has specific expertise in curriculum development (Teaching Enhancement Unit), CUAS is expert in User Experience/Acceptance and related Behaviour and Decision Making/Monitoring, DIAK has long knowledge in promoting sustainable well-being and DIT is the leading partner in Digital Health and Internationalization.

Competencies and Need Analsysis

For the design of the Master in e-Wellbeing and Mental Health in Older Adults, the first step is to define the competencies that students should acquire with this Master. The basis of the competencies is a well-founded literature research as well as the involvement of important stakeholders from the participating countries. DIT created a Competency Matrix, that served as the basis for the development of the modules.

Curriculum Development and Accreditation Framework

This workpackage led by DCU focusses on the key curriculum design principles (including universal design), including stakeholder and accrediting body involvement, as well as staff and student involvement; learning technology tools and ways of learning, to support the engagement, learning feedback and assessment of diverse and international learners on the proposed M.Sc. in Mental Health and Wellbeing.

Core and Elective Modules

In WP 4 we co-create and develop the core and elective modules of Joint Masters e-Wellbeing and Mental Health in Older Adults and produce an implementation plan (handbook) of the modules for the use of teaching staff. These concrete outputs will be key for furthering international collaboration by providing a practical implementation tool for effective up-take and roll out of the Joint Masters in the participating HEIs, ensuring a shared and equivalent practices in all organizations. This WP is managed by DIAK.

Innovative Teaching and Didactics

The activities in this work package comprise on the one hand the development of pedagogical concepts (e.g.) challengebased learning, interdisciplinary learning) for high-quality online teaching with the use of proven and accessible online tools; and on the other hand, the technical realization of the pedagogical state-of-the-art concepts for the implementation of an MA programme in a digital environment. The applied teaching concepts and the already used technical solutions will be critically assessed and their accessibility, usability and usefulness for different involved target groups will be surveyed by means of questionnaires (teachers, learners / students etc.). This makes it possible to collect different points of view and to create a handbook for the lecturers of the MA programme, which is seen as a roadmap for accessible online teaching and which should support the quality and accessibility of the individual teaching modules. This will also ensure that the students' point of view will be heard and included in the conceptual design. At the end of the project, selected content and tools will be piloted and tested by students and experts. Therefore we created piloting courses in moodle – with focus  on ethics and in eduBreak with focus on mental health in older adults. New learning methods such as gamification and social video learning are integrated into both courses.

• Moodle-Course:

In the course the topic of ethics will be adressed, especially in combinatin with digital ethics.

As this subject area also involves a certain degree of responsibility, the topics of algorthmic fairness, data ownership and, as one of the consequences, digital accessibility will also be briefly introduced.

• eduBreak-Course:

In the EduBreak-Course a video shows physical, mental and social problems of a person after a stroke - students comment on the video, comment on the posts of their fellow students and thus also come into exchange in virtual space.

Students comment: “The inability to perform simple tasks like putting on glasses or eating normally may lead to feelings of helplessness and lowered self-esteem. The loss of speech is particularly challenging, as it can lead to social isolation and difficulties in expressing needs or emotions, further exacerbating potential depression”

Quality Assurance Processes

For the planned programme quality assurance processes, roles, tools, and requirements (in the following abbreviated as QAP) are required both from a managerial/operational perspective as well as a formal perspective (accreditation etc.). The specific challenge within a joint programme lies in the fact that all existing QAP are unique to each university involved and therefore might not fully fit the new programme.

In this situation lie two challenges:

• A) For the students, the QAP shall be as clear, seamless, accessible, and effective as in every “pure internal” program.
• B) For the universities, the QAP should be as little redundant as possible and additional overhead should be avoided.

However, some adoptions from other universities might be required.

Hence, a new QAP needs to be designed which is specific for the programme and still fits to all concerned Universities.

QAP potentially embrace regular quality circles with students, evaluation processes for lectures and lecturers, points of contacts for immediate issue resolutions, objection processes, on-demand interviews with students or lecturers, feedback rounds with stakeholders, regular program reviews and support of the accreditation process.

11-12 June 2024:
Workshop of the project consortium in Deggendorf & online

Topics:

• Quality Assurance Process
• Producing the Handbook
  • Core modules
  • Elective modules
• Dissemination
• E-Pedagocical Models, Methods and Tools

13 – 14 June 2023:
Workshop of the project consortium in Villach (FH Kärnten)

Topics:

• competences to be taught
• rough framework of programme columns
• development of personas
• accreditation: overview of possible workstream structure,
• first impression on map of required QA documents in Germany
• eLearning platform: overview of eLearning preferences and experiences from survey results and demonstrating good practice in eLearning at CUAS
• visit of the Director of the Europahaus Klagenfurt