Le@d3.0 Academy

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Lead3.0 Academy mission is to establish a long lasting Knowledge Alliance between academy and industry by creating a digital online platform that offers strategic e-Leadership skills’ training programmes based on OERs (Open Educational Resources).

The main purpose of the Le@d3.0 Academy is to encourage the use of Web 3.0/Open Educational Resources (OERs) by teaching professionals. Hence, the project involved trainers and teachers from universities-business schools and corporate academies both in the selection and collection of existing OERs to produce new educational resources (Community of Practice), and in the delivery of an educational toolkit for trainers and related capacity building activities.

IMPACT STATEMENT

The use of Web3.0/OERs are important for developing the soft e-Leadership skills that are required by the labour market in this Digital Age. By e-leadership skills we refer to skills such as decision-making, giving feedback to a team and critical thinking. Given the digital age we live in, it is also important to have at least basic digital literacy skills. Through Open educational resources (OERs), the Le@d3.0 Academy can provide freely available teaching and learning materials that can be of great use to both teachers (instructors) and students or self-learners.

Le@d3.0 focuses on teaching professionals as change agents. The first aim was to identify new Leaders’ soft competencies needs (e.g. decision making, people management, strategic vision, design, creativity, intra/entrepreneurship) and how to raise them using innovative methods. The secondary focus was to undertake a gap-analysis to identify the e-leadership competencies teaching professionals are lacking to effectively develop Web 3.0/OER based learning programs and soft e-Leadership skills. The Le@d3.0 mandate also includes shaping, deploying and testing an open virtual environment and an educational tool kit for teaching professionals enabling learning processes aimed at soft e-Leadership skills.  This included setting up a Community of Practice (CoP) of teaching professionals to use Web3.0/OER in soft e-Leadership skills education.

The Community of practice is Le@d 3.0’s virtual learning environment. There are different blogs of interest such as, E-learning, Digital transformation and E-leadership. Open educational resources are also shared with members to foster collaborative learning. Technology plays an important role in promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. Online collaborative learning can create an inclusive culture for all staff and students. Learners can have equal access to opportunities to enable full participation in the learning process (barring any connectivity issues). The Le@d 3.0 Community of Practice uses technology to facilitate a comprehensive array of educational and cultural resources to serve diverse learners. The Le@d 3.0 Community also promotes achievement through fostering an environment that encourages learners to support one another.