COVID-19 effects – Why?The sudden transformation of lecturing styles from physical, face-to-face teaching into the online, distance, “COVID19 style” teaching demanded considerable adaptations and changes from all teachers. These circumstances caused for many of them a series of issues and difficulties. This unexpected change affected all educators independent of the level or type of educational institution. Some of them without any or with very basic digital competencies in teaching had to start to teach online, overnight. They had to skip several steps in competency levels and perform online lectures without well-founded skills. Other teachers that have technical affinities, had problems with didactical structuring of the content and providing a meaningful learning sequence. All these experiences gained in the sudden transformation of the educational model caused by the COVID19 lock-down period, confirm the necessity of a common, standardized and structured content plan and references for diverse groups of educators. All educators could use such a plan for their personal orientation regarding online education (“Where do I stand?”) as well as for finding possible information on content (“Where do I find what I need to learn?”), in order to develop their digital competences. Reference point – What?The framework defines educators’ professional and pedagogic competences as well as learners’ competences in six specific areas e.g teaching, assessing, providing resources, in empowering learners and facilitating learners’ digital competencies and in the professional engagement of educators Each area outlines a certain number of competencies, all together 22. These competencies include a list of “activities.” These activities remain rather general and do not provide educators with practical information on how to achieve and implement the outlined goal in practice. All these are further broken down for six accumulative levels of progression A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.Project GoalWhile DigCompEdu provides a general framework, as such it is difficult to use for educators trying to find out where they stand regarding their digital competencies and attempting to find relevant practical materials needed to improve their competencies. The goal of this project is to fill the DigCompEdu framework with concrete examples and content (output 1), to develop an online course on selected levels (output 2) and to establish an e-teaching manual for self-paced learning (output 3).The aim is thus to enhance and augment the framework so it can function as a practical, useful resource for educators willing to increase their digital competencies.Output 1 – a collection of content (curricular plan) Develop and create a curricular plan/collection of content for all six areas and corresponding competencies, structured along the six levels of progression and publish it on a website. Any educator, even those with little or no digital competences, can access and use this collection of content (curricular plan) for all six levels of progression, independently or guided, according to their own needs. In addition, any educator can find out what s/he can learn and which competencies s/he can develop in the structured curriculum plan; the content and competencies of which they were/are unaware. This will be done for all areas, competences and levels.Output 2 – online course with instructor(s) For one or two of the pedagogic competence areas outlined in DigCompEdu the project intends to develop fully online courses. Which of the four areas are chosen will depend on the needs of educators at the participating partner institutions. The course will be held for educators of the partner institutions and will offer flexibility in time with a fixed schedule for synchronous meetings. The project partners will agree upon the level or levels of the course content in these areas.Output 3 - e-teaching handbook for self-paced learning (without instructor)The materials developed for output 2 will then be adapted and made openly available in the form of an e-handbook/manuals for all educators. These e-manuals will be available online and will enable educators the independent (anytime, anywhere, without instructors), self-paced learning and developing of competences. The materials will be open access and available to all educators trying to improve their digital teaching competencies.The long-term benefit is the dissemination of common European curricular plan with concrete topics and content of digital competences for educators (DigCompEdu) and increasing and enhancing the educators’ awareness of the necessity of constant individual development of their digital competencies. It is envisaged that in the future all areas and competence levels listed in DigiCompEdu will be filled/will have corresponding online courses.