Walking CUTIE Together: A UMU Story

CUTIE is finishing on this 30th of December, and this is my little celebration of this time together.

Taking part in the CUTIE project from the University of Murcia has been a deeply enriching experience. Not only because it has allowed us to advance in our understanding and dissemination of Digital Teaching Competence (DTC) and broader educational digital transformation within our institution, but also because it has opened up spaces to talk, reflect and build together from a very practical, close, flexible perspective — always grounded in a strong educational commitment.

The UMU team in CUTIE has been very directly involved in the project’s communication and outreach. From the very beginning, when we first imagined the project, we knew we didn’t want “dissemination” in the traditional sense. What we wanted was to genuinely contribute to the wider conversation about educational digital transformation. That is how this “entity” we called the CUTIE Channel was born: a set of social media profiles (Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Mastodon) together with our CUTIE Podcast, where we ended up producing eight episodes. It has been a part of the work that I particularly loved, because it allowed us to share what we were doing in an open, fresh and approachable way, while also bringing into our conversations the perspectives of experts from all over the world (thank you to all of them). It was never meant to be a showcase, but rather a way of sharing processes, ideas and learning… and, above all, sparking conversation.

Another contribution from Murcia was helping coordinate the use of the CUTE Canvas in both WP2 and WP3 — a conceptual and practical tool inherited from the previous CUTE project (in which I also participated). Although CUTIE has an international, collaborative and complex structure, we have always insisted that educational transformation must be concrete and very local. In Murcia, in addition to the joint project tasks, we focused on developing materials to support a deeper understanding of DTC among different university actors: faculty, students and institutional decision-makers. We were convinced that, to create real impact, we needed to speak to each group from their own starting point, making visible needs that were often not even articulated as such.

This is why a fundamental part of our work at UMU was creating a Spanish version of the course materials, not simply as a translation, but as a deep adaptation: incorporating contextualised references, connecting with the Spanish University Digital Teaching Competence Framework, and including CUTIE materials developed directly in Spanish. We believe these resources not only enrich our own institution but may also serve as inspiration and support for others.

CUTIE has given us the space to pause and think together — from our diverse professional backgrounds — about how we talk about digital competence, how we understand it institutionally, how teachers and students experience it, and what institutional leaders need to foster sustainable transformation processes.

And perhaps what I value most from this experience is something that never appears in official reports: the personal touch — the CUTIE people. It is not often that we get to work with such an extraordinary group of people. Our monthly online meetings and our in-person gatherings became wonderful spaces for learning, professional growth, fun and warm personal connection.

30I hope everything we have produced from our project can be useful to others. That is, after all, the essence of an ERASMUS project: that what we do in one small corner — in our case, Murcia — might open conversations and support digital transformation processes elsewhere.

I have learned so much personally, and I will miss the CUTIE people dearly… at least until we meet again. Our path together has taken us from beaches to mountains to castles to snowy landscapes, reminding me that diversity —of places, cultures and ideas— has been CUTIE’s greatest strength. It has been a privilege to walk that path with the CUTIE people.

You can find all the information about the CUTIE project on its website https://cutie.unak.is/, and all the Spanish-language resources developed at UMU on the CUTIE at UMU site https://www.um.es/cute/

The DALI Project is finished!

On 30 December 2023, the DALI project -Data Literacy for Citizenship- (https://dalicitizens.eu/ ) officially ended a project that we have been working on at UM for the last three years and in which our challenge was to develop practical educational materials and resources for the development of Data Literacy in adults of all age ranges, i.e. to promote how people use and engage with the data they encounter in their daily lives as citizens.

In these three years, we have developed in the four official languages of the project (and therefore also in Spanish)

And much more…

And EVERYTHING is now available for free and open use on our website.

I have been the project’s contact person for the UM team and had the immense good fortune to work on it. I have had the opportunity to learn, meet, laugh, work hard and generate, with my project partners, a lot of material that I firmly believe is useful to face one of the most critical challenges posed by the current and imminent future technological reality, how people should relate healthily with the data that is generated around them?

Since the first time, we were asked for a workshop “for the healthy use of social networks” back in the first decade of the 21st century, I have always been convinced that the only way to become more human in a world with technology is to emancipate ourselves to be better humans, to make better decisions, to be able to make human decisions –being empowered– in this world and WITH technology. … and I believe that DALI does all of this. Furthermore, I think that it does it with deep pedagogical roots that give more substance to this emancipatory and empowering perspective… it is an educational project… of educational technology.

It has been a precious experience; I feel very proud of the work we have done from Murcia (thanks to Inma Haba-Ortuño especially). It is also a project in which many people have been able to work, collaborate and feel involved… Even my students have been able to work with the games! So, all the better…

As I said above, all the materials are open and licensed to be modified for further use.

I hope you can browse and use any of the materials we have produced and that you find them useful.


SOME ACADEMIC PAPERS FROM DALI PROJECT

  • Castañeda, Linda, Inmaculada Haba-Ortuño, Daniel Villar-Onrubia, Victoria I. Marín, Gemma Tur, José A. Ruipérez-Valiente, and Barbara Wasson. 2024. ‘Developing the DALI Data Literacy Framework for Critical Citizenry’. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia 27 (1). doi:10.5944/ried.27.1.37773. (Online First) https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.27.1.37773
  • Castañeda, L., Villar-Onrubia, D., Haba-Ortuño, I., Postigo-Fuentes, A. Y., & Arnab, S. (2022). Game-based Networked Learning. Proceedings For The Thirteenth International Conference On Networked Learning, 273–277 https://dalicitizens.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Game-based-Networked-Learning.pdf
  • Castañeda, L.; Arnab, S.; Tur, G.; Klykken, F.; Wasson, B.; Haba-Ortuño, I.; Maloszek, R.; De Benito-Crossetti, B. (in press) Co-creating pedagogically informed games for data literacy. Revista de Educación. (IN PRESS)

The DALI project is an Erasmus+ Strategic Action for Adult Education project (KA204-076492) coordinated by the University of Bergen and involving four other European universities: Coventry University (UK), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany), Universitat de les Illes Balears (Spain) and Universidad de Murcia (Spain).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why to do Erasmus + Projects?

Part of my work as an academic, at least from my point of view, is disseminating what I do so that I can contribute to the learning of others through my experience… as part of my learning community (yes, all that peripheral legitimate participation staff…).  That’s why I share openly my reflections from my stays, or I’ve told before how I teach my classes.

However, these days I wanted to make a series of videos to talk about why it is worth trying and participating in European projects… so I am going to tell you about my experience, with no other pretensions than that, to share the experience.

In this video, I share with you my experience and vision about why it is great to participate in Erasmus + Projects. I hope you find it interesting.

(Yes I know is only in Spanish… well, maybe subtitles  could help…)

 

The CUTE Project

Since October 2019, I have had the opportunity to be the contact person for the CUTE Project “Competencies for Universities – using Technology in Education” (ERASMUS+: Strategic Partnership KA203-867FE04B) at the University of Murcia and to have as associate partners in Spain none other than INTEF (National Institute of Educational Technology and Teacher Training). We are working hard (and having fun) and I wanted to have the opportunity to present you the project of which you have all the information on the website https://cute.ku.dk (also in Spanish).

Hope you find it interesting!