Since the e-Schools project activities are based on the Framework for the Digital Maturity of Schools, it has been envisaged that the digital maturity of schools should be systematically developed and their progress monitored during the project. It is important for each school administration and its project team that the school is aware of its own digital maturity. For this purpose, the project also enables self-evaluation of digital maturity, which may be performed by means of an online questionnaire.
Through self-evaluation, schools will obtain feedback on the current status of their digital maturity and instructions on the potential steps which may be taken to develop digital maturity. Within the scope of the pilot project, the purpose of self-evaluation is also to determine the initial status of the digital maturity of all the schools included, in order to monitor their progress and plan the forms of support, which they require the most.
Self-evaluation is performed by means of an online questionnaire, which consists of several groups of questions, and the names of the groups of questions represent the areas of digital maturity defined by the Digital Maturity Framework:
- Leadership, planning and management
- ICT in learning and teaching
- Development of digital competences
- ICT culture
- ICT infrastructure.
Schools are invited to use the self-evaluation, that is, the answering of questions in the questionnaire, in the process of creating their own project team and establishing cooperation between the school administration and its project team. The questions in the questionnaire which are focused on the planning of the school’s work will help both the administration and the project team to consider how the project activities may best be integrated into the everyday life and work at the school. The questions focused on the digital competences of teachers and students aim to raise awareness on the needs for knowledge, skills, additional professional training and new modalities of work with the students. The answers to the questions concerning infrastructure will help find potential courses of development in the ICT field.
In this phase of the project, only schools included into the pilot project are invited to do the self-evaluation, but it has been envisaged that later all schools will be provided this opportunity.