Research results

These findings, along with the outcomes of two regional workshops and a training, have helped us better understand the challenges that youth workers, trainers, and educators face when designing and delivering HRE online. The majority of respondents rated their capacities for delivering HRE online as good, but they noted numerous challenges. Some educators, on the other hand, rated their capacities for delivering HRE online as poor to below average, owing primarily to a lack of digital skills for delivering NFE online, as well as the fact that designing their own learning activities was time-consuming and did not produce the desired results. Many educators found it difficult to take a holistic approach, deliver experiential learning, maintain an open-ended framework, and incorporate both individual and group learning into their online activities when it came to methodological principles and learning approaches. They rated their abilities to deliver small group discussion and networking learning activities well, as expected. The most difficult topics for educators to deliver were disability and disabilism, migration, culture and sports, religion and belief, and democracy, followed by environment, discrimination and intolerance, remembrance war, and terrorism work. Surprisingly, more educators believed that online NFE programs were more exclusionary when it came to participation of young people from disadvantaged groups. Many of the respondents, as expected, found it difficult to motivate participants to take action after the program ended. 

These findings formed the basis for discussion at two regional workshops, where we were able to gain a better understanding of educators’ struggles, challenges, and needs. Regional workshops resulted in two levels of conclusions about issues facing educators. First, a strong emphasis was placed on digital skills (and the use of technology in general in education), there was a lack of mentoring support and ToTs for designing and delivering online HR NFE, and there was a lack of learning materials and exemplary learning activities that could be used for their trainings. Second, there is a lack of understanding of how digital shapes society (particularly human rights, democracy, and the rule of law), as well as a lack of comprehension of how they can actually educate participants on what to do in the online world – for example, how to report HR breaches, shape democracy, recognize microtargeting, protect oneself from data tracking and surveillance, and so on.