Unidigital Plan
The Ministry of Universities has defined various reforms and investments to be implemented from the European Recovery Instrument "Next Generation EU," as outlined in component 21 of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan, titled "Modernisation and Digitalisation of the Educational System, including Early Education from 0 to 3 years," and approved by the European Commission on 16 June, 2021.
To this end, Royal Decree 641/2021, of 27 July, was approved, regulating the direct granting of grants to Spanish public universities for the modernisation and digitalisation of the Spanish university system within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan. This decree implements investment C21.I5 "Improvement of digital infrastructures, equipment, technologies, digital university teaching and assessment".
This multi-annual investment includes the granting of subsidies aimed at promoting investment in infrastructure, technological developments, and innovative teaching projects to improve academic digitalisation resources; reducing the digital gap among academic staff and students; promoting strategic and interdisciplinary inter-university digital innovation projects; and boosting digital training, with the goal of achieving at least a 10% increase in the "university digitalization index" compared to 2019.
All projects, whether individual or collaborative inter-university, must fall within the following lines of action: Improvement of digital equipment (line 1), Digital Education (line 2), Training content and programmes (line 3), and Digital service platforms (line 4).
The order granting the subsidies established in Royal Decree 641/2021, of 27 July, states that the amount allocated to Public University of Navarre is 596,919.20 EUR (VAT is financed by Public University of Navarre). The university must allocate at least 25% of the total granted to collaborative inter-university projects, in which at least three of the universities benefiting from the aforementioned Royal Decree must participate. For their implementation, universities may formalise mechanisms of horizontal collaboration, as well as use their own resources or dependent entities..
- Acronym: Ecu UPNA
- Title: Equipment University Community
- Summary: Provision of equipment, computers, connectivity kits, and other devices to groups of the University Community to reduce the digital gap.
- Action line: Line 1. Improvement of digital equipment.
- Budget: € 20,000
- Project file: File Annex I - ECU_UPNA
- Acronym: ACR_UPNA
- Title: Improvement of storage, count and network infrastructures.
- Summary: Upgrading of count, storage, network, and security infrastructure in data centres, as well as the security and network infrastructure of campus backbones and both wireless and wired access networks.
- Action line: Line 1. Improvement of digital equipment.
- Budget: € 264,919.20
- Project file: File Annex I - ACR_UPNA
- Tenders: ABR0007/2022
- Acronym: SSO_UPNA
- Title: installation of an identity management system and single sign-on tool.
- Summary: To install an identity management system and a single sign-on (SSO) service that allows users of the University’s applications to access them through a single entry point, using a single username and password.
- Action lines: Line 1. Improvement of digital equipment. Line 4. Digital services platforms.
- Budget: € 40,000
- Project file: File Annex I - SSO_UPNA
- Tenders: ABR0018/2022
- Aronym: UPNA- eReality
- Title: Creation of a Virtual Reality Lab.
- Summary: The aim of this project is to create a virtual and augmented reality laboratory for the development of innovative educational activities. This new laboratory will provide an innovative space where students can learn actively using new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, video games, 3D design, and the audiovisual world. In this way, progress will be made in adopting new teaching methodologies based on active learning, where both students and teaching staff will not only be consumers of this technology but also creators/prosumers.
- Action lines: Line 1. Improvement of digital equipment. Line 2. Digital training.
- Budget: € 100,000
- Project file: File Annex I - UPNA - eReality
- Tenders: ABS0002/2022
- Acronym: PINNED_UPNA
- Title: Educational Innovation projects with digital tools.
- Summary: This project aims to promote the development and implementation of educational innovation projects that use digital technologies to enhance students' learning processes. Specifically, resources will be provided for projects deemed relevant to official Bachelor’s or Master's degree programmes across various fields of study.
- Action Lines: Line 2. Digital training.
- Budget: € 15,000
- Project file: File Annex I - PINNED_UPNA
- Acronym: CD_JOVEXCL_UPNA
- Title: Training in digital skills for socially excluded young people.
- Summary: The goal of this project is to create content for training in basic digital competences of young people at risk of social exclusion.
- Action line: Line 3. Contents and training programmes.
- Budget: € 5,000
- Project file: File Annex I - CD_JOVEXCL_UPNA
- Acronym: MTSakai
- Title: Technological improvement of the LMS Sakai tools and integrations
- Coordinating universities: Lleida
- Partner universities: University of Murcia, Politechnic University of Valencia, Public University of Navarre.
- Summary: The participating universities use the Sakai platform as their e-learning (LMS) system. This project proposes a technological development and improvement of many of the tools included in the LMS system, and will also involve full integration with Microsoft services provided through Microsoft Office 365. This integration will add functionalities to the virtual campus to meet new standards and the evolving demands of students.
The 'deliverables' will be developments that can be immediately applied to the version of the Sakai platform used by each university. Once integrated and operational, students will be able to use Microsoft Office 365 functionalities seamlessly, without noticing that they are using an external product to their institution's On-line Office.
All solutions are based on open-source software, with no licensing requirements for the university, and will ensure that the resulting development is shared and published within the Sakai LMS community so that everyone can benefit from it. - Action lines: Line 1. Improvement of digital equipment. Line 2. Digital training.
- Budget: € 40,000
- Project file: File Annex II - MTSakai
- Agreement: MTSakai Agreement
- Acronym: DigitALL
- Title: Training and certification of digital skills within the DigComp framework.
- Coordinating universities: Castilla-La Mancha
- Partner universities: Almería, Cádiz, Complutense of Madrid, Córdoba, Coruña, Extremadura, Granada, Huelva, Balearic Islands, Oviedo, Pablo Olavide, Basque Country, Polytechnic of Cartagena, Public of Navarre, Salamanca, Sevilla, UNED (Distance University), Valencia, Zaragoza.
- Summary: The aim of this project is to create materials and tools for training and certification in the digital competencies defined by the DigComp framework. The project will consist of developing self-training materials and certification methods for the digital competencies outlined in the DigComp framework. The training materials will include instructional videos, additional and supplementary documentation, and interactive self-assessment activities. The videos will cover essential theoretical aspects and develop use cases based on technological tools. The documentation will address complementary theoretical aspects, as well as more advanced tools and details. Additionally, the project will provide certification tools for these competencies and offer question banks for each area, level, and competency. Moreover, a certification platform will be created to generate certification exams semi-automatically. The ultimate goal is to certify the entire society, and particularly the university community, in the DigComp digital competencies framework.
- Action line: Line 3. Contents and training programmes.
- Budget: € 32,000.00
- Project file: File Annex II - DigitAll
- Agreement: DigitAll Agreement
- Acronym: DigCompEdu-FyA
- Title: Digital skills of teaching staff-Training and Certification.
- Coordinating universities: Alcalá, Murcia, Seville
- Partner universities: Autonomous of Madrid, Burgos, Cantabria, Carlos III of Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Complutense of Madrid, Córdoba, Coruña, Extremadura, Girona, Granada, International of Andalucía, Jaén, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, León, Oviedo, Pablo de Olavide, Politechnic of Cartagena, Basque Country, Politecnic of Madrid, Public of Navarre, Rey Juan Carlos, Salamanca, UNED (Distance University), Valencia, Valladolid, Vigo, Zaragoza
- Summary: CRUE, through a joint working team from the ICT and Teaching Sector Groups, has been working on the DigCompEdu project since 2017.
The project has undergone three major phases:
1. A pilot questionnaire involving 12 universities, which validated the model
2. An open questionnaire completed by 51 universities
3. The development of training materials to address the digital competencies of teaching staff collaboratively.
The project proposed under the UNIDIGITAL Plan aligns entirely with section 3. The aim of this project is to develop training materials to enhance the digital competencies of university teaching staff. From the outset, it was established that these training materials would be developed in a distributed manner across different universities, with coordination provided by the DigCompEdu project team. Thus, this project addresses how such collaboration will be organised, ensuring that all competencies outlined in the DigCompEdu framework, as well as the three competencies included in the study on open education, OpenEdu, are covered.
- Action line: Line 3. Contents and training programmes.
- Budget: € 18,000
- Project file: File Annex II - DigCompEdu-FyA
- Acronym: Certidigital
- Title: Digital certification service for SUE (Spanish University System).
- Coordinating universities: Carlos III, Castilla-La Mancha, Granada, Murcia, Oviedo, Rovira i Virgili
- Partner universities: Autonomous of Madrid, Alcalá, Alicante, Burgos, Cádiz, Complutense of Madrid, Coruña, Extremadura, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Pablo de Olavide, Basque Country, Politecnic of Valencia, Public of Navarre, Rey Juan Carlos, Salamanca, Valencia, Zaragoza.
- Summary: To provide SUE with the technological and service infrastructure to allow any university to be able to define in the Europass data model those cases of use (continuous training, languages, postgraduate degrees...) which it deems interesting and issue their digital certification. These initiatives will align with the two projects currently launched by the European Commission. EDC (European Digital Credentials for Learning), which operates within a centralised framework, and EBSI (European Blockchain Services Infrastructure), based on blockchain technology and therefore decentralised. Furthermore, it is important within the project to generate information and training for use by all potential users within the Spanish University System (SUE). The ultimate goal is for RedIris to offer this service to all universities.
- Action line: Line 4. Digital services platforms
- Budget: € 50,000
- Project file: File Annex II - Certidigital
- Agreement: Certidigital Agreement
- Acronym: OpenGnsys
- Title: OpenGnsys project, increase and improvements of functionalities.
- Coordinating universities: Cádiz, Granada, Huelva, Málaga, Public of Navarre, Salamanca, Seville, Zaragoza.
- Summary: It is a free software application that allows for the deployment, control, and management of an organisation's IT equipment, enabling remote administration both in bulk and individually..
It allows for the automated installation of operating systems on network-connected personal computers and centralised management of these computers through various communication protocols, achieving highly efficient management of computers in computer labs and other types of classrooms.
OpenGnsys was created in 2009 by merging three university projects: Brutalix (Zaragoza), HIDRA (Seville), and EAC (Malaga), in response to the need for centralised management of computer labs. The initiative has since been joined by more universities such as Huelva and Granada, as well as companies like SOLETA and VirtualCable, transforming the project into an essential tool for managing an institution's IT equipment.
It is currently used in over 20 public universities in Spain.
Its collaborative nature and status as free software make it an ideal candidate for an interuniversity project.
- Action line: Line 4. Digital services platforms
- Budget: € 12,000
- Project file: File Annex II - OpenGnsys
- Agreement: OpenGnsys Agreement