Topic 4: Designing/ Delivering Digital Civic Engagement Solutions

This topic identifies how to provide solutions to issues that a digital civic engagement project might utilize. The learning outcomes of this topic will be to identify how digital technologies may influence the design and delivery of an DCE project, and how to implement it.

DCE Case Studies and Digital Solutions

Within this topic, we will take a closer look at key case studies that we compiled as part of our research for The Guide to DCE.

The case studies have been explored frequently throughout these Modules. In this section we will identify how these examples of Civic Engagement utilized digital technology whilst providing a solution to a civic engagement issue.

Allowing Students to Create Solutions to Civic Problems

Earlier in this Module, we examined the STARTER program offered by the University of Tartu in Estonia. The programme seeks to attract students who want to experience the process of coming up with an idea to launch a product or service.

Covid has had a massive impact on the world, and the students at University of Tartu designed solutions to issues that Covid had presented. But what are some of the ideas that students came up with?

Click here for a link to STARTER

Solutions Provided by the STARTER Program

Some of the solutions that were identified:

A robot for picking strawberries (as farmers could not rely on getting workers due to covid restrictions)
Software for connecting elderly people at care homes with volunteers and loved ones
Interactive 3D models to simplify event planning etc.
An application for understanding how to sort waste (a major problem in society)

The SORTER App

Using your own expertise to help find solutions to civic issues is often a fantastic way to create solutions. This was the case in the STARTER programme when SORTER was developed.

One of the key students behind this solution was studying waste management, and they recognised that people often were unsure of what materials should be disposed of or which waste materials can be recycled.

The SORTER app is an app that allows people to scan their waste, and the app then shows people how they can dispose of it correctly and which bin they should use to remove the waste.

There is a large community within Estonia who practice a circular economy. The circular economy is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible.

The students behind the SORTER app used the circular economy community to their advantage and used it to help spread the word of the project.

The students also found that there were many ways of utilizing digital tools, and used videoclips, direct e-mails, mailing lists, interviews with alumni all to share the app.

They also found Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram were also beneficial to the project- especially to share the content that they had made.

The P5 Medical Centre

P5 is a Digital Medical Center created by the school of medicine in the University of Minho to promote Digital Health Care.

P5 was started because of the vision that work can be improved by digital technologies, and can add value to the healthcare system.

Prior to Covid, the team behind the P5 medical center were working on a project around symptom evaluation. However, when the pandemic broke out, work was needed to adapt and help the community.

When the pandemic first broke out, many people were confused with the information about the pandemic and needed help to clarify their questions.

The P5 Medical center team decided that they could help, and they set up an online helpdesk that people could use to contact healthcare professionals regarding the covid restrictions.

However, due to the limited staff behind P5, they needed to find new solutions to help answer patient’s questions.

In response to this, the P5 medical center decided to involve 5^th and 6^th year medical students. The students were given total control and were asked to find a solution to the helpdesk.

In the end, within two weeks students were able to reduce the waiting times that people were spending waiting to receive an answer, and students were able to answer 700 questions, after creating a special phone line where people could also contact the helpdesk.

The students worked together quickly to find a solution. One idea that they came up with was to ensure that when someone sent a question to the helpdesk, it would be emailed to someone who would be qualified to answer the question.

Over 200 students ended up becoming involved with the P5 Medical Center.