This contribution intricately examines the synergy between digital policies, workforce inclusion dynamics, and the evolving landscape of digital continuing training in the European Union (EU) and Italy. Set against the backdrop of rapid technological advancements, our research endeavours to map the multifaceted trajectory of the digital transition, shedding light on pivotal crossroads where policies intersect to shape the socio-economic landscape. Taking a comprehensive approach, the study analyses the nuanced policies implemented by the EU and Italy, with a particular focus on their impact on workforce integration within the digital realm. Notably, attention is directed towards the domain of digital continuing training, as a crucial component for nurturing adaptability and resilience among workers facing technological disruptions, considering opportunities and challenges. The study examines the evolving landscape of digital training, highlighting the importance of addressing challenges in digital and transversal competencies. It explores the potential of microcredentials and digital badges in recognizing and certifying skills acquired through targeted short courses. The paper delves into the growing interest in microcredentials and short learning experiences, accelerated by the post-pandemic landscape's demand for new or renewed skills in education, vocational training, and continuous learning. It aligns with the EU's digital transition initiatives, focusing on skill development policies outlined in the Digital Compass 2030 strategy. The study combines qualitative analysis of policy documents, legislative frameworks, and institutional strategies with quantitative data on workforce participation and digital training initiatives. This interdisciplinary approach provides a holistic understanding of the challenges and opportunities inherent in the digital transition, elucidating key factors influencing the effective integration of workers. In conclusion, the study underscores the pivotal role of continuous training in navigating the digital and AI-driven future. It advocates for a proactive approach to skills development, acknowledging the intersection of human values, ethics, and technological innovation. Continuous training emerges as a strategic resource for individuals and organizations, ensuring a resilient and adaptable workforce in the face of evolving technological landscapes.

Online universities have witnessed significant growth in recent years, necessitating a closer examination of the role and significance of e-tutors in facilitating effective learning experiences. There has been a growing emphasis on redefining the role of tutors in e-learning and online education, especially in response to the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic (Raviolo, 2022). E-tutors serve as crucial facilitators of online learning, providing guidance, support, and feedback to students navigating virtual learning environments (Youde, 2020; Ferrari et al., 2021). This study presents preliminary findings from an ongoing research project focused on tutoring at IUL Telematic University. The project aims to explore the community of e-tutors, examining their perceptions with respect to the role they play and their practices in terms of responsibilities, relationships with students, teaching and support activities, platform tool usage, and orientation strategies (Nardi, et al., 2023). The research adopts a mixed-method design (Creswell & Clark, 2007): the quantitative aspect, encompassing surveys and questionnaires, primarily aims at mapping the community, while the qualitative dimension, involving focus groups and interviews, seeks to delve profoundly into the community's perceptions, needs, preferences, and habits. This work presents the results based on questionnaire administered to IUL e-tutors (n=57) and qualitative insights from focus groups. The questionnaire covers various dimensions, including the educational background of e-tutors, their professional experiences, perceptions, and expectations, as well as their competencies in disciplinary, methodological, and socio-relational aspects. The same dimensions of the questionnaire were investigated in the focus groups. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of e-tutoring in online education and inform future efforts to optimize e-tutoring practices.

The themes of social injustice and educational inequality resonate strongly in a world where individuals grapple with pervasive uncertainty (Nuzzaci, 2020; Di Profio, 2022). Particularly vulnerable are young people, who may develop extremist viewpoints in response to these challenges. We define extremism as any form of rigid and inflexible personal identity with total and uncritical adherence to an ideology, intolerant of different points of view (Bötticher, 2017). It is essential to remember that the minds of adolescents and young adults exhibit physiological modes of functioning that tend toward radical thinking (Tkhostov et al., 2020). If radicalization is viewed as a process, it is conceivable that socio-environmental and psychological risk factors characterize a pre-radicalization phase. These factors would be represented by specific episodes that affect the individual during identity formation, typically during late adolescence and early adulthood (Borum, 2011; Beelmann, 2020). These indicators are not direct precursors to the experience of violent radicalization; the presence of these elements in a person does not guarantee that he or she will follow an extremist pathway extremist path. Instead, they should be understood as a risk profile and, therefore, a warning sign to pay attention. Proactive measures are essential, necessitating a nuanced understanding of the interplay between equity and quality of education in navigating today's multifaceted linguistic landscape, which encompasses not only language but also emotional literacy (Nuzzaci, 2020a). In alignment with this perspective, the "Radicalization and Extremism in Adolescents" project, spearheaded by the Gruppo Italiano Studio Terrorismo (GRIST) in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, and recipient of the CRT 2020 call for proposals, seeks to address these issues. The project's primary goal is to uncover manifestations of social extremism among youth through digital storytelling (Lambert, 2013). Digital storytelling is a methodology widely used in various fields that, through a narrative process, consists of creating video stories with images, voice, music, and text (Rodríguez, et al.,2021). It places emphasis on identifying risk factors and fostering self-awareness among fourth-year secondary school students in two schools in Turin.

Comprising six meetings throughout 2023 and involving 62 participants, the project utilized narrative workshops to prompt students to reflect on their experiences by crafting video stories around researcher-selected themes. Concurrently, alongside digital storytelling, questionnaires on future self-perceptions were administered to explore students' representations of themselves in prospective scenarios. Qualitative and content analyses of Digital Storytelling (DST) narratives and imagery reveal prevalent themes of fragility across three dimensions: individual (pertaining to self-acceptance, depression, and coping with emotional stress and anxiety), social (encompassing prejudice, social oppression, and apprehension about the future), and a sense of powerlessness in the face of change (whether positive or negative, and the imperative for meaningful decision-making) (Lamonica & Bartolini, 2023).

While the processing of questionnaire data is ongoing, preliminary findings underscore the imperative of implementing listening strategies and fostering dialogue among youth. This approach aims to equip them with the necessary tools to navigate challenges and cultivate constructive, well-being-oriented pathways forward.

In recent years, Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs) have become increasingly prevalent within university settings. These encompass DEERs established by universities themselves for institutional, educational, or guidance purposes, as well as those developed by faculty members or students for didactic aims. Broadly defined, escape rooms entail live-action, team-based games where participants confront a series of challenges with the objective of completing a mission or unraveling a mystery within a specified timeframe (Nicholson, 2018). Upon successful completion of the mission, involving a blend of hands-on and minds-on activities (Fotaris & Mastoras, 2019), participants may exit the enclosed space. The immersive and interactive nature of escape rooms, alongside the cognitive demands inherent in deciphering clues and solving puzzles, has prompted numerous faculty members to adapt the entertainment-focused escape room concept for educational purposes within their respective disciplinary domains. Recognizing this approach as an innovative and inclusive method to engage students, they have embraced it as a novel means to enrich and invigorate the learning experience.

Transforming a teaching resource in a DEER involves the incorporation of gaming elements such as structure, narrative development, and puzzle construction. These elements, as highlighted by Veldkamp et al. (2020), must be closely aligned with the learning or guidance objectives. Moreover, achieving this alignment necessitates the integration of game mechanics with pedagogical methodologies, thereby demanding a design approach that is not only guided by pedagogy, but also informed by fundamental game design principles.

The objective of this contribution is to outline an approach for designing Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs) from a pedagogical standpoint.

Ten years after the European Recommendation “Opening up education” and the UNESCO Declaration on OERs it is increasingly evident how strategic digital technologies can be in enhancing more accessible learning environments, but, at the same time, how a concern for equity and inclusion is crucial not to exacerbate educational and social inequalities between those who have access to quality education and those who do not (OECD 2021). As underlined by UNESCO Agenda 2030 and reaffirmed by the Digital Education Action Plan (EU-2021-2027), the quality and inclusiveness of education systems is crucial to enhance a fairer and sustainable society, social cohesion, economic growth and innovation.

These hopes and worries are at the basis of the Open Education (OE) movement (Blessinger e Bliss 2016), born well before the COVID-19 Pandemic with the aim of making quality learning accessible, abundant and customizable for all (dos Santos et al., 2016; Croft, Brown, 2020; Ossiannilsson E., 2022). Embedding digital technologies in the OE perspective could help to reach these goals and OERs (UNESCO 2019) represent one of the most iconic results of this match. But a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable educational environment is not an automatic consequence.

There are many critical issues that still need to be questioned. Among them: as teachers (and students in some cases) become themselves OERs creators, which new competences are needed (technological methodological and pedagogical) to fully realize openness and inclusiveness? How to spread shared quality standards and enhance an easier access to OERs? What do we actually mean by “inclusive education”? Indeed, even if there is a wide agreement on the importance of inclusion in theory, a large debate is still ongoing in policy and research sectors: some restrict the discourse to special-educational needs, others adopt a wider perspective, acknowledging that students fall behind at school for several reasons, most of them having nothing to do with special needs or disabilities but with the existence of the right conditions for learning (Thomas 2013 and Messiou 2016)).

This contribution questions these issues starting from the research process realized in the Open Learning for All (OLA) project, which enhanced the creation and use of qualitative and inclusive OERs in the secondary school system at European level with the following aims:

1. fostering the idea that inclusion is a matter of schools’ capacity to meet the different learners needs learners, without focusing only on specific target groups, which requires new approaches, pedagogies and practices;
2. widening accessibility and quality of OERs, creating an open repository, designing and testing OERs;
3. improving teachers’ competences in designing and implementing inclusive and quality OERs through open courses (MOOCs): using and menage digital tools, interacting with digital platforms, enhancing inclusion not just in terms of technological accessibility, but also taking into account the variety of students’ learning strategies, backgrounds, perspectives, personnel histories;
4. widening the definition of digital literacy promoted by EU (DigiCompEdu framework 2016) by including students’ and teachers’ capability to detect stereotypes and values explicitly and implicitly conveyed by educational resources

Recently, e-learning within higher education institutions (HEI) has received much attention for its ability to increase accessibility to online learning resources, utilising technology to enhance learning processes (La Marca & Falzone, 2022; Regmi & Jones, 2020). E-learning is considered as one of the global driving factors for the development of education and economy in many countries. The recent development of e-learning methodologies characterized by the diffusion of MOOCS, Open Educational Resources (OERs), such as apps for gamification, and other elements have improved the effectiveness of the HEI courses and reduced costs. According to the European-wide e-Learning Recognition Review Report (2015), throughout Europe the top three perceived important advantages of e-learning were greater satisfaction in the learning, job related skills and variety of choices.

Despite growing evidence claiming that e-learning is as effective as traditional means of learning, there is very limited evidence available about what works, and when and how e-learning enhances teaching and learning. There are, also, still several issues that restrict the use of e-learning on a global scale (Degner et al., 2022). Our interest is limited to the Mongolian context, starting from an analysis of best practices at European level on pedagogical-didactic practices for effective e-learning.

Lifelong Learning for Mongolia: Occupational Health & Safety project (3L4MOHS) aims to transfer know-how from the European part of the project to Mongolia, in order to develop and implement Lifelong Learning Centres at University level (in the selected 4 University Mongolian partners, covering the whole country). The digitalization of learning and teaching delivery methods of curricula (including video/moving training materials, augmented and/or virtual reality), ensures not only the modernization of the respective curriculum, but also accessibility and access equity to Lifelong education for a large number of beneficiaries in the vast and sparsely populated country of Mongolia (Barati et al., 2023). To achieve this aim, it is important to conduct a review on the EU best practices on Lifelong Learning (LLL) and e-learning at HE level with the aim of identifying:

- Trends and best practices from higher education institutions for the quality management of digital study programs;

- Effective training methodologies;

- Innovative digital tools for content sharing.

This literature review of best practices at the European level represents a crucial starting point for elevating the standards of teaching and assessment methods utilized within Mongolian institutions. Within the realm of digital education, this review has the potential to facilitate the seamless integration of technology into teaching and learning processes, thereby modernizing educational practices and enhancing accessibility (Staring et al., 2022).

Indeed, this endeavor will serve as a foundational step towards embarking on a collaborative educational journey with Mongolian partners. It will not only improve the training of teachers and promote continuous professional development, but also aims to have a lasting impact on the overall quality of the Mongolian education system.

In early 2000s the first e-government platforms (EGP) were introduced to strengthen the collaboration between citizens and governments online. What the United Nations defines e-participation is a new form of civic engagement which, in principle, should foster open and participatory governance through ICTs - Information and Communications Technologies (United Nations, 2020). Since the commitment of Barak Obama’s Administration to an “open government” model in 2009, governments around the world have increases the number and scope of internet-based platforms to facilitate public engagement of citizens (United Nation, 2020). This rapid growth creates new opportunities and challenges.

This study aims at providing insight on the inclusiveness of this new form of civic engagement. In theory, EGP should increase transparency and help individuals to accomplish civic duties, producing benefits for the entire society (McDonald, 2008; Khazei and Stockemer, 2013; Campante et al., 2018; Ceccarini, 2021). In practice, whether EGP integrate all groups of citizens, without leaving the most vulnerable segments of the society behind, is an empirical question.

Exploiting the few data available for cross-country comparisons, this study will compare data on the development of EGP with data on the average levels of competence arguably needed to the reap the benefits of the digitalization of national governments. In particular, it will focus on digital literacy, defined by the UNESCO as “the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately through digital technologies for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship” (UNESCO, 2018). And on financial literacy (FL), defined by the OECD as “a combination of awareness, knowledge, skill, attitude and behavior necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial wellbeing” (Atkinson and Messy, 2012), and more recently used as a proxy for citizens’ understanding of the content of public policies, an element needed to inform public decisions (Lo Prete and Fornero, 2019 and 2023).