Design options for Digital International Youth Work: An overview Zoom, BigBlueButton or something entirely different? A day, a week or several months? There are numerous ways to design digital projects depending on the project goal, available resources and funding guidelines. This section provides an overview of how to design digital projects in terms of format, project term, use of digital elements, devices, online tools and composition of the educational team. Formats: online, hybrid, blended Digital projects follow different formats depending on how their online and offline phases are structured. A distinction can be drawn between online, hybrid and blended formats. This distinction should be regarded as a suggested definition that serves to roughly categorise projects. The three terms are used differently in the cur- rent debate. Online In online-only formats the entire exchange takes place virtually. That means that all the participants communi- cate with each other online. They take part individually in these online sessions using their own device or partic- ipate using various digital tools. Example: All the participants in the partner countries take part in a project individually on their own devices and at various locations. Hybrid In hybrid formats, online and offline activities take place simultaneously, for instance when one youth group is lo- cated in one place and another joins the session virtually from another location. When individual participants in a group take part online while the rest of the group is on site, this is also described as a hybrid format. Example: Youth group A is in a youth centre in country A; youth group B is in a conference centre in country B. The two groups are linked up online, each group using its own device. Blended In blended formats, online and offline phases alternate. The online phases can be incorporated into the project structure in various ways, that is either in parallel, at the start or at the end. The term “blended format” was coined in analogy with the term “blended learning”. The term “blended” was originally used in the drinks and to- bacco industry when different types of coffee or tobacco, for instance, were mixed together to produce a new, bet- ter product (see Stecher et al. 2019, p. 21.)
Example: A project involving two partner countries starts with an online phase in which all the participants take part virtually and individually. The next phase is of- fline, that is, all the participants meet in person in one of the two partner countries. However, some projects cannot be assigned to any of the above three categories as they contain a mix of dif- ferent formats. They can involve a national, in-person session at the start during which the two country groups link up online during certain phases. After that both country groups attend an in-person session. As a result, the project has hybrid elements (in-person sessions with the partner group linked up online) and blended ele- ments (an online phase at the start and an offline phase at the end). Project duration Using digital elements in International Youth Work can sometimes change the duration of a project. Here, too, there are multiple ways to design the project. Short one- day online formats are one option, as are digital projects lasting several weeks or months. The options available for designing the sessions within a project lasting sever- al weeks or months can also vary from one long online meeting per month to short daily meetings over a period of two weeks, for example. One thing to remember is that processes can often take longer in an online set- ting, on account of technical delays, for instance, having to explain the technical equipment being used or other dynamics in group processes. In contrast to offline set- tings, it is more difficult to fill any idle time that may arise by having an informal discussion. This, in turn, can neg- atively impact both participants’ motivation and various group dynamic processes, such as how participants per- ceive the group building process. Account needs to be taken of this during a digital project’s conception phase. Approaches to offline sessions cannot be transferred wholesale to online settings. Instead, digital projects should be designed as such from the start by taking aspects specific to the online setting into account. That can, for instance, mean that online sessions need to be shorter than offline sessions and include online-specific, interactive methods that help create a more relaxed at- mosphere (see the contribution on Group Dynamics in Digital Exchanges).
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