Active students form the backbone of democratic universities, active citizenship and engaged universities (Adler & Goggin 2005). Student engagement activities in higher education institutions, either as an optional activity (e.g. volunteering in a student union) or as part of study programmes (e.g. engaging in service-learning), foster students’ civic responsibility and equip them with the necessary competences for facing societal challenges (Boland 2014; Watkins et al. 2015).

In light of the COVID19 pandemic, there are strong arguments in favour of awarding civic engagement a larger role, especially in a digital arena. Digital tools allow the widening of opportunities for civic engagement. Due to the pandemic, most courses related to student engagement have been switched to online coursework, however, from research we know little about the link between students’ civic engagement and digital technologies in higher education teaching and learning. Therefore, our research questions of the proposed symposium are: How can good practices of students’ civic engagement making use of digital tools be described? Which chances and potentials for civic engagement can we identify in the digital arena and which recommendations can we derive for teaching?

The symposium offers insights into this field in higher education from a European comparative perspective. While the first presentation focuses on the development of a European Framework for civic engagement and offers a theoretical framework for the symposium, the following three presentations display practical case studies for digital civic engagement in higher education. The presentations 2, 3 and 4 involve case studies from the European project Students as Digital Civic Engagers. In each country, case studies on student engagement activities using digital tools were conducted. In each case, online interviews were performed with both sides of teaching and learning: With teachers and educators in higher education, who planned and set up the digital activities, and with students who participated in them. For this reason, the symposium follows an empirical case study approach in all papers (Yin, 2014) in the three universities involved (University of Minho, Portugal; University of Vienna, Austria; University of Tartu, Estonia). The case study approach facilitates insight on the incremental development of digital civic engagement.

The findings show both potentials and critical viewpoints on how civic engagement changes when using digital tools in HE teaching and learning.

Adler, R. P., & Goggin, J. (2005). What do we mean by civic engagement? Journal of Transformative Education, 3(3): 236-253. Boland, J. A. (2014). Orientations to civic engagement: Insights into the sustainability of a challenging pedagogy. Studies in Higher Education, 39(1): 180-195. Watkins, M., C. Hayes, & Sarubbi, M. (2015). The six requirements of service-learning: A pathway to high impact practices. In O. Delano-Oriaran, M. W. Penick-Parks & S. Fondrie (Eds.), The SAGE Sourcebook of service-Learning and civic engagement (pp. 115-122). London: SAGE. Yin, R.K (2014) Case Study Research: Design and Methods California: Sage Publications.