UGM Participates in DISCERN-DSS Kickoff Meeting in Belgium to Advance Digital Soft Skills in Health Education

Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) took part in the kickoff meeting of the DISCERN-DSS project held in Belgium in February 2025. The meeting marked the beginning of a collaborative initiative between Indonesian and European partner institutions to strengthen digital soft skills education in the field of health higher education.

UGM was represented by Prof. Lutfan Lazuardi and Wika Hartanti. Their participation reflected UGM’s commitment to supporting educational innovation, particularly in preparing future health professionals to respond to the growing digital transformation of healthcare.

DISCERN-DSS, which stands for Digitally enhanced Scenario-Based Learning for Digital Soft Skills, is an Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project. The project aims to improve digital health education in Indonesia and the wider Asian region by promoting co-creative learning practices and Digital Scenario-Based Learning (D-SBL).

The kickoff meeting brought together partners from Indonesia and Europe to discuss the overall direction of the project, institutional roles, implementation timeline, training agenda, and expected outputs. It also provided an important opportunity for all partners to develop a shared understanding of how D-SBL can be used to support the teaching and learning of digital soft skills in health education.

For UGM, the meeting served as a strategic starting point to explore how digital soft skills can be integrated more meaningfully into curriculum and learning activities. These skills include communication, collaboration, ethical reasoning, adaptability, professionalism, and critical decision-making in digital health contexts.

Through discussions with partner institutions, UGM also gained broader insights into the use of interactive scenarios and virtual patient-based learning as tools to support active and reflective learning. This approach is expected to help students engage with real-world digital health challenges in a structured and safe learning environment.

Following the kickoff meeting, UGM will continue to contribute to the next stages of DISCERN-DSS, including curriculum mapping, training preparation, local coordination, and the co-creation of Digital Scenario-Based Learning resources. These activities will support the project’s broader goal of developing learning resources that are relevant to Indonesian health education needs.

UGM’s involvement in DISCERN-DSS strengthens its role in international collaboration and health education transformation. Through this project, UGM aims to contribute to the development of future health professionals who are not only digitally literate, but also ethical, adaptive, collaborative, and ready to work in digitally enabled healthcare systems.