King’s leads the Partnership for Digital Learning and Increased Access (PADILEIA), which was formed to meet the educational needs of a mobile and digitally literate refugee population in Jordan and Lebanon. The partnership consists of King’s, Al Al-Bayt University in Jordan, and the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, as well as Kiron Open Higher Education (a digital-education NGO) and FutureLearn (a leader in online learning).
PADILEIA delivers blended foundation and short courses and has launched eight bespoke courses on FutureLearn, designed by King’s Online and King’s Faculties. This includes English Elementary, English Intermediate, English for Healthcare, Introduction to Nursing, Business, Entrepreneurship, Digital Skills and Engineering.
To date, over 13,000 self-identifying refugees and disadvantaged young people have participated in one of these courses, and more than 1 million learners worldwide have enrolled onto one of the PADILEIA courses to gain competencies essential to business management, entrepreneurship, nursing and digital skills. In addition, some of the courses have been included in the Department for Education’s Skills Toolkit and the Grow stronger with Google initiative, allowing them to reach significantly more beneficiaries.
Find out more about PADILEIA