<< Background >>Europe is facing an aging population. Life expectancy is at its highest and many European populations are experiencing major demographic changes and transition towards a much older population structure. Despite living longer many people suffer ill-health or disability in the last 15-20 years of life which not only affects the quality of life of individuals and theirfamilies but also puts pressure on public health and care services, consequentially leading to the substantial social and economic impact on the society. With such a disbalance betweenthe quantitative and qualitative characteristics of human life, it is crucial for the population to move to the stage of active and healthy aging (AHA) and it is important to promote a healthylifestyle and increase literacy in maintaining active longevity. Ad4Health project enables Food science experts and graduates with knowledge and expertise to design functional food and thus contributes to tackling society with the challenge and need to prolong the active and healthy life of the elderly people and provide a high quality of life to them.<< Objectives >>To address the challenge, ADtrain4Health initiates a partnership of 4 internationally renowned universities with strong expertise in Food Science & Biotechnologies forteaching “Advanced Training for Future Food and Nutrition Challenges for an Ageing Healthier Population” (Ad4Health) to enable the graduates to contribute to providing AHA by elaboratingfunctional diets and nutrition.The universities involved in ADtrain4Health are:- University Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC, France)- ITMO University, Russia- Slovenska Polnohospodarska Univerzita v Nitre (SUA, Slovakia)- Universidade Catalica Portuguesa (UCP, Portugal).The consortium is strengthened by five associated industrial partners from France, Russia and Portugal.<< Implementation >>ADtrain4Health unites the advanced research and teaching expertise of the partners for developing open educational resources (OER) with digital interactive eLabs. The OERs willhave a modular structure on the basis of which the biomedical aspects of active and healthy longevity will be highlighted and include theoretical and methodological material forpractical work.In compliance with Digital Competence Framework for Educators, ADtrain4Health empowers learners with digital competences through instruments and tools for educating. Consultingwith the stakeholders, the consortium will select learning methods and criteria, digital instruments and tools, research methodologies, and required knowledge, skills and competences, filling gap between research, education and the society.The innovative teaching modules will be validated through the test-run in the format of the International Camp hold by the partners, resulting in first-hand experience andfeedback data. To respond the challenge resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the developed course will be transformed into online format, completed by eLabs and supported byguidelines and recommendations for educators and will be placed on the open educational platform to safeguarding the inclusive nature of digital learning opportunities. The eLabs willbring to learners various tools for learning, additional web resources, video lectures, animated demonstrations and self-evaluation, to conduct experiments by arousing their curiosityand learn basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation. Various participants beyond the project can enroll on the online version of the course with eLabs acrossEurope including all types of learners, educators, industry workers.ADtrain4Health will draw together real-world experience with academic knowledge to provide educators with the capability and tools to design and deliver innovative cross-disciplinaryonline course with digital eLabs in Food Science, Nutrition, Biotechnologies, Marketing, Chemistry, and Biology, thus contributing to the quality and relevance of the EU education.Regular consultations with industrial partners will guide the consortium to develop and promote teaching materials and methods to prepare graduates for the Food industry and otheremployers in Europe and around the world able to deliver the best solutions, through food and nutrition, for an aging population with more longevity and health, thus contributing tomaking European economies more research-driven, knowledge-based, and competitive.<< Results >>The outcomes of the project are- four (4) new teaching e-modules will be developed and approbated by partner universities within the curricula of the existing Master's Programs.- development of educational practices to improve knowledge and skills with an inclusive approach in the field of Food Science- possibility for students to participate in high-quality study programs of international dimension, improving their language skills and increasing their intercultural awareness as well as their chances of employability- transfer of knowledge and expertise by providing training to researchers and academics from the partner institutions- a better-trained workforce in personalized nutrition providing the countries with the human resources to solve the acute and burning problems in nutrition for AHA.

"<< Background >>Environmental sustainability is today’s most acute challenge. The European Commission’s Zero Pollution Action Plan 2021 declares that “the public health, environmental, moral and socio-economic case for the EU to lead the global fight against pollution is today stronger than ever”. As human behaviour is largely responsible for the environmental crisis we are facing, creating conditions in which governments, organisations and individuals are inclined to make eco-friendly and sustainable choices will be highly instrumental in the crisis mitigation. The European Commission has identified it as one of “the most effective ways forward” in order to achieve its “Zero Pollution Vision for 2050: a Healthy Planet for All”. Promoting social behaviour change also features in the five priorities of the Education for Climate Coalition, a flagship initiative of the European Education Area. In the meantime, right in front of our eyes, Blockchain and an array of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) have launched a revolution in the way governments, organisations, and individuals work together. At its heart, Blockchain is a database distributed among different computer servers, keeping a log of records cryptographically protected and organised in blocks of transactions, with no need of a third-party authentication. DLT and ‘Blockchain’, which is one type of DLT, allow immutable, transparent, traceable records of data. It provides a simple, secure way to establish trust for virtually any kind of transaction worldwide. The irrefutable aspect of DLT provides a new approach for promoting accountability of government, organisational and individual activities. Therefore, DLT’s potential to induce behaviour change is enormous. While the revolutionary potential of DLT has been largely tested in the financial domain, its possible use to address sustainability challenges have been explored far less. Application of DLT for environmental monitoring projects is in this regard very promising: water and air pollution levels can be monitored and recorded in an immutable manner, making falsification impossible. Giving citizens open access to trustworthy data can be conducive to their own personal accountability, empowering them to participate in environmental justice or ‘zero pollution pledges’. But to produce significant impact, DLT applications need to be designed with a knowledge of what drives human decision-making. To discover more ways DLT can contribute to improved accountability for actions and to unlock the transformative power of this technology for environmental good, non-technical issues need to be addressed. Higher education institutions play an important role in preparing the next generation of Computer Science engineers capable of tackling societal issues through breakthrough technologies. However, most EU universities lag behind when it comes to teaching DLT in combination with necessary non-technical skills to Computer Science students. Existing numerous online and offline courses on Blockchain cover the technical, financial, legal aspects of the technology but very few teach how to leverage it with the aim of tackling environmental problems. As Dr. Massarotto from UCL notices: “Educational materials are often superficial or overly-technical making their understanding of how blockchains will impact in the near future a challenge”. Future professionals will need to tackle strategic questions that DLT raises, and this will require critical, creative thinking skills, the understanding of complex, decentralized systems, the ability to design social behaviour, as well as to work in interdisciplinary teams. Currently, students still struggle with the distributed approach typical for DLT, as they are trained to deal with centralised systems. Moreover, Computer Science students lack the tools that would allow them to make a step from technical knowledge to identifying and solving certain environmental issues.<< Objectives >>The overall objective of the project is to build European higher education capacity in teaching DLT in combination with Environmental Engineering, Design Thinking, Behavioural Psychology/Behavioural Economics to Computer Science students at the Master level, in order to enable them to develop decentralised applications addressing the issue of environmental sustainability on a strategic level - aiming at a wide-spread social change. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to equip the next generation of professionals in Computer Science and beyond (environmental engineers, green NGO activists, designers of products & services, designers of smart cities & Industry 4.0, etc.) with the ability to develop solutions with a ‘decentralised’ and ‘green’ mindset. Creating a novel pedagogical framework that would allow developing such a mindset in students through the teaching/learning process is one of the project goals. The project team also aims at producing an innovative curriculum and a set of digital OERs that could be validated and used oncampus, online or in a hybrid setting not only by the members of the consortium but by dozens of universities Europe-wide.Another goal is to take full advantage of digital social interaction tools and set up a decentralised network of communities and supportive tools for connecting Computer Science students to the wider communities (DLT experts, environmental activists, behaviour economists, service designers), that can offer teachers and students learning and project development support in the context of the extremely interdisciplinary curriculum that we propose to create. In line with the decentralised logic that this resource will have, breaking down barriers between professional communities and allowing peer-to-peer exchange of knowledge will help to increase the quality of the learning outcomes and bring ‘green’ DLT-based projects to fruition by multidisciplinary self-organised teams.<< Implementation >>All BC4ECO activities have been designed and planned with the project objectives in mind. The partnership will organise seven transnational project meetings that will be instrumental to the project management and to the production of project results, as the meetings will allow partners to plan their teamwork and reflect on the progress. The work on the project results will be mostly happening between the face-to-face project meetings via digital tools for online collaboration and communication. However, the first transnational meeting will include an internal Ideation Workshop, where a co-creation process drawing from diverse fields of expertise will lead to the first draft of the BC4ECO novel pedagogical framework, aimed at instilling ‘decentralised’ and ‘green’ mindsets in students through the teaching/learning process.Organisation of three oncampus teaching and training events - two Summer Schools and one Teacher Training Workshop - will greatly contribute to the validation of the BC4ECO pedagogical framework, the course and the open educational resources. The Summer Schools will be organised in order to pilot the two educational modules with students and collect their feedback. Lecturers and researchers will learn from each other while observing peers giving classes during the Summer Schools. The Teacher Training Workshop will target the teachers from the partner institutions and beyond - all those interested in adopting our pedagogical methodology, replicating the course, or integrating BC4ECO OERs into their existing curricula. The Workshop will help teachers to become practically fluent in using distributed ledger technology in combination with associated methods, and to cultivate students with the ‘green’ and ‘decentralised’ mindsets. Feedback collected from the participants of the teacher training event will inform the further improvement of the project results.The partners will organise seven multiplier events, which are necessary for both dissemination of the results and stakeholder engagement. Important external experts and other stakeholders will be invited as participants to these events, their feedback on the project results will be collected and analysed. This will help to ensure the quality of the results. The multiplier events are also aimed at promoting the exploitation of the project results as widely as possible for a greater impact on the European higher education system. To maximise the target audience outreach, partners will co-locate five multiplier events with relevant national or international conferences, such as EUA Teaching and Learning Forum, Blockchain for Europe Summit, Next Web Amsterdam, Internet Week Denmark.<< Results >>The general outcome of the BC4ECO project will be an established strategic partnership of four organisations from across four countries - Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands and Russia - in teaching distributed ledger applications development for environmental good. It will provide a standard of excellence for higher education in Europe in this area. All project results will contribute to this outcome. The major results of the project will be the design and validation of the innovative curriculum - an interdisciplinary course “Blockchain for the Environment” (6 ECTS) enriched with digital and interactive Open Educational Resources (OERs). The course will consist of two modules - basic and advanced - 3 ECTS each, made available through a MOOC platform. The ‘basic’ module and the first MOOC “Basics of Blockchain for the Environment” will explain the main principles of the distributed ledger technology (DLT) and its potential for environmental protection to Bachelor and Master students who have never been taught about this technology before. The module will combine explanations of DLT principles with such approaches as critical thinking, design thinking, behavioural design, environmental intelligence. Students will learn how to use these approaches for creating DLT applications capable of convincing people to make eco-friendly decisions. The module will also equip the non-technical audiences, e.g. staff of ‘green’ NGOs, with the building blocks necessary to work smoothly as a team with computer scientists capable of building DLT applications. The ‘advanced’ module and the second MOOC ""Leverage Blockchain for the Environment"" are aimed at Computer Science students at the Masters level and with a certain background in distributed applications design. The module will guide students through the entire cycle: from analysing environmental challenges, selecting those issues that can be solved with the use of DLT, identifying the role of social actors in the problem, using design thinking methods to ideate solutions, and applying knowledge of behavioural psychology to build DLT applications that allow to alter social behaviour for the benefit of the environment. The set of digital OERs that BC4ECO will produce includes an e-Course Reader, a Video Collection, a Teacher Guide, an Interactive Multimedia eBook, and an online Ecosystem for Learning and Project Development. These OERs will make the entire course available to different types of learners, while the project results - better known and accessible Europe-wide. The OERs will be piloted in the partner organisations during two Summer Schools. Creation of the Teacher Guide will allow to introduce the BC4ECO educational modules beyond the partner organisations and help to improve the quality of teaching and training in this breakthrough area in Europe, thus boosting skills and employability of learners.The BC4ECO team will also develop a novel pedagogical framework showcasing the non-functional characteristics of DLT: immutability, irreversibility, transparency, consensus, distributed ledger, peer-to-peer transmission, provenance tracking, fast but costly nature of transactions. The methodology will be first formulated in the Concept Paper ""Translating the Distributed Ledger Technology Approach into Innovative and ‘Green’ Educational Methodology"", then tested with stakeholders, elaborated in the Teacher Guide and, finally, after the analysis of all lessons learnt during the project implementation, presented for a wide audience in the Interactive Multimedia eBook format. All project results will be designed in regular consultations with stakeholders. They will be suitable for on-campus, online or hybrid teaching and learning. The BC4ECO will also create conditions for the recognition and certification (ECTS credits) of learning achievements, both in the organisations within the partnership and beyond, to make it more appealing to replicate the course for other universities."

Open Educational Resources on Enabling Technologies in Wearable and Collaborative Robotics (WeCoRD) project will establish a strategic partnership for modernising postgraduate and continuous professional education in the field of robotics, making it more relevant to the users, labour market and industry needs, boosting skills and employability of learners.According to the International Federation of Robotics, collaborative and wearable robots have become the largest trend in robotics with high demand for skilled graduates. Collaborative industrial robots enable manufacturers to improve productivity by complementing human skills, relieving employees of heavy, unergonomic and tedious tasks. They play a vital role in the automotive sector. For millions of people with physical disabilities, wearable robotic technologies make everyday life easier or assist their rehabilitation. The EU collaborative robots market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 50.02% during 2018-2026. The global surgical robots market is rapidly expanding and is anticipated to reach $19.96bn in 2019. This means that the development of robotics could have a significant impact on Europe’s capacity to expand a competitive industry with millions of related jobs at stake.There has been a clear focus on developing more user-friendly robots as current models often have flaws that disappoint users. As per Multi-Annual Roadmap for Robotics in Europe 2020, development of enabling technologies to improve wearable and collaborative robots is one of the main priorities. The more user-centered is the design of such robots produced in Europe - the greater are the overall acceptance of technology among users and the global market share. These days, the market is dominated by the US and Japan. Given that an increasing number of EU citizens will need healthcare/rehabilitation in the coming decades, massive introduction of well-designed medical and rehabilitation robots could have a significant social and economic impact for the EU. The knowledge of physiology, neuroscience, ergonomics, interaction design is therefore becoming a more widely sought professional quality for robot engineers.In this context, WeCoRD project aims to enhance the EU higher education capacity in teaching enabling technologies in wearable and collaborative robotics for medical and industrial applications to fill in the skill gap between, on the one hand, the industry and the labour market needs and, on the other hand, the quality and quantity of the graduates. WeCoRD brings together five internationally renowned institutions from Turkey, Belgium, Russia and the Netherlands to combine their advanced expertise on enabling technologies in a validated innovative course offer of excellence, extended with professionally produced open educational resources, and an online Virtual Lab aimed at accessibility and fostering implementation across Europe. The project partners will select the most relevant methods, tools, and findings in engineering, design and medical research to introduce them into curricula by producing four dedicated transdisciplinary modules. These will equip graduates with the right skills and with the mindset of future technology leaders.Consultations with industry/medical stakeholders will guide the consortium's selection of learning methods and objectives, assessment criteria, research methodologies, required skills, and competences, filling the gap between research, education and the workplace. Three innovative teaching modules comprising the course will be validated during transnational Summer Schools, resulting in first-hand experience and feedback data. The fourth module is aimed to make biomechatronics accessible to medical students as future users of robots in surgery and rehabilitation. It will be validated by experts.Various participants are considered for the pilots and beyond. Mechanical Engineering students from partner universities are direct end-users of the project outputs. Other participants who enroll in the course through the Virtual Lab or in replications across Europe will include all types of learners, educators, professionals and industry workers. Five public events will be the main dissemination activities for relevant stakeholders, who are essential as the target audience, users of the Virtual Lab, multipliers of the knowledge, and a source of valuable feedback.WeCoRD's impact will be strongest at EU level, while also providing benefits to society and the economy at local, regional and national level. Through intensive cross-border and transdisciplinary cooperation, the project will produce results that are likely to become self-sustaining and develop further, such as the WeCoRD teaching community and the Virtual Lab. The project will help to prepare graduates for the robotics industry and other employers, thus contributing to making the economies of the Erasmus+ Programme countries more research-driven, knowledge-based, and competitive.

"It is widely acknowledged that language proficiency is key for a common understanding between the EU citizens and for the practice of shared cultural values. However, recent studies demonstrate that we still have a long way to go until ICT gets truly integrated into the work of the European foreign language teachers. According to surveys, the availability of ICT facilities in the foreign language classrooms of European schools is extremely low. But even a greater barrier to spreading the best practices in technology-assisted language learning is the level of teachers’ digital literacy, which is a challenge for Higher Education. Above 70 percent of the language teachers in Europe do not consider themselves 'digitally confident’ or able to teach their students using ICT instruments effectively. In order to improve the uptake of ICT tools in foreign language teaching, the educators’ digital skills need to be regularly upgraded. Moreover, there needs to be a clear distinction between the ICT skills that teachers use in regular classrooms and those that are required for teaching languages online, as online tutoring becomes increasingly popular. This new educational reality requires novel pedagogies and open learning environments, open educational resources, and open adult training environments.In this context, DC4LT project aims at improving digital literacy and empowering language teachers of all levels (HE, VET, Schools, AE, private language institutions, entrepreneurs) to use ICT instruments in their practice. To achieve this goal, the project will explore how teachers are prepared to the integration of information technologies in their pedagogical work, what skills they need in order to better support their online courses, and in what ways they can help their students' in the language learning process. Then, based on the collected primary data, the consortium will develop a self-sustained Open Internet Community of Practice for language teachers / online tutors, which will help to continuously enhance their digital competences as well as their knowledge of the design and delivery of online and blended courses. Large numbers of language teachers will be invited to participate in the DC4LT training workshops and provided with an opportunity to collaborate with peers in an interactive educational process, spreading the excellence. This will allow many European language teachers improve the efficiency of their teaching practice, secure better employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, and offer their services to more students via ICT instruments. It is envisaged that more than 1500 language teachers/trainers from all levels of education institutions from public and private sector across Europe will initially benefit from the activities of the DC4LT project. The DC4LT project will be carried out by an international consortium composed of five partners: the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO), University of Macedonia (GR), PIXEL (IT), Cyprus University of Technology (CY) and ITMO University (RU). All partners have a vast experience in technology-assisted language learning, development of open educational resources, learning analytics tools, mobile adaptive / personalized and collaborative learning and assessment.The partners will implement the project in four macro-phases: (1) Preparation, including setup and a pre-study, (2) Development of methods and content, applying expertise and pre-study results, (3) Delivering training and updating content based on the feedback and (4) Sustainability and finalization. Within the lifetime of 36 months, the project will develop and offer to the European Higher Education and other stakeholders the following tools and services:Analytical Report ""User needs and SOTA in e-language teaching""Digital Competence Assessment Framework and Tool for language teachers Training Methodology for online and blended language learningInteractive eBook “Modernising and Opening up Language Education”e-Toolkit for Digital Competences, OERs and OEPsOPEN Community of Practice DC4LT platformSeries of DC4LT WebinarsThe results of the project will be delivered at three teacher training workshops and through a series of webinars, as well as widely disseminated via the project website, social media, one European, one international and three local multiplier events and multiple other means.Reaching the ambitious objectives of the project will have a strong impact on the quality of language teaching in European Higher Education and other sectors. The impact of the project will be strengthened by delivering a replicable model of the training program for digital competences and by targeting the multipliers of knowledge."

The Health Research-Based Innovative Open Educational Resources and Tools for Lighting Design Students and Professionals (Light4Health) project has established and deepened a strategic partnership for teaching health research methods and findings to lighting designers at graduate level. Light4Health was a three year Erasmus+ co-funded project, which investigated the impact of light on health, wellbeing and the environments we live in. It developed a novel cross-disciplinary course on the intersection of lighting design and health research by selecting the most relevant health research methods, tools and findings in Neurology, Photobiology, Neuroendocrinology, Neurobehavioral Studies, Psychophysiology of Perception, as well as Behavioural, Cognitive and Environmental Psychology, and introduced these into lighting design curricula which higher education institutions can adopt. The project involves experts from Neurology, Light and Health Research, Lighting Design, Architecture, and the Build Environment from six internationally renowned institutions from the UK, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and the USA.The project, which was underpinned by scientific research, supports richer understanding of informed lighting designs associated with domestic, educational, healthcare and other types of premises. The educational course, health research methods and other outcomes of the project are suitable for lighting designers at graduate level. The course’s drive of lighting efficiency, design maximisation associated with building performance and educational tools are useful to architects, designers, lighting practitioners and lighting manufacturers. The project’s findings have also articulated the benefits of increased natural and appropriately selected artificial lighting in various settings.The project participants and consortium members have managed to close the gap between research and practice/application and translate research from complex to ‘easy to digest’ for the end users. The higher education course contents created and piloted during three annual summer schools have been consolidated into a Light4Health Online Course of Health Research for Interior Lighting Design. This has been extensively reviewed by lighting manufacturers, design practitioners such as architects and lighting designers, academics in the fields of lighting and health research and students. The course was launched in August 2021 to a very positive response.The course contents are open access, free to use by either lighting students or practitioners through self-study; provide a syllabus and materials for HE providers to use in whole or in part within their curricula or teaching. The online course consists of five educational modules:1.Introduction to health-related research for lighting design2.Review on lighting basics and health and wellbeing research3.Software, measuring devices and evaluation tools4.Standards and best practice5.Application and examples from research and practiceEach module, which has been reviewed by professional bodies, academics and industry practitioners, contains video lectures, supporting presentation slides, a reading reference list and a self-assessment quiz. Teachers are provided with a syllabus and other material such as sample task assignments such as how to do a light plan, measuring illuminance and physiological metrics.This education offer will better inform lighting practitioners and develop stronger client understanding of the impact of specifying appropriate lighting solutions. Light4Health’s impact is at many levels – both international and EU whilst also providing benefits to society and the economy at local, regional and national level. Through intensive cross-border and cross-disciplinary cooperation, the project has triggered collaborations and produced results that are already in use at university level and likely to become self-sustaining and develop further. The project will help to prepare graduates for the lighting industry and other employers in Europe and around the world, thus contributing to making European and other economies more research-driven, knowledge-based, and competitive.