Aarhus University, Bifrost University and University College Dublin have agreed to join forces and develop a high quality and innovative degree that will attract students interested in studying business law in Europe. The impact of this partnership is a joint degree in business and law that will be launched in fall 2018. The innovative aspect of the degree is that all lectures will take place in an online setting. By this, borders are eliminated between participating countries, as the classroom is moved to the “cloud” using ICT and social media to enrich the student experience. Therefore the actual place of residence of the students or faculty will not be the deciding factor in their possibility to participate. Partners aim to contribute towards the strengthening of education in Europe and graduate professionals with broad but interlinked competencies.The reason behind this partnership is that there is a need for innovative thinking in law schools. E-learning is relatively uncommon and underdeveloped in law. We aim to transform the way universities cooperate and communicate with students. Cross border teaching of courses, using technology can be a response to the challenge facing higher education. The current forms of teaching in law school are not sufficient to prepare students for the technological advances. It does not connect with the new generation of law students, and does not take into consideration the benefits of technology for teaching. The project is innovative and complementary to other initiatives carried out by the participating organization. All three partners support information and communication technology for learning and digital competencies of students and faculty, using the goals stipulated in the 2013 Communication on Opening up Education. We are going to design and implement a methodology to convert conventional classes to blended learning and to find a common language of what planning and developing such a degree entails. The methodology aims to facilitate the transformation for other universities, and assisting current and future adaptors of blended learning. The partners will use the A.D.D.I.E model to design the methodology behind the development of the blended learning. The model includes five stages: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation where the parameters of each phase are defined beforehand. All elements of the plan are carefully evaluated and monitored. Within each phase project activities are set up with the aim of reaching the project objectives. It is our goal to expand the network of participating universities as the joint degree is running successfully. Blended learning can facilitate the cooperation of universities, regardless of the location of faculty and students. By ensuring a thorough quality control and constant improvement of the degree, the joint degree can continue to grow and improve with time and technological advances. This joint degree in business and law, might in the end, be a degree where you can choose your courses from hundreds of universities, based on a common curriculum and a successful network of innovative partners.

The Higher Education (HE) sector suffers globally from a number of flaws which are currently being enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Communication of the European Commission it is stressed that “If education is to be the backbone of growth and inclusion in the EU, a key task is preparing citizens to make the most of the opportunities and meet the challenges of a fast-moving, globalised and interconnected world.” (COM(2018) 22 final, p. 3). This document points towards a strong need for enhancing online, distance and blended learning in the EU including support for teachers and learners. This need has been also expressed in the Extraordinary Erasmus+ call to support Digital Education Readiness in response to Coronavirus pandemic.To make the HE institutions ready for Digital Education (DE), the two main project objectives are:A) to synthesize the main pedagogical and technological principles in the development of DE approaches including preparation of the supporting teaching materials, and development of a basic structure for DE recognition,B) to apply, test and validate these principles in different pilot modules/courses targeting different student cohorts at all partner universities.The project consortium is composed of partners with the distinct experience in DE on different levels, ranging from a few months to decades. The consortium partners represent universities with different history and educational profiles, from general to technical and business oriented.The project consortium consists of:1) Brno University of Technology (CZ),2) University Politehnica of Bucharest (RO),3) University of Agder (NO),4) Bifröst University (IS).Two Intellectual Outputs will be developed:(1) Digital Education Methodology, including several case studies with the description of relevant pedagogy, teaching materials, digital learning tools and simulators in DE; each partner university will contribute with two methodological cases for two different study disciplines covering engineering, quality management, mathematics, media studies, leadership.(2) Digital Education Recognition, where possibilities of recognition of higher education achievements will be explored including use of the blockchain technology in digital recognition of ECTS. A needs/gaps analysis will be prepared as well as a case study and a pilot concept for digital recognition based on blockchains.Other project activities:-4 transnational project meetings, one in each partner country,-4 Multiplier Events, one in each partner country,-4 Learning/Teaching/Training activities, one organized by each consortium member.The project is innovative in both methodology and results. The most important innovation characteristic is applying an advanced DE strategy based on the Design Thinking and the Universal Design methodologies to transfer multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge in HE.Anticipated main project results:-8 DE methodologies for HE institutions in 8 different topics,-one case study about application of blockchain technology in DE recognition, including design, implementation and testing of a recognition system.The project target groups:i) students of a variety of study programmes with diverse background and learning skills,ii) teachers involved in DE,iii) education and ICT experts with specialization in online learning.We envisage the following short and long term impact on target groups and institutions:a) Partner institutionsShort Term: increased level of knowledge based on exchange of evidence on DEconcepts, focus groups and results of the pilot training; increased knowledge to be transferred into more extensive projectsLong Term: introduce schemes into daily practices; contribute to changes in economic policies and learning techniques b) Authorities/expertsShort Term: increase knowledge and awareness on circular bio-economy conceptsLong term: stimulate DE concepts schemes policies; developing ideas for further improving modern educational mechanismsc) Academic service providersShort Term: increase awareness levels about the possibility of introducing modern DE concepts / blockchain technology support in their own administrative rules; increase responsibility in promoting modern curricula and coursesLong Term: increased capacity of the involved HEI to cooperate with authorities in designing appropriate DE conceptsd) Students/learners: increased awareness of the potential of DE concepts; increased capacity of learning based on modern practices; increased chances to be enrolled on the unique European labour market based on Digital Education RecognitionAddressing Priority 1: Making better use of digital technology for teaching and learning put forward in the Digital Education Action Plan of the European Commission, the BoostEdU project will provide a solid methodological basis and valuable recommendations for the efficient implementation of Digital Education across European universities.

Understanding and communicating data became critical for companies: lack of data communication and visualization skills, including data storytelling and infographics, lack of knowledge of basic tools to analyses and present data become a serious problem for the modern labour market. Today not only data scientists need data understanding and communication skills, but a wide variety of positions in any industry require this new type of soft skill, that became similar to language skills and digital literacy. The partnership has developed a modular course on Data Understanding and Communication to be implemented in CPD, VET and HE environments. The three modules of 30 learning hours (theory and practice) consists of a problem analysis module, a data analysis module, and a communication modul. Each modul covers 3-5 skills that are thought through units. One unit is between 25 and 60 minutes of self-paced studying. The acquisition of a skill is tested through self-assessment: unit level self-evaluation and skill level self-tests. The full course is available in English, Spanish, Polish and Hungarian. Validation workshops and piloting ensured the relevance and the quality of the course.It is based on a detailed needs analysis and best practices report on the state of the art in DUC (Data understanding and communication) and especially DUC in continuous professional development field. The partners organised 4 focus group meetings with 27 selected participants, conducted 14 expert interviews and used the data collected through 95 completed online questionnaires. For desk research they collected the data and referenced at least 5 sources as requested and provided 2 case studies per country. The full report is available to download from the project website in English. Executive summaries are also made available similarly in English, Spanish, Polish and Hungarian.Our initial survey showed a great need of easily applicable examples that facilitates understanding and provides a good example of data understanding and communication close to one’s own field of work. For this reason, every module of the DUCK course has three mini-project activities. These follow the content structure of the course and provide examples of the different skills on different educational sectors (this way learners and teachers can identify the mini project closest to their professional interests): activities and examples for VET teachers and trainers; for Secondary school teachers in-service training activities and; for continuous professional development (CPD) in the corporate sector and for adult VET trainers. These examples are build in the course structure but can be accessed separately as well, through the Resource Center. All activities and examples are available there as OERs to be freely used, adapted and translated. Participating organizations have all benefited from the teamwork itself which has proved to be productive and very positive for all. Partners have shared knowledge on all the project topics, and shared different ways of critical thinking skills development. All partners have also successfully tested the proposed educational tools, strategies and methodologies being able to reproduce and apply them in their daily activities. Finally, some partners (the Institute of Continuing Education of Engineers of BME and the Faculty of Economics of WUT) are already made steps in applying the project’s results in their organizations in order to promote a new program for VET teachers, university teachers, Engineering further education and intra-university CPD offer via short term training for trainers.An Implementation Guideline was written to help teachers and trainers to plan and implement their own course offer with the use of the On-line content, Resource center, evaluation and methodological tools, written based on the O1 report, development plans and piloting results. A complex methodology is introduced multimedia on-line course content production on DUCK topic, descriptions on how to use the different on-line course elements in the classroom and by using other methods, with special emphasis on blended learning methods like flipped classroom, project work, mini project and collaborative learning.

The project goal stem from three preconditions: the necessity to develop and train transversal skills to provide students with right skills to enable graduate’s employability in changing labour market, the necessity to provide unified evaluation system supported by online tools to encompass education disruption; the necessity to provide teachers with skills and tools to improve online and blended teaching enabling both hard and soft skills education.Overall project goal is to create soft skills standard system to address incoherence in training and evaluation of transversal skills in digital environment. Such framework would be beneficial for further establishment of soft skills recognition and validation system in EU. There will be 5 project partners working on 5 intellectual outputs: preliminary analysis on current state-of-the-art of digital soft skills training, soft skills evaluation methodology and tools, soft skills simulator module-a digital tool, soft skills training and evaluation in digital environment (training scheme) and handbook explaining the standard soft skills system deployment. The system will be developed by consortium of partners: ABC-Academic Business Centrum (association), Technische Universität Dresden, Fachhochschule Oberösterreich, Masaryk University, Haskolin a Bifrost. Project partners’ previous activities and research focused on methodologies supporting interaction in class and soft skills development, namely project-based learning, design thinking as well as use of digital instruments within classes and online learning. Partners will use this didactics and teaching tools to address the gap between online and offline teaching in the training of soft skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration. The project will aim to deliver course templates (teaching unit templates) with preselected techniques and tools to address soft skills training and evaluation in digital environment in 3 main areas: technology, economics, languages. To enhance the soft skills training, project partners will create soft skills simulator module to support the training, course scheduling and evaluation. University teachers will gain new skills and tools via multiplier events which will lead to long-term improvement of transversal skills development and inclusion into study courses thus improving overall education quality a graduate’s preparedness.

• Context: Tourism is one of the fastest growing and most profitable industrial sector in Europe and accounts for consistently larger share of GDP. Despite great expectations of continuing growth of the tourist sector as a base for economic stability, there is a lack of recognition concerning skills of employees. This project was set up to improve the qualifications of unskilled persons in the tourist sector by creating a strong and comprehensive learning model for vocational instructors (training of trainers) who can provide fellow employees with education and training considering the special requirements of the target group. A GAP analysis clearly indicated that the need for this type of VET education is similar in all participating countries - from Sicily in the south to Iceland and Finland in the north.• Objectives:The primary objective of the project was to create, test and implement a learning model/curriculum, to meet the requirements of the specific situations in each partner country and which could be adopted in other European countries. This model used was based on a well-proven methodology for training on-the-job-trainers in retail, services and other industrial sectors. The model developed was adjusted to requirement analysis made in all partner countries. Our opinion is that we succeeded very well with the objectives of the project.• Participants:The consortium comprised of five partners: Two from Iceland (one of which was the project coordinator and the other is federation of tourist enterprises) and one from each of the following countries: Austria (Vienna), Finland (Kajaanin) and Italy (Sicily). All partners hold a key position in their home regions in vocational education development. All partner has close links to the tourist industry in the home region which was important to secure involvement of local enterprises where the learning model was tested in real circumstances. The partnership ensured that the final model took into consideration the variations in tourism in the different areas and different vocational school systems in each partner country.• ActivitiesThe first step was to revise a proven learning model, designed for training of vocational instructors, by the name of Stepping-stones and had been implemented in other industrial sector, i.e. the retail sector. Parallel to this review a GAP analyses in all partner countries was performed whereby the outcome was be compared. The GAP analysis together with the revised learning model was the base of drafting a curriculum, which was then tested in a pilot training in all partner countries. The pilot training was assessed, and results used for improving the final learning model. The model was presented to stakeholders and finally implemented by trainers in their respective organizations. Dissemination activities were carried out during all project time by promoting the idea behind the TTRAIN model and the learning portal.• Methodology A set of methodologies were applied in order to achieve the goal of the project, to implement a tailor-made learning model for vocational instructors in the tourism sector. The basic model which was applied is a combination of several modules where the main subjects concentrates on the demand of adult students, enhancing self-confident and encouragement of creative thinking together with practical solutions in the working environment. • Results The result is a detailed curriculum plan including content, number of learning hours and practical guidance for the vocational instructors. The result was published in an open web portal. Other main outputs are the summary results from the GAP analyse and a summary report on the outcome of the pilot test courses. • ImpactThe main impact of the project is the contribution to increase the quality of vocational training of tourist company employees, which leads to enhancing the quality of services provided to tourists and raise the quality of the companies involved. Moreover the project leads to better qualified employees with grater motivation to further build on to the education and become more valuable employees. Another impact is on the educational providers, especially those involved in adult education. • Long term benefitsThe TTRAIN project contributes to strengthen the image of the participating companies and increase their competitiveness with more qualified personnel and happier customers. A long-term impact is expected to be improve vocational education and training for tourist companies’ employees in Europe. This goal also secures the sustainability of the result. Another long-term impact is the contribution to the national economy by supporting the growing tourist industry.