<< Background >>Most of the students that finish their courses at HEIs get the technical skills. But, do they know the purpose of such skills? Are they prepared to apply them to their jobs? And, the technical skills do not represent the full story. Businesses live in a global digital connected world. Although actual students are digital natives do they get the necessary digital competencies, like do collaborative work using digital technologies?The aim of D-PBL project is to combine digital teaching-learning with project-based learning, applied in an international context. PBL focuses on problem solving and solutions seekers, providing students with a rich learning path, given that the job market increasingly demands transversal skills in teams to achieve a better collective intelligence effort. D-PBL promotes outcomes-oriented learning while integrating transdisciplinary approaches with innovative active pedagogic practices.Students, mainly, and lecturers, jointly, are the target groups to be addressed in the project. The former benefit from increasing their digital competencies, above all those that will be structural when they enter into their jobs, and also benefit from a recent, but effective, pedagogical learning process that focus, both on the technical competencies, and the transversal ones. The latter benefit from actualization of digital competencies and improving their pedagogical skills, likewise becoming more effective while lecturing, and, at the same time, establishing a mutual communication platform with their students. Together, all benefit from the inclusion in Europe, exchanging learning experiences and progressing with other European mates, but avoiding the awkward traveling costs, time consumption, and settling.Collaborating in the creation of methodologies and tools aimed at developing specific students’ competences will enable teachers/lecturers to act in correspondence with the HE institutions’ strategy and better respond to the actual societal needs. Developing core competencies in higher education graduates has become an actual and trend issue due to the greatest concerns of students, governments, and employers about the quality of higher education outcomes.<< Objectives >>The objectives of D-PBL project ground on three dimensions: give sense to the technical skills by providing a real context to the learning path, give effective business-useful digital competencies, and integrate students in real multi-national teams. Partial specific objectives include: assess lecturers digital skills (as lecturers digital skills should be solid in order to teach them to students); train the lecturers with the necessary blend of digital and pedagogic competences; conceive the space (room) where students and lecturers will work on their projects, enabling both the technical context and digital apparatus, i.e. create the D-PBL cell; organize multi-national teams working on business problems, finding solutions, while communicating over digital technologies.Students will gain new competencies in distant project work based on real problems, combining and using the benefits of new technologies. Disadvantaged students, as well as those already employed, will have an opportunity to engage and benefit from international mobility despite the barriers they may face preventing them to go on physical mobility. Teachers/Lecturers will get the opportunity to explore new methodologies. All the intervenient will get involved with digital technologies, getting used to participating in digitally mediated work sessions, acquiring skills in the use of specific hardware and software, internalizing the best practices in virtual environments in such a way that their levels of productivity in such environments will get increased and their motivation and readiness to participate in virtual mobility and exchange will lift. This project will contribute to streamlining innovative teaching-learning paradigms and technologies aimed to develop soft skills in different contexts. Multiplier effects will be facilitated since all partners will be able to demonstrate to newcomers the D/BPL pedagogies in practice at their digital cells.During the project implementation, the team will deliver a set of Outputs (Results) developed, mostly, to train and empower HE lecturers in the usage of EAD and PBL methodology for the benefit of the students, as well as to enhance the adoption of innovative technologies and pedagogies in Higher Education.<< Implementation >>The D-PBL project is scheduled for 24 months. The first stage will be dedicated to diagnose digital skills weaknesses in the lecturers and train them. In parallel, the working environment (the D-PBL cell) will be conceived, assembled, evaluated, and replicated among the six participants. In the final activity, the cells and procedures will be tuned in real working multi-national PBL student groups and all the emerging knowledge will be recorded.The project's sequence of activities towards the main results starts with the assessment of the lecturers/teachers' digital literacy levels, and for that the project will deliver the EAD Digital Competencies Survey (R1). The project will then develop the EAD Training Toolkit/Course for Teachers (R2), which will include user manuals (in video and e-book format) in technical, pedagogical, and behavioral features. By the same time the project will be designing the Architecture of Digital D-PBL Cells (R3), considering that most of its building blocks already exist in the university partners. Next, happens the Piloting phase that will follow a 2-stage format: 1st) training the trainers, and 2nd) the application in real context with students carried out through experimental courses. Finally, a set of Guidelines for Digital Problem-based Teaching-Learning (R4) will be conceived.The D-PBL project encompasses four main groups of participants, being the main targets students and lecturers. Their involvement in the project activities is planned as follows: A) Students: students will come from the six HEI partners and will be integrated in the piloting phase; they will work on the real projects proposed by companies (PBL) under the advising of the lecturers. B) Lecturers: like students, lecturers will come from the six HEI partners; they will also participate in the piloting phase, as they will be advising the PBL student groups, and the more proficient lecturers on digital technologies will also participate in the preliminary training phase, teaching their colleagues according to the EAD Training Toolkit/Course for Teachers. C) IT support staff: each HEI partner will select the respective IT staff that will support students and lecturers and maintain the IT systems purposefully working for the D-PBL project. D) Companies: actually every HEI partner already has established relationships with companies, but they will call them to action, participating with real problems and challenges suggestions; the real problems and challenges are the core of the work of the PBL groups.<< Results >>The main project results, for which all partners will jointly contribute, will be: ●EAD Digital Competencies Survey (R1) where the actual digital competencies of the academic staff will be assessed;●EAD Training Toolkit/Course for Teachers (R2) where manuals (in video and e-book format) and a training course are produced/designed according to the weaknesses detected in R1;●Architecture of Digital D-PBL Cells (R3) where the working space (cells), respective furniture, decking, hardware, and software are conceived, designed, assembled, tested and replicated;●Guidelines for Digital Problem-based Teaching-Learning (R4) where the D-PBL cells and pedagogical techniques are taken into practice in multi-national student groups working in projects, while all the knowledge and savoir-faire that emerge in the project is recorded; this will work as referential for other HEIs.Developing and piloting the D-PBL proposed model will both allow to introduce pedagogical and methodological novelties in the partners’ study processes, as well as contribute to the development of the new educational models in the EHEA (European Higher Education Area) while contributing to sustainability targets. The most important long-term benefit envisaged by the D-PBL project is the effectiveness of the students’ competence while working in companies, mastering both the technical and the digital skills, after D-PBL had a role during their educational path at the HEI. Then, HEIs’ mission would have been accomplished. In addition, the method of D-PBL project is disseminated and extensively applied, turning HEIs more effective while educating well-equipped citizens, ready for the XXI century. The D-PBL partnership will contribute to further enrich the quality, inclusiveness, digital and green dimension of EU Member States education systems. D-PBL will help shaping the European Education Area based on freedom for students and teachers to learn and work internationally and for institutions to freely associate with one another in Europe and worldwide. The project outcomes contribute to build a high-performing digital education ecosystem with enhanced digital competences for the digital transformation, as foreseen by the “Digital Education Action Plan (2021 – 2027)”.

ADD-ONSKILLS project responds to an increasing need for taking up new challenges in digital and remote times, that set the bar high for teachers and trainers in technical universities. Thus, they need not only to follow quick-changes in the construction sector, but also face the prospect of remote or hybrid learning. Preliminary research about the competences of graduates of technical universities as well as results of analysis of our previous Erasmus+ project, showed inability to conduct comprehensive analysis taking into account different aspects and technical solutions to create the best energy-effective and ecology-friendly solution. The analysis of the previous project in this area showed a gap to be filled, thus, we decided to face the challenge. Moreover the pandemic situation made students stay home or conduct blended learning, that raised requirements to educators. Modern lessons would thus move from an approach centred on the teacher's performance to one based on the construction and development of new students' skills, guided by the teacher working with them on the evaluation of content, making it clear, comparing results, developing new ideas. The teacher would therefore not only be entrusted with the role of controlling learning but also that of facilitating the interaction of knowledge, managing relationships, developing practical hard and soft skills. Multimedia modules are aimed at stimulating subsequent reflections and activities to be carried out by students. They must deal with the topics with an integrated approach between different disciplinary areas, encourage questions and develop creative thinking. We need to prepare engineers to enter the international labour market. To achieve the aim of the project a cohesive consortium with active involvement of 5 HEIs and one association of engineers has been established. All partners understand inevitability of changes in the education system and have wide experience in different areas related to designing low energy and eco-friendly buildings for sustainable cities. Common work of our teachers, their participation in an international short training, project meetings will enable the exchange of knowledge about designing and workmanship of modern, smart buildings using eco-friendly solutions. It will also contribute to the creation of a long-lasting network of cooperation in the didactic and scientific field. We will create an innovative learning module for blended mobility course, taking into account that the full course could be done remotely if necessary. We will develop at least 4 e-labs that will provide remote access to the equipment or will allow to simulate operation of systems depending on external variables to replace typical labs on site. Our ideas, tools and methods will be tested on two groups of students working in international and interdisciplinary teams. All products verified during the courses (syllabus of the course, didactic e-modules, e-labs, e-book) will be delivered and available free of charge on the ADD-ON_SKILLS web page. The innovative ADD-ON_SKILLS module will be included in our HEIs programmes and offered to students from various universities as a facultative subject (4 ECTS), or/and as a course to upskill young engineers. The implementation of this module will allow to enhance the attractiveness of the studies, complement the programme with modern IT technology achievements and make the teaching content more consistent with the practical aspects to prepare graduates to enter the demanding international labour market. It is worth to note it will ease HEIs virtual teaching and sweeten the pot. Participants of ADD-ON_SKILLS project (students, teachers) will improve their language competence, interpersonal skills, raise their multicultural awareness and get specialist engineering knowledge. Employers taking part in meetings will find HEIs open for cooperation with business and industry in many fields (joint case-studies, thesis, trainings etc.).In the future, ADD-ON_SKILLS module that is open to new technologies and adapts to the needs of the labour market demand will contribute to the development of the economy, filling the gap in education observed. We will organize at least 3 multiplier events in Poland and Lithuania, to promote results of ADD-ON_SKILLS project and ERASMUS+ ideas at various levels. We will disseminate the results among students, teachers and scientists–we will share our outputs, facilitate access to materials that will be helpful in different disciplines and courses. The results of the project will be also submitted to the executives of HEIs to inspire them to further improvements in the educational process. Moreover, we will disseminate the results of our analysis among local citizens to make them more environmentally conscious, which hopefully will result in larger use of modern innovative solutions, reduction in energy consumption and decrease of greenhouse gasses emission in the future

<< Background >>The pandemic has forced various educational institutions to adopt an online teaching format quickly. From a technological point of view, this was not hard. A major challenge is the teaching methodology: learning online makes it more challenging to keep the student at the computer for a long time, as well as to involve the student in the lecture and help him/her avoid ‘distraction syndrome’. Months of lockdown, when teachers and students had to work in the format of distant learning, demonstrated that traditional methods are not optimal, it is necessary to change the approach and help lecturers to overcome the challenges posed by online teaching.Moreover, the pandemic has become a real challenge in organizing Erasmus+ studies. The onset of the pandemic, when the situation changed in a flash, the countries were closing their borders and the transport system completely disrupted, created a great sense of uncertainty for students and their parents; many families feel reluctant to let their children study abroad. A possible response to this situation is to offer students the opportunity of Erasmus+ blended mobility in order to recover trust and create international experiences taking full advantage of virtual mobility. However, the last few months have shown that students do not see the value of starting Erasmus+ studies online – if they refuse physical mobility, they do not choose to study online either and do not participate in the Erasmus+ programme at all. It would be very important to show students that even without physical mobility, studying online in the international environment could create value for them – working in an international online team can help students to develop important professional and transferable competencies, to expand their network and still, can create cultural experiences for them.<< Objectives >>The CityGo project aims to develop methodology and materials that enable higher education institutions (HEIs) to perform quality and engaging problem-based learning in a digital environment.This will be achieved through applying at HEIs a model of collaborative online communities focused around a particular topic. In business this practice already proved to be a successful one: in our info-age people feel overwhelmed with information and they wish to have a ‘guide’ who would orient them, connect with high-quality info-pieces or relevant expertise. The active community also provides peer-to-peer learning, which creates common experiences, gives a sense of belonging, and increases participants’ engagement. So during this project consortium will develop a methodology of efficient teaching/learning in collaborative online communities, where students will solve particular societal challenges on Sustainable City. The community will offer to their members (students and lecturers) a digital content library on relevant topics and a collaborative online platform, where members will meet each other and solve various issues.Project objectives:1) to improve HEIs lecturers competence in creating an engaging and efficient online learning environment;2) to advance competencies of higher education students to learn efficiently in international online communities addressing real-world challenges;3) to create an open-access content library for the modules in the field of Sustainable City that can lay the foundation for effective partnerships between HEIs for Erasmus+ blended mobility;4) to collect findings and best practice and share success factors and challenges of engaging digital problem-based learning in the various cultural and institutional contexts.<< Implementation >>The project will start with students' and teachers' survey in order to develop tools for efficient online communities – in Month 6 the work package will result in Procedures and strategies for setting up effective challenge-oriented online communities (facilitator’s rules and participants’ policies).Along with that, the consortium will start working on a platform with digital learning materials, which will be used by the participants of collaborative online communities. At least 6 modules will be adopted for online learning (3-6 ECTS each). After completion of the digital content library, at least 6 collaborative communities for students and 1 community for facilitators will be created in Moodle, Facebook (or other) environment. 180 students from 6 HEIs will be working on real-world challenges in the online communities. In order to consistently gather information and analyze the resulting experience from the perspective of students, lecturers, and institutions, a participatory-made framework will be developed. Partners will analyze adaptation of participants, interaction rules and work process, facilitation of communication, acting as a team, peer-to-peer learning, reaching the goals, transdisciplinarity, working in international teams. After analyzing and compiling all the experiences PR3 will result in Guidelines for HEIs, which would address the following concerns: choosing a platform that matches institutional/consortium needs, preparing community facilitators, developing guidelines and governance to fit the organization, creating awareness for the community, intercultural aspect (what to take into account running international communities). In order to multiply created knowledge and lessons learned, each partner will organize 3 multiplier events (webinar M9, webinar M15, offline event M24) inviting higher education lecturerers, local authorities, NGOs, business representatives from their region/country.<< Results >>The main results and outcomes reached by the consortium evolve from the project objectives:RESULTS1) Procedures and strategies for setting up effective challenge-oriented online communities (facilitator’s rules and participants’ policies) 2) An open-access digital content library on Sustainable City consisting of at least of 6 modules and laying a solid foundation for quality Erasmus+ blended mobility will be developed;3) Guidelines for HEIs on setting up collaborative online communities will be prepared.4) At least 30 lecturers will increase their competence in the facilitation of challenge-oriented collaborative online communities at 6 HEIs (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL);5) At least 180 students (including both local and international) from 6 HEIs (LT, DE, PL, CZ, PT, GR) will increase their competence of working on interdisciplinary real-world challenges in the virtual environment of collaborative online communities;6) At least 360 persons from outside the partner institutions will take part in the webinars/workshops (through multiplier events) where they will learn about created results and lessons learned.OUTCOMES1) Advanced HE lecturers’ competence for interdisciplinary engaging problem-based teaching in an online environment;2) Improved student competence and engagement for collaborative online learning;3) Created institutional know-how regarding quality challenge-oriented teaching/learning in the digital environment at 6 HEIs (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL);4) Laid a solid foundation for quality Erasmus+ blended mobility in the field of Sustainable City;5) Created new partnerships and strengthened existing cooperation within 6 consortium members (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL).6) Developed a learning approach in a digital environment easy transferable and applicable in HEIs across Europe.

Living in the era of digital technologies rapid development and taking over the traditional ways of teaching and learning the best approach for a modern VET school is to adapt quickly and create corresponding educational environment equipped with digital resources. This Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Innovation objective is to create an in depth and thorough Online picture dictionary for the EU car mechanics (Clipping: Car Mechanic's Pictionary). The Car Mechanics' Pictionary will contribute to car mechanics' skills upscaling and professional English language fluency fostering and will be reachable on a laptop, smartphone or any other digital device that is connected to the Internet. There are 6 European educational organizations from 5 countries in the creators’ team: 5 of VET sector and 1 of HE sector. The chosen language of the Car Mechanics' Pictionary is lingua franca - the English language. The Resource will correspond with the current needs of the EU Car mechanics sector community for easily accessible speciality's database of English terms, car mechanics' tool names, car part names and systems names which are supported with a real life photo. Such a free of charge Online picture dictionary for car mechanics containing a large and systematically grouped amount of information in one place is a unique endeavor in the sector as it will cover a vast number of vocabulary items. This will create added value for professionalism increase in a wide range of VET educational establishments and among individuals. The professional community of car mechanics VET sector and transport sector as a whole is now lacking digital up-to-date material of such wide scope that would be appealing (visual, user friendly, free) and professional at the same time. The Online picture dictionary for car mechanics will fill in the current gap of similar tools within the sector. It is given, that a feature of a highly trained car mechanic in a modern day Europe is ability to read and use diagnostic equipment and its data, use other professional resources in foreign languages -statistically most often - English. Fundamental knowledge for a professional car mechanic is - knowing the terms, tools and mechanical parts in their native, but not less importantly - in the English language. The best approach to answer the need of such primary goal of every car mechanic is a professional picture (photograph) dictionary. A Car Mechanics' Pictionary that will be created as a joint effort of the multinational team of European car mechanics teachers and professors will be clear, precise and giving a user an adequate answer to their search in the provided visualized database. The created Car Mechanics' Pictionary will contribute to open and distance learning as well, since it will not be limited to certain location or institutions. This feature of a material proves vital in many modern life situations and 2020 events with COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent distance learning is one such proof. The Car Mechanics' Pictionary will be used for purposes of learning, knowledge updating and verification both in the process of learning in VET, often in HE, preparing for labour market and in a routine process of work within the transport sector. In addition, the Resource will be suitable for continuous learning of learners of all ages. The Online picture dictionary will contain photos of objects instead of animated version of them. This approach will be more practical, focused on hands-on work of car mechanics with diagnostics, changing car parts and repairing cars. Each vocabulary item will be supported by 1 or more photos depending on the practical need in every case. The Resource will have an enabled search engine by the term and by the letter of alphabet. The Car Mechanics' Pictionary will include such major content parts: Engine, Car Electronics, Transmission, Cassis, Brakes system + ABS, Tools for car mechanics, Hybrid and Electric cars specific terms and vocabulary, Car body types, Car interior, Car exterior, Automobile comfort. The whole capacity of the Online picture dictionary for EU car mechanics will be within the range of 7200 - 7800 vocabulary items - an unprecedented capacity of any Dictionary for car mechanics.The international aspect of this Resource creation will provide extra value as it gives the outlook of various national experiences and the wider European context avoiding the risks of being too one nation specific. Online picture dictionary for the EU car mechanics will come into being through a number of face to face transnational meetings of creators' teams, discussions, continuous peer-reviewing and monitoring to achieve the highest standard of the educational-professional Material for wide public of Europeans in the Transport sector. As a result of its quality and professionalism, Car Mechanic's Pictionary strives to become a must-have for every car mechanic in Europe.

Youth with disability has professional needs just like their typically developed peers. Disabled individuals’ need of getting a profession and employment is a basic human right that has to be regarded with the principles of equality of opportunity and full inclusion. This fact has been emphasized in international platforms for many years. Naturally, hearing impaired individuals also have these same rights as a subgroup of disabled individuals. There are many international models and regulations organizing hearing-imparied youth’s vocational education and employment. These young people have been getting vocational education in areas which needs labor force and afterwards their employment has been granted by transition programmes. However, it is known that only 40% of disabled graduates could be provided with jobs. Another problem in vocational education of disabled people is that the fact that educational programmes of vocational schools of special education are not up-to-date and not oriented to answer the needs of profession areas with employment opportunities. Consequently, young graduates are having problems of employment; since their education programmes do not accord with the needs of the business world. The third problem is hearing-impaired young people’s inability to acquire occupational competence later in business life because of important problems encountered in social harmony, peer acceptance, participation in educational processes and academic success. When you add language and communication problems brought about by hearing disability and the negative attitude of employers against hearing-impaired people to the situation, employment of these young people is clearly a problematic area. The above mentioned problems are not only hampering employment of disabled people, they also should be regarded as obstacles for hearing-impaired young people to be productive and participate in social life as a whole. Since it is almost impossible to solve disabled people’s employment problems with a single project, construction sector’s need for qualified labor power and hearing-impaired youth’s potential to answer that need could be a solid base for solid steps to a real solution to this problem. This project, with reference to the abovementioned thoughts, aimed to develop and implement a vocational education program to train hearing-impaired young people as construction technicians and employ them in construction companies. Within this context, construction planning programs (Primavera, MS Project), quantity take-off calculations and bid documents preparation used in construction firms’ project offices are adapted and taught in a way that disabled young people can use. To realize that goal:- A vocational education program and modules are built- Vocational education and transition phases are implemented- These young people are employed as trainee in partner companies. A total of 6 people are employed as trainee in these companies- This employed group are monitored and majors are taken for their improvement. The vocational education program is tested among participants and employers in order to determine the effectiveness of the program. Based on the testing results, all participants and employers reported positive opinions on the training program. It could be said that this suggested project is an example model of a bridge involving vocational education and transition program with a perspective of “full inclusion” and “equality” and employment in partner countries. This model can be implemented not only for people with hearing disability but also for other subgroups of disabled people. As a result, realization of this project is an example model of building bridges between vocational education and employment in Turkey and reinforcing that bridge in international context.This project is formed of 7 partners from 4 different countries. The project is composed of ten work packages and these work packages are executed by Anadolu University (Turkey), AHENK Special Education and Rehabilitation Center (Turkey), TAV Construction (Turkey), University of Minho (Portugal), Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom), Vilnius College of Technologies and Design (Lithuania) and Erbil Project Consulting Engineering (Turkey). The partnership is a very successful one as it combines universities with social partners, engineering and construction companies from different countries of Europe allowing a large dissemination of our project all around Europe. The valorisation of the project are mainly through the products produced; eg. the manual and testing results of the vocational education program. As a vocational education program for hearing impaired youth, this project can be seen as an innovation because it offers professional competence, transitional plans, employment guarantee and monitoring process to support the full participation of disabled people in society and it regards all of these phases as a whole.