"EPIC has contributed to the modernisation of European Higher Education by developing a flexible framework for international student projects, carried out across universities and in collaboration with industrial partners and research environments. It has been developed, tested and refined based on the experiences of three years, and it has been made available along with supporting materials published as Open Educational Resources. The materials also document our experiences through qualitative and quantitative evaluations, examples and success stories. The framework provides different models of setting up international and interdisciplinary student projects, reflecting different needs and regulations - making the framework useful for most institutions who want to work with international, interdisciplinary and/or problem based projects. The approach developed is scalable and cost-efficient due to the use of virtual collaboration and blended learning. The framework has also demonstrated its value through good evaluations, and by being used by partner institutions and beyond. For example, many ideas of EPIC are continued in a new initiative on collaborative student projects, bringing students from different disciplines and countries together to work on problems related to the sustainable development goals, and including universities from Europe, South America and Africa.Each year was conducted as a cycle, consisting of:-Planning of projects and collaborations-Preparation of training materials, guidelines and seminar-5-day project planning seminar for students and supervisors-Project work, virtually but with the option for one additional blended mobility-Evaluation and reflection-Dissemination activitiesStudents, teachers and companies were involved throughout each cycle.Due to Covid-19, the additional mobility in the last year was cancelled, and part of the dissemination went virtual. Yet, the project prepared us to work within all the restrictions also in our other teaching tasks.After the evaluation of each yearly cycle, the framework and materials were revised. Year 2 focused especially on improving the support for students by streamlining the whole process of carrying out the projects (e.g. by integrating the preparation phase better with the project planning seminar, by facilitating a more structured workflow during the project seminar, and by linking the outcome of the seminar better to the virtual collaboration). Year 3 focused especially on creating a joint scope for the various projects to enhance collaboration and understanding between the projects - using the Sustainable Development Goals for this turned out to be a very good approach.The framework developed is flexible, and allows students from different backgrounds and countries to work together - even if learning objectives and workloads are different - and allows for both tight and loosely coupled collaborations. It has been tested with teams of 2-10 students, and it was demonstrated that the approach makes it possible to integrate and recognise the work within existing programmes, which is important for a more widespread take-up.The project work is supported by ICT-based educational resources that are made available for the students and supervisors, focusing on e.g. project planning/management, team work, entrepreneurship and innovation, supervision, and other documents that supports the take-up of the approach for companies and universities. Also, an open source IT tool was customised to support the collaboration process. All the materials developed are publicly available for use and exploitation, and are presented in a user friendly online course format.The partnership has contributed to increase the quality and relevance of higher education within and beyond the participating institutions particularly by focusing on increased employability, closer collaboration between students and industry, internationalisation, increased labour market relevance of education, increased learning outcome by promoting active learning methods based on real-world problem solving, promotion of the take-up of ICT tools and Open Education Resources, and by giving the students transversal competences. The evaluations show that the project had a significant impact on the participants, and we also see a systemic impact on the participating organisations. As planned, more than 2.000 teachers were reached face2face, and 6 conference papers were published targeting practitioners and the didactical society (including a student paper that won the ""Best Student Paper Award""). 25 companies (including three Centres of Applied Research) were involved in student projects, along with 102 students and 50 supervisors (incl. repetitions). In summary, EPIC has developed and tested a paradigmatic formula for carrying out industry/academia collaboration, and for implementing the project based learning with groups of students of blended expertise and background."

"The Colibri project was created as a response to some of the main challenges faced by higher educational institutions in Europe: - A wider group of students pursuing educations in the ICT domain fosters a need for more personalised and active learning. - An increasing mobility of students (geographically and between programmes) has led to increasingly diverse backgrounds among students following the same course/eduction, calling for more personalised approaches to learning. - With fast technological developments and the increasing popularity of MOOCS, universities are struggling to find their position on how to benefit from increasing use of ICT in education and make use of Open Educational resources. - There is a need for improving interdisciplinary skills and labour market readiness among the candidates.The aim of Colibri was to contribute to the Modernisation of European Higher Education by developing new and innovative teaching approaches, increase labour market relevance of education, and promote the take-up of innovative practices in education. The project focused mainly on personalised learning, collaborative learning, and use of ICT. Colibri has also been strengthening the link between companies and education by promoting teaching methods where students work together across disciplines and cultures, on projects based on real-world cases. During the implementation of the project it became clear that the international aspects were very appreciated by all participants.The project partners are seven universities, one research and documentation center, and two companies who ensured that the teaching methods support employability, e.g. by the use of real-world cases as part of the teaching. Colibri was organised as a yearly cycle of:(1) Teaching material development(2) Conducting a course on ""Future Internet Opportunities"" for a diverse group of students from all universities using blended learning(3) Systematic evaluation(4) Dissemination within and beyond the consortiumThe evaluations and experiences were then taken into account when designing the material for the next cycle. Colibri lasted for 3 years, thus covering 3 cycles. Each cycle involved 2-5 teachers per institution per year, and 3-7 students per university per year.The course on ""Future Internet Opportunities"" essentially was a living lab in a blended learning setting. The course integrated course modules, which provided background knowledge on technical, social and business aspects of Future Internet Opportunities, with project work based on real-life cases from the participating companies. The course ran through the spring semester, and contained the following elements: Virtual kick-off meeting, virtual phase of studying modules, midway seminar to finish the modules and start the project work, virtual project work phase, and finally the project seminar where the projects were completed and an exam conducted. Students passing the course received 5 ECTS points.There were a total of ten jointly developed IT-supported course modules, each of which could be followed at introductory, basic or advanced levels. These were mainly studied online, based on active participation and/or collaboration between students, and personalised in the sense that they accommodate for students with different prerequisites and learning styles and/or different specific learning objectives. The projects were implemented by having students working together across cultural and educational backgrounds on real-world problems defined by companies. The teaching material and results developed through the project, including instructions on how to use the material, evaluations, and comments/suggestions, are made publicly available using the Creative Commons licensing scheme. This ensures that the results can be exploited both inside and outside of the consortium. Also, additional papers and reports have been written to different target groups including university teachers, the didactical community, and decision makers at e.g. institutional levels. A cornerstone of the dissemination plan was to make the participating teachers Colibri Ambassadors. These have helped to spread the results and benefits of the project to large groups of university teachers who can use the methods in their teaching. Based on the evaluations received we can see that the project had a significant impact on the participants. But we also start seeing an impact on systemic level that exceeded our initial expectation: More than 1.800 university staff has been reached through the Colibri ambassadors, 9 conference papers were published targeting practitioners and the didactical society, and dissemination activities were made for also the ICT & entrepreneurial community and the general public.To learn more about the project, please visit:Website: www.erasmus-colibri.euFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ErasmusColibri/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCACqthyxuIlHaBMgwO1-uvw"