The project „Strengthening Teaching Competences in Higher Education in Natural and Mathematical Sciences – TeComp“ is aimed at improving the quality of higher education in the field of natural and mathematical sciences at higher education institutions in Serbia and Albania in line with advance EU practices, thereby enhancing their comparability and competitiveness in Europe and beyond. This wider aim will be achieved through completion of the set of specific objectives concerned with the areas where the measures should be applied:- to enhance professional competences and skills of teaching staff through training courses in contemporary pedagogical approaches, methodologies and educational technologies; - to upgrade educational infrastructure as a basis for wider integration of modern pedagogical principles and technologies in teaching and learning;- to deliver new/modified courses in psychology, pedagogy, methodology of teaching, and technology enhanced learning at the PC HEIs in line with the modern European strategies;- to strengthen personnel infrastructure through the introduction of continuous professional development in the system of higher education.According to these objectives, the proposed project is expected to achieve the following outcomes:- Identifying and adopting the necessary measures and actions required for quality enhancement of teaching and learning processes;- Upgrading educational infrastructure;- Training of teaching staff for harnessing pedagogical and methodological principles and new modes of teaching and learning;- Development of methodology and platforms for wider integration of ICT in teaching and learning.The project will particularly impact on raising awareness among teaching staff in all educational fields on the necessity of continuous professional training in pedagogy and teaching methodology, and wider integration of modern educational technologies in teaching an learning.

In Albania, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoESY) is working on the national strategy for the Development of Pre-University Education that includes the implementation of a comprehensive Vocational and Educational Training (VET) System for the professional development of teachers that are in service at pre-university levels. The project aims at contributing to the comprehensive VET system for teachers by developing a lifelong learning (LLL) Teacher Training System of high quality by means of an accreditation procedure and through the establishment of specialized LLL centres in Albanian universities.Specific objectives are the following:1. Defining a strategy for a comprehensive VET system for teachers emphasasing the contribution of universities as main providers of ongoing professional development for a high quality of the teacher qualification process. This objective will be achieved by both European and Albanian partners in collaboration with MoESY. 2. Establishing new expertise and standard of teacher training in Albanian universities through organizing a training workshop for Albanian universities and training visits to European universities. This objective will be reached in each Albanian university involving the process of academic staff selection with certain expertise in training program development. 3. Establishing specialized LLL Centres for Teacher Training according to the strategy of MoESY and to the needs of in-service teachers. Each Albanian university in collaboration with European partners and MoESY will decide about training centre team that has to include academic staff selected, master teachers and representatives of regional directorate of education in order to meet all the teachers’ needs for annual qualification and professional development. The centre should have a location with a name, an address, a structure proposed, etc. Albanian partners have to visit European project partner institutions and to be trained in order to understand the process.4. Developing teacher training course programs for different levels of education in scientific methodologies, pedagogical issues, ethics and ICT use in learning according to European standards. After identifying teacher qualification needs, the training centres team have to coordinate through a Network of LLL Centres for Teacher Training in order to identify and select the teacher training programs that contribute in relevant level in the new competencies of teaching in high standard. 5. Designing and developing a new academic methodology that consist in credits application to MoESY for 16 new teacher training courses with 2 credits each and design classrooms and equipment to support the training process. 6. Creating digital structures (video projectors, interactive laboratories, smart board, laptops, etc.) in Albanian universities that support training process for teacher qualification and their lifelong learning. Academic staff and students involved to the centre will work to be creative and to discover equipment and other ICT resources that perform and illustrate new knowledge in an attractive way. 7. Developing a national information management system & database of teacher training that will be able to register teachers in training courses, to manage the assessment processes, exams, course materials delivery, etc. Human resources of Albanian universities will be engaged to design and develop the national system that manages the process of teacher registration. This objective involves government requirements within the definition of a broadher accreditation system and needs the collaboration of representatives from MoESY and other national and international stakeholders.

The proposal EntrAL supports the employability of young graduates through entrepreneurship education. By organizing entrepreneurial courses at different educational levels (pre-university and university levels) and to a large audience (pre-university teachers and university teachers and students), the project aims at a wider impact. The proposal does not only support the entrepreneurial mind-set of highly educated students but also of pre-university teachers, who will encourage the next generation to think outside of the box and be more risk driven. For this reason the project encourages entrepreneurial teaching methods, and nurture entrepreneurial behavior from the students. Teachers are supported by the university structure and mechanisms (LLL, activities for staff); students get from their teachers better support and advice in term of entrepreneurship and skills related to entrepreneurial attitude, supporting their employability after graduation. The project will implement entrepreneurship to the existing U3M-AL and TEAVET centers teacher qualification process lifelong and Third Mission according to the needs of the teachers. It will utilise the established specialized centers of teacher training in accordance with the needs of MESY to increase entrepreneurial mind-set at national level through accredited teacher training in entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial mind-set at institutional level will be increased through teacher training and entrepreneurship modules using scientific methodologies, pedagogical issues, ethics and ICT use in learning. New expertise and standard of teacher training in entrepreneurship will be established in Albanian universities and schools through organizing seminars in Albanian universities and training visits to European universities.

The main objective of the project is fostering the modernization and development of the stone sector in Western Balkans partner countries and strengthening the relationship between the higher education and the industry. For this purpose different specific objectives have been allocated to the project:• To benchmark existing training initiatives & incorporate elements into project training outputs• To support technological & practice-based innovative training based on courses approach and format.• To encourage participation of industry stakeholders in outputs conception and testing phases• To test new HE possibilities of Tertiary VET levels in partner countries• To contribute to National/regional innovation strategies for specialization in the natural stone sector with project outputs• To create a Stone Sector network platform involving stakeholders in programme & partner countries.The project aims at Higher Education, and this is the reason why most partners are HEIs, but it includes also a VET tertiary level and a stone technologic centre, Marble, Natural Stone and Materials Technology Centre (CTM), Several associated partners will be involved in the project, mainly city halls and SMSE’s. Main products of the project are training content for university courses, a training programmes for VET tertiary level, an Online Resource Centre and multimedia handbooks. The project will last for three years and involve partner from Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro, as partner countries. From programme countries, partners from Spain, Italy, Romania and Greece.

The overall goal of this project is to improve higher education provision in Kosovo and Albania, by building institutional capacity for international relations whereby establishing or making fully functional respective offices (including capacity for project cycle management) in all nine Kosovo and five Albanian consortium members. This project will build institutional capacity for the internationalization of HE in Kosovo and Albania, by improving capacity for project development and management through international expertise made available by European HEIs partnering in this project and exchange of good practice between the consortium members. This will make way for local higher education institutions to engage confidently in various academic and research cooperation initiatives in the region, in Europe and wider.The aim of the project is establish and develop fourteen fully functional offices of international cooperation that will also include the function of project cycle management. Currently, none of the new public universities in Kosovo and Albania has the capacity to fully run an International Cooperation Office, at a time when over 50% of students in European Higher Education institutions are studying or participating in one or another form of international studies and when a significant part of university life takes place in the form of various exchanges and mobilities. This makes it of paramount importance to build respective capacity for all members. This will ultimately contribute substantially to the quality of provision and will enrich university life and experiences of the student population in Kosovo and Albania. Therefore, having in mind the possibility of Erasmus + project to support this idea, we initiated the work as a consortium on developing this idea. The project will have very high importance in addressing increasing isolation, lack of quality international cooperation and lack of project initiatives from Kosovo and Albania universities.