The Covid-19 pandemic has presented higher education institutions with the challenges of suddenly having to switch to online and hybrid teaching and dealing with the collapse of physical student and teaching mobility. To aid them in mastering these challenges, VERSATILE creates the necessary building blocks for a collaborative online semester abroad in the form of a guide to online teaching methods, a model curriculum of team-taught modules in the social sciences and guidelines for an administrative infrastructure. It enables deeper collaboration between the project partners and provides other higher education institutions with guidelines to develop online collaborative learning and teaching environments.VERSATILE has four key objectives: 1) to create viable alternatives to physical student mobility during the pandemic, 2) beyond the pandemic to enable higher education institutions to offer new internationalisation-at-home possibilities to students who traditionally face mobility barriers, 3) to aid educators in developing their online teaching skills, and 4) to provide new ways in which educators can internationally exchange knowledge and methods.The project consists of five participating universities from the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands. They already collaborate as part of The Hague Network, a European network of universities founded in 2017 to share capabilities and best practices and jointly develop new internationalization initiatives.The groundwork of VERSATILE is laid in a state-of-the-art analysis of online teaching methods and infrastructural conditions in the partner institutions. This forms the basis for creating a guide to online teaching methods suitable for international classroom settings with diverse student groups. A curriculum of team-taught modules under the topic of “European Scenarios in Business, Politics and Societal Change in the next Decennium” is jointly designed and prepared. In order to facilitate the smooth delivery of the online semester abroad, guidelines for creating an effective administrative infrastructure are developed. These elements are put into practice when the online semester abroad is delivered to students in the project partner universities. Responsibility for the activities is spread between the project partners. Working groups made up of experts from each partner on the different areas of the project – educators, administrators, curriculum developers, didactic experts and experts on online teaching methods - will ensure that the results are achieved collaboratively. In order to identify best practices and develop the guidelines and curriculum, a number of methods are used, in particular feedback interviews and questionnaires with educators and students in the participating universities, the joint training of educators in online teaching methods and piloting through mini team-teaching episodes. The intellectual outputs are also tested in the delivery of the online semester abroad to students of the project partners. VERSATILE will produce results that can be used by the project partners and other higher education institutions. The online semester abroad enables the project partners to offer students a viable alternative to physical mobility and build long term possibilities for internationalization at home. It provides teachers with opportunities to develop their skills in online teaching and offers then new avenues for teaching exchange. These results can be extended to include further partners and other disciplines. The intellectual outputs provide other higher education institutions with the key building blocks necessary for developing and delivering a collaborate online semester abroad.The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed digitalization in higher education institutions from an emerging field to an absolute necessity. It is also posing huge challenges for universities in managing student and teaching mobility across national borders. VERSATILE seeks to provide the building blocks necessary to develop collaborative online teaching and learning environments which can have lasting benefits beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. It enables higher education institutions to develop internationalization-at-home practices so that a wider range of students can develop vital future-focused skills, including intercultural engagement, digital literacy and collaborative working in international teams. It provides educators with opportunities to develop their online teaching methods and enlarge their teaching experience and skills through collaborative teaching with colleagues from different institutions. It enables administrators to create infrastructures in which administrative barriers to student and teaching mobility are more manageable.

Europe has several issues it needs to address to improve social wellbeing and its economic competitiveness. These include improving scientific literacy amongst its population, increasing the uptake of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers and enhancing the transferable skills of current researchers. In Malta, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) placed Malta 40th out of 50 countries, while a recent report commissioned by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) showed that over half of the Maltese public are disinterested in Science especially those who are retired, unemployed, responsible for home duties and/or have a secondary level of education or lower. The STEAMed consortium will bring together the best higher education institutions performing science communication across Europe. Through the exchange of best practice an intensive study programme will be created that will train students and researchers to engage the public. This will be supplemented by a long-term training assignment were participants will continue practicing and perfecting the skills they learnt by joining science communication activities. The activities have a dual purpose of enhancing the intensive study programme’s training but also providing an innovative form of informal education. The various science communication activities will be targeted towards school children: primary (5–10) and secondary (11–15) school children and various public groups: teenagers (16–19) youths (20–30), young and established professionals, and pensioners—as dependent on the activity. Reaching the wider community through informal education is in line with the 2011 EU Modernisation Agenda. The training and informal education approaches will be innovative by involving interactive experiments and incorporating the arts. By using an informal approach and making things interactive will help engage low achievers. The intensive study programme developed is intended to be sustained beyond the study programme. STEAMed will help consolidate science communication activities and bring together best practices from each participant countries while developing a new programme for the coordinating country that will help build the skills of participants being trained and attendees of the activities.

DONUT, European Doctoral Network for Neural Prostheses and Brain Research has the mission to provide a multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral network for young talented researchers. The ambition of the project is to serve as a springboard for the expansion of EU partners into the fast-developing Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology and connected scientific disciplines. The DN will leverage the complementary expertise of 7 academic beneficiaries and 8 associated partners from 8 EU countries, to guide its 10 doctoral candidates (DCs) to address and solve deep problems in brain research, development of different BCI applications and systems with the latest technological advancements. The proposed DN will integrate existing research in BCI systems to make it more user-friendly, suitable for different types of potential end-users and for modern medical diagnostics. The DN would also provide excellent opportunities for career development of young researchers under the umbrella of German doctorate graduate school PK NRW (Graduate School for Applied Research in North Rhine-Westphalia, with over 180 participating professors), regularly offering specialised trainings and courses including Scientific Research Writing, Academic Presentation Skills, etc. Early scientific independence is one of key goals of training programmes. It is the ambition of DONUT to build a strong and lasting network not only between the DCs but also between the participating beneficiaries and associated partners. DONUT researchers will benefit of a dense network of contacts with scientists acquired during network-wide training events, to improve their career prospects in the European and worldwide innovation sector, having the opportunity to become scientists employable in both the industrial and academic sectors. The participation of 7 industrial participants in research and training programmes will guarantee extensive inter-sectoral experience for the trainees and maximise the impact.

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TeRRIFICA – Territorial RRI Fostering Innovative Climate Action – will create a comprehensive overview on the state of the art of climate change adaptation research, tangible climate action and climate change adaptation examples, related policies as well as communication strategies and methods at different levels of complexity. Through its co-creative multi-stakeholder approaches the project will identify opportunities, drivers and barriers of implementation. It takes into account challenges for the acceptance and feasibility, technological and regulatory constraints in six pilot regions in Spain, Germany, France, Serbia, Poland and Belarus. The selected pilot regions cover the diversity of climate change mitigation approaches in Central– South, East – West, urban – rural, EU – non-EU settings. The project will define and adapt innovative communication strategies, dialogue actions and formats. Through Living Lab methodologies, different stakeholder-groups (with a particular focus on regional authorities and policy makers) will be integrated as co-creating and actively participating partners. This will lead to recommendations, procedures, tools and methodologies that are appropriate to the different roles and objectives of these parties and which will consider the key policies of RRI and integrate Sustainable Development Goals. TeRRIFICA will set up tailored roadmaps and key performance indicators for the implementation of developed methodologies and climate change adaptation activities in regional practice. Customised capacity building for the different stakeholder groups will be offered. Field trips to local and regional promising activities related to research and regional innovation, and broader stakeholder engagement with feedback loops will be organised to learn from these examples of innovation and create input for the next stages of development.