Skills are crucial to ensure employability, innovation, competitiveness, growth and a more resilient recovery in the context of the current COVID-19 crisis in Europe. Therefore, EU policies in the field of Higher Education aim at addressing both the need to overcome skills mismatches and to promote excellence in skills development, while also fostering inclusion, innovation and effective and efficient Higher Education systems.Indeed, institutions must ensure that their content is up to date, that they provide relevant study programmes in fields where skills shortages exist and that they develop methods of learning and teaching that allow students to acquire the breadth and depth of skills they need. On the other hand, the European Higher Education Area emphasizes the importance of a formative assessment of competences to facilitate students’ learning process and the educator’s course strategy, since well-designed HE programmes and curricula, centred on students’ learning needs, are crucial for effective skills development.However, education and training systems are currently facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and, for many, digital teaching and learning was the only viable emergency response in times of confinement measures and lockdown.Building on these evidences, SAPIENS aims at reinforcing the ability of education and training institutions to provide high-quality and inclusive digital education by providing Professors with an innovative, digital competence-based assessment tool that supports online and blended learning training pathways, which is of increased importance in light of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis in education.Specifically, SAPIENS seeks to:- Develop, test and implement an innovative tool to detect and assess learning shortcomings/gaps among students individually and the class as a whole;- Empower Professors teaching Physics, Mathematics, Statistics and Economics to implement new, competence-based assessment methodologies and tools in online or blended learning pathways in Higher Education studies;- Increase Professors’ skills to design and implement high-quality curricula for students, according to their learning needs and based on evidences provided by the SAPIENS Competence Assessment Tool;- Promote a greater adaptation of curricula and training programmes by adopting an assessment tool that is based on competences, thus making qualifications easier to understand (namely by the labour market);- Enable Higher Education Institutions to improve their capacities to offer online or blended learning pathways, while also promoting their competitiveness in an increasingly more digital world and fostering transnational cooperation. Over the course of 24 months, SAPIENS will achieve the following intellectual outputs:- O1 – Definition of a Competence Framework describing the proposed cognitive itineraries for the different areas of study targeted by SAPIENS, which will be based, integrate and build on the specific micro-competences (and the corresponding knowledge, skills and attitudes) identified and mapped at the internal level of Consortium HEIs. - O2 – Creation of an online Personalised Competence Assessment Tool that will detect and assess that are harder to acquire both in students individually and in the class as a whole, thus enabling educators to guide and adapt teaching programmes accordingly.- O3 – Definition and implementation of the SAPIENS Online Training Course for Professors, which will help to build the capacities of Professors to implement and use the SAPIENS automated evaluation system, so as to promote high-quality and inclusive digital education.The main SAPIENS target groups encompass: Higher Education Institutions and networks (including Professors and Researchers with expertise in Physics, Mathematics, Statistics and Economics); local and regional authorities, decision-makers and/or policy-makers (especially those engaged in education and training, digital education, skill development, youth and employment/employability); institutions and associations supporting educators and/or students.Coordinated by the Loyola Andalucía University, the SAPIENS Consortium brings together 5 institutions from Spain, Germany and Austria, who are experienced actors active in education & training that are strongly committed to improving the assessment of competence acquisition in Exact and Social Sciences HE studies (namely Physics, Mathematics, Statistics and Economics).