The project addressed the issues raised in Bruges Communique, namely, increased competition of institutions and professionals, as well as rapid technological change. These issues were addressed via prepared training materials and facilitation of (C)VET, VET teachers and trainers, as well as adult educators who, being professionals, should learn how latest innovations in education (such as Open Educational Resources (OER), innovative ICT tools, new curriculum design models) affect sustainability of their organization and learning services.As institutions are challenged with the shift in the target learner profile, when nowadays learners are migrating throughout the world and Europe and require learning services to be open, to be provided in international settings and available any time, anywhere and in their working places, teachers, trainers, and adult educators need training and consultancy on how to create learning for new target groups.The vision for 2020, (C)VET and adult education includes high quality, new modes of curriculum and learning services, courses which develop expertise for higher level qualification characterized by innovation and excellence. Online learning and open educational resources meet these needs and suggest solutions for innovative, quality work-based learning curriculum designing.The main project aim was to foster open and international professional collaboration for innovation by creating possibilities for teachers and trainers to openly collaborate in the development and adaptation of open educational resources, online curriculum designing using created and adapted OER, curriculum licensing and adaptation for online work-based learning.In order to reach the aim, the following project results were created and activities undertaken:1. Training materials on- OER and sustainability models,- ICT tools to develop and adapt OER, and- innovative curriculum designing for work - based learning for CVET, VET and adult educationwere developed and used by teachers, trainers and adult educators for OER and curriculum development.2. 48 OER were created or adapted in English and national languages by CVET, VET teachers and trainers and adult educators.3. Curriculum for diverse target groups, including work-based learning for CVET, VET and adult education using OER, innovative tools and sustainability models was developed in English and translating adapted to national languages. One version of the developed curriculum (either national or English) was piloted with the learners from CVET, VET or adult education sectors.The 6 consortium institutions represent 2 professional associations (one national, one European), 2 training organizations for companies and adult learners, a VET organization and a university. The experts from the mentioned institutions collaborated and created the training materials, and based on the training guidelines trained the teachers, trainers or adult educators from their institutions for the development of OER and innovative curriculum. CVET, VET teachers, trainers and adult educators collaboratively developed or adapted OER and online curriculum for online work-based learning.The most important result of the project was the started open collaboration for innovation among CVET, VET and adult educators. A strategic partnership of professionals working at different institutions started professional collaboration in an open way and will continue so involving more and more institutions from the professional networks.To ensure the started collaboration and sustainability of the created results, the developed and tested curriculum was not only shared between partnership but also made open for other learners or institutions either to openly browse the learning content, to learn independently in a selected module or download the full version of the selected module to be delivered at their institution. In order for teachers, trainers and adult educators (from and outside the partnership) to share, adapt and use the OER, created or adapted in the project, the editable versions of each OER were shared in the project website. This public access of editable versions of each OER ensures the open use of project results in the long term. This was appreciated and met with enthusiasm by most of the participants, whom this innovation was introduced. Also the created training materials are already planned and used in the events that focus on OER, even after the project was ended.

"ReOPEN project addressed the problem of recognition of non-formal learning results in formal education and by employer organizations in the new context - online open learning (OOL). Education institutions and employers are often reluctant to recognise OOL and question its validation, credentialization and proctoring. ReOPEN project directly addressed the recommendations published in the study of the European Commission ""Validation of Non-formal MOOC-based Learning"" (2016) (http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC96968/lfna27660enn.pdf), by the project aim - to create instruments to develop validated OOL for recognition of prior and non-formal learning. ReOPEN project achieved the following objectives: 1. Designed the platform for non-formal OOL curriculum development with learning validation and recognition instruments in place. 2. Trained teachers and trainers (T&T) at C-VET organizations, companies, higher education (HE) institutions and adult learning organizations to design validated non-formal OOL curriculum, to apply digital badges as a new form of digital credentialisation and tracking one’s learning path in non-formal OOL and to recognize non-formal OOL results in formal curricular. 3. Designed 5 non-formal OOL courses for continuous professional staff developing (CPD) applying learning recognition instruments for validated non-formal OOL. 4. Established partnership for future collaboration for non-formal OOL recognition. The project target groups involved C-VET, LLL, HE institutions and companies, establishing their collaboration to enhance access to OOL and qualifications for all through C-VET. The project results reached 123574 people (instead of 3820 planned) through multiplier events (ME), dissemination and thematic events, including 213 participants (instead of 59 planned) (see Annex 4) with fewer opportunities facing economic, social and disability obstacles. They benefited from awareness of what non-formal OOL is, on new learning and teaching possibilities and innovative solutions for teaching and learning. 6 Intellectual outputs (IO) were developed for them: IO1. ICT platform. IO2. Training material (TM) on non-formal OOL curriculum designing.IO3. TM on application of digital badges. IO4. TM on recognition of non-formal OOL results in formal curricular. IO5. 5 non-formal OOL CPD courses.IO6. Case - scenario collection on recognition of validated non-formal OOL course. Continuous feedback was requested from HE, VET, adult learning and school representatives, which proved high interest from project target groups for ReOPEN platform solutions at user institutions, and rated IO with strong positive statements. More than 120 organizations were involved in ME and dissemination events. 6 agreements have been signed with the third - party organizations for product exploitation (see Annex 6). ReOPEN results will have long-term impact to these organizations, as responses from events’ participants proved that organizations need to prepare and create non-formal OOL possibilities and that TM, ICT platform and methodological and technological help is most useful to them. Project partnership consisted of 3 HE institutions (VMU, ESCP Europe and SRCE), 2 companies (ONECO and Q21) providing training services for adults, VET and company employees, as well as 1 European association (EDEN). Consortium directly benefited from the results in adapting ICT portal for their use, using TM for their training programs for all project target groups in their countries, creating open non-formal OOL courses, application of digital badges in their institutional online platforms, tracking learning paths of their learners. ReOPEN project results already increased the sense of initiative, entrepreneurship, and professional collaboration among partner organizations and their collaboration channels with networks of education providers and employers by involvement of all stakeholders (teachers, administration, employer organizations and HE institutions) to work on CPD courses (IO5). The project increased the level of digital and other competences of T&T and better understanding of practices, policies and systems in education and training. ReOPEN contributed to better understanding and recognition of skills and qualifications in European and beyond, as well as interconnections between formal, formal education, vocational training and other forms of learning and labor market respectively by establishing three – party engagement case scenarios (IO6) on recognition of learning results and credits in formal curriculum (IO5), linking non-formal and formal curricular and employer needs. ReOPEN improves the use of EU reference tools for recognition, validation and transparency of competences and qualifications through description of parts of competences, qualifications and curricular, supporting teaching and learning progress and assessment in the new form of digital OOL."

"As part of an in-depth reflection on the modernization of universities in Europe, the D-TRANSFORM project is the first attempt of its kind to set up, at the European level, a program of Leadership Schools and online courses (MOOC) addressed to the university governances. The aim is to strengthen the capacity of these institutions to meet the needs of universities for competitiveness and international attractiveness through the digital transition and the e-Education.The D-Transform project (KA2) brought together, from 9-1-2014 to 8-31-2017, a consortium of seven European partners represented by three ""traditional"" universities (University of Lorraine in France, Politecnico di Milano in Italy, Budapest University of Technology and Economy in Hungary), one online university (Open University of Catalonia in Spain), a consulting company in the field of e-learning (Sero in the UK), a European network on e -Education (European Distant Education Network, United Kingdom). The Foundation Maison de Sciences de l'Homme (France) coordinated the project.Partners were represented by scholars, researchers and experts in the field of e-learning.In this context, the missions of the D-Transform project were the following three:1. Make recommendations for an e-Education-based strategy aiming at transforming universities in a context where teaching and learning patterns are changing dramatically. 2. Organize two leadership schools (LS), in the form of residential seminars, in order to support university presidents and vice-presidents in implementing strategies to transform their institutions through e-Education. 3. Produce an online kit (the MOOC D-TRANSFORM) made from the modeling of the Leadership Schools programs.The recommendations are presented in the form of four reports: (i) Digital Transformation Policies in Higher Education; (ii) Business models for opening up education; (iii) Open Educational Resources, a lever for digital transition in higher education; (iv) Guidelines for University Governance. The reports are available (free access) on the D-Transform website (http://www.dtransform.eu).The two leadership schools were organized in Barcelona (November 2016) and in Nancy (May 2017). They were also open to faculty deans and those who work closely with the presidents and vice presidents to implement the transformation policies of their universities.The D-Transform MOOC is a kit providing a syllabus with innovative contents for defining academic strategies in the digital age.These deliverables were presented to the target audience (university governance) as well as to a wider audience (ministerial executives, members of university networks or rectors' conferences) during the 4 dissemination events organized in Spain, Hungary and France.During the 3 years, the partners met in the context of 4 transnational meetings (organized in France, Italy, Spain and Hungary), 2 leadership schools and 2 meetings of the International Advisory Board. Skype and videoconference were also useful tools for communication within the consortium.The D-Transform project has had a strong impact on the universities that took part in the D-Transform consortium (launching new courses on e-learning and registering the D-Transform knowledge in their Strategic Plan). More generally, at a European level, D-Transform has made a significant contribution to popularizing the concept of ""leadership programs"" for university governance among rectors' conferences, (European or international) university networks and e-learning associations."

EU recognition instruments such as the diploma supplement and the EQF support the award of qualifications in the areas of formal learning, and are supported by recognition procedures for non-formal and informal learning. The recognition and transfer of individual credits through ECTS was created for an era of physical mobility, and is optimised accordingly. While these tools can be used to support open education and virtual mobility, a number of caveats exist to their use, including that: - little to no guidance exists on how to document virtual mobility / open education experiences for the purposes of credit transfer. - procedures for recognition of prior learning or of non-formal/informal learning do not scale to the massive numbers of students enrolling in open education programmes such as MOOCs - there is no European approach to recognising, transferring or scaling open education modules. These problems are so pronounced, that many open educational providers are creating parallel systems of credentials that are not even described in terms of ECTS - leading to a situation where millions of students per year are enrolling in open courses offered by universities which do not necessarily award valid or recognised forms of credit. This project intends to address these issues by creating a standard format for describing open education and virtual mobility experiences in terms of ECTS which: • Addresses common criticisms (lack of trust) of open education, in particular with respect to student assessment and identity • Is scalable to hundreds or thousands of students through automatic issuing and verification of certificates • Can capture a wide range of non-formal and formal open education experiences Specifically, the project is divided into five stages involving: Stage 1: Definition of Quality Credentials We will propose a quality system that evaluates the quality credential based on their transparency, ease-of-recognition and ease-of-portability – this quality system will then be used to evaluate current credential-types on offer, and to inform credential-improvement activities in the next stages. Stage 2: Enhance Transparency of Quality Credentials by creating a Learning Passport The consortium will propose a transparency instrument, building on proposals in the field, which documents the (a) course design, (b) learning activities undertaken by the learner, and (c) assessment activities, which make up a credential. This ‘learning passport’ is intended to serve as a supplement to the credential, to facilitate its recognition by under institutions. To this end, we will pilot its usage by using it to transfer information on credentials in 6 Higher Education Institutions, thus ensuring that it fulfils its purpose. Stage 3: Propose Technological Methods to Strengthen Automatic Exchange of Recognition Information Should the process of recognition of credentials be conducted entirely manually, it would be extremely time consuming and inefficient, especially were such processes to be conducted at scale. To this end, we will use roadmapping to propose a meta-data standard, ontology and a set of interlocking technologies which would allow for automatic exchange of credentials between Higher Education Institutions Stage 4: Clarify Concepts around Open Educational Recognition The proper use of recognition tools described in Stage 2 and Stage 3 depend on the successful application and understanding of concepts such as estimation of workload, verification of student identity, fair and accurate assessment, and quality assurance of learning. Since there are differences of varying degree in applying these concepts in open education and in traditional formal education, we will propose guidelines for the correct interpretation of each of these concepts. The methodology applied here will involve collaborative authoring by the partners, backed up by the same process of peer-review used under Stage 1. Stage 5: Study and Predict the Impacts of Open Education Recognition We will build exploratory scenarios, which describe events and trends as they could evolve based on alternative assumptions on how open education recognition might influence the future. Thus, the technique will be used to develop a future history—that is, the evolution from present conditions to one of several futures. The scenarios will outline a causal chain of decisions and circumstances that lead from the present, displaying the conditions of important variables over time. We believe that by increasing the quantity and quality of recognition processes in OE we will: • Create new flexible learning pathways for students inside Higher Education • Allow institutions to increase the scope of their offer, by integrating teaching/learning done at other institutions into their curricula • Improve resource-efficiency within HEIs • Lead to an increase in the use and impact of Open Educational Practices

With sharply increasing cultural, linguistic and socio-economic diversity in Europe’s school populations, there is urgency to shift towards educational practices that embrace the inclusion of all learners. Learner diversity is now to be viewed as an intrinsic - and positive - characteristic of our schools. Accordingly, we need to support teachers’ endeavours to establish inclusion as a cornerstone of their practice. Many feel ill-prepared to teach classes that are ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse and where learner backgrounds differ markedly from their own. The challenge is to ensure that ALL students, including those facing educational disadvantage, have optimal chances of realizing their potential as students and future European citizens.PLayful Environment for Inclusive leArning Design in Europe (PLEIADE) responds positively to this scenario by treating it as an opportunity for needs-driven educational innovation powered by teachers’ professional capacity building. PLEIADE supports the efforts of European teachers to systematically integrate inclusive practices in their teaching. It does this by helping them to work together on the design, implementation and sharing of inclusion-oriented learning activity plans. These plans centre on carefully orchestrated learner collaboration, a widely recognized approach not just for strengthening acquisition of curriculum contents but also for supporting inclusive classroom dynamics and attitudes.PLEIADE’s support for teachers’ capacity building comes in the form of Blended (onsite + online) Training Activities lasting 13 months based on peer collaboration for 75 teachers working in four different schools, who are facing different challenges in terms of learner diversity. These are based on a pathway carefully designed by the project partners and a learning environment encompassing advanced game-like elements drawing on a hybrid (tangible and digital) game (the I4Ts game) and a bespoke gamified platform designed to support teacher interaction, cooperation and, ultimately, collaboration. The tangible version of the game has already been successfully tested in Italian teachers’ professional development. In PLEIADE, this learning environment will be fully developed and deployed to - enhance teachers’ engagement in the training experience, - foster co-creation and sharing of inclusive activity designs, - support classroom enactment of those activities, and - promote the sharing and propagation of successful inclusive practices in a teacher community.PLEIADE engages an immediate target population of about 75 teachers at primary and lower secondary schools in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, and Cyprus, whose schools are consortium members. The collaborative learning activities designed during training are implemented in the teachers' classrooms during the project, involving about 600 pupils, many of whom experience educational disadvantage due to cultural, linguistic and socio-economic diversity.The PLEIADE consortium comprises eight partners from five countries: the National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Educational Technology (project coordinator); the development company OpenLab, in Italy; the UK-based European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN); plus four school organizations located in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus who are facing a range of challenges in terms of students’ socio-economic /cultural disadvantage.The main activities in PLEIADE involve:- designing a Blended Teachers’ Professional Development (TPD) pathway in inclusive oriented education enhanced by bespoke tools;- developing the learning environment to host the online component of the designed pathway, comprising the I4Ts game and a gamified platform (see below);- delivering Blended Training Activities and support for teachers in the schools involved;- enacting the classroom activities generated during the training ;- amplifying impact through exchange of experiences, dissemination of outputs and preparation for transfer to other contexts.The chief outputs PLEIADE produces are: - an innovative and gamified blended TPD pathway [O1] dedicated to inclusive education, learning design, and collaborative learning; - the above mentioned Hybrid I4Ts game [O2] comprising a tangible and a digital components to support teachers’ design of collaborative, inclusion-oriented learning activities; - a Gamified platform for the Blended Training Activities [O3] providing a scaffolded context for teacher interaction to design PLEIADE - inspired classroom activities and the exchange of related experiences; - an Open online collection of good practices for inclusion generated by the PLEIADE teacher community;- an evaluation kit for inclusion-oriented collaborative learning activities;- a project Impact amplification kit.These two kits, co-designed with participating teachers, will help implement the project strategy and approach outside consortium contexts.