Despite of rising new media study programs at higher education institutions (HEIs), there is a gap in education meeting the challenges of digital economy, emerging new creativity based business models and digital literacy in creative media. Exactly this gap was addressed by Clustering Creativity project.In order to cope with the lack of synergy between HEIs, online marketing professionals and students as future creators of new media products, a need to strengthen interaction between academia, business and online marketing professionals was identified by the consortium of 7 partners: 5 universities from Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Croatia, and the UK joined by online marketing and private training companies.The aim of Clustering Creativity project was to stimulate synergy among universities, internet marketing companies and students in order to empower Cultural and Creative Industries for the creation of jobs in new media market. To reach the aim, the project pursued 4 objectives all of which were successfully met. Obj #1 was aiming to create international new media community integrating students, online media companies and educators. A Creator Hub platform with over 1000 registered users from 32 countries confirms that consortium has managed to grow this international community beyond the borders of the EU. Obj #2 was aiming to strengthen the skills of students which was achieved by developing hands-on innovative learning methodology and engaging learning materials. Students from all the participating countries had an opportunity to propose their ideas for 8 different challenges, created by real operating businesses, and to be evaluated by and negotiated with the decision makers in these companies, taking the practical part of this project as close to real business situations as possible. Obj #3 aimed at developing an internet platform as a tool for interaction of new media community. The platform offers its visitors 3 blocks of topics (fundamentals; strategy; tools and implementation) that include video, slides and additional material about selected topics in digital media and marketing. Obj #4 aimed to create conditions for acquiring labour market related knowledge and skills during the studies. During the training activities linkages and common understanding among digital business professionals and academia have been created by project partners. Short-term joint staff training event, carried out in the frames of Clustering Creativity, has highly contributed to achieving project's objectives through increased competencies of the authors who developed the training module. Better awareness on labour market needs in digital marketing and new ideas on strategies how to involve students, teachers and businesses as well as build the community around / through clustering creativity platform were among other benefits of the short-term joint staff training.The key outputs of Clustering Creativity are a training module and Creator Hub available at www.clusteringcreativity.com and social media. The training module was created by teachers and partners from business and thus integrated offline marketing theories with online marketing realities and specific digital skills. Community of creators developed the Creator Hub (online integrated platform) will be further supported by motivated teachers and students with improved knowledge and skills gained in newly established online marketing module.With a total reach of 104k target group members, Clustering Creativity became a success story in project partner countries and beyond. 15 teachers have worked with 8 campaign briefs from business companies and 240 students who were directly involved in the Clustering Creativity competition. As a result of Clustering Creativity, new opportunities were and will continue being created for students – they will be able to gain new competencies including how to collaborate and participate in business market by fulfilling the orders of small SME's and NGOs and to earn money, as well as to increase employment possibilities by entering business market with higher entrepreneurial and digital competencies.The impact of Clustering Creativity envisaged by the partners is increased application of European qualification framework, enhanced academia and business collaboration and growing competitiveness of higher education in creative industries – one of emerging markets as acknowledged by the European Commission.

The Integration of Web Accessibility Courses in ICT Programmes (IWAC) project establishes a unique partnership between higher education institutions and the private sector, with the overarching goal of mainstreaming accessibility skills in higher education curricula for ICT disciplines.A major driving force behind the project is the EU’s Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102) that was recently implemented in national legislations across the EU. The Directive imposes accessibility requirements on all public sector websites and apps. This increases demand for ICT professionals who have accessibility skills. Another driver of demand is the growing insight among view that accessible websites are better for everyone. Yet there is not yet a corresponding supply of skilled professionals. Web accessibility is usually not included in ICT programme curricula in higher education. As a result, many entry-level ICT professionals are unfamiliar with web accessibility. There is therefore a gap between demand and supply that must be closed. In pursuit of the vision of mainstreaming accessibility skills, the project has four overall aims. First, to spread best practice examples of how web accessibility can be integrated into higher education ICT curricula. Second, to give higher education institutions the support they need to integrate web accessibility into their ICT curricula. Third, to develop training material that will help students apply web accessibility skills in professional contexts. Finally, fourth, to create cross-sector collaborations for the dissemination of the project results.The project will encompass the following activities:-Gather best practice examples of web accessibility courses in higher education. This will be done through the use of surveys and expert interviews.-Assemble a handbook for developing content for web accessibility courses. This will rely on an extensive literature review, as well as the pre-existing knowledge of the project partners.-Develop case-based training material and MOOCs suitable for different ICT professional target groups. This will be based on the project’s previous outputs.-Localise and test training material and MOOCS. The testing will be carried out in pilot sessions at the partner universities. At least 20 students at each partner university will complete pilot trainings on the basis of the case-based material.-Draft and disseminate recommendations for how to integrate web accessibility courses into higher education ICT programmes. All outputs will be refined at multiplier events with relevant stakeholders. One such event will be held in each participating country. There will also be a larger multiplier event held at the end of the project, in conjunction with the Funka Accessibility Days conference in 2021. At least 50 representatives from universities outside the partnership will take part in project events. These representatives will also have the opportunity to examine the project results and contribute to their final drafts.The outputs of this project will be of great help to other higher education institutions to be able to respond to the increased demand for ICT graduates skilled in web accessibility. Notably, the case-based training developed in the project is an innovative as well as efficient way to ensure that the education is relevant to the needs of the future employers of the ICT students. The results of the project will be disseminated in a variety of ways. The outputs will be publicly available and promoted both through the universities and also by the Nordic chapter of the branch organisation International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP Nordic), as a partner in the consortium. Multiplier events will be held in all participating countries. These events will bring in actors from outside the partnership, which will in turn help spread the results to a wider audience.The ambition is that the project will serve as a point of reference for higher education course development on web accessibility in the coming years.

<< Objectives >>HEIsCITI project focus on creating universal curricula (methodology and teaching tools) for all types of university courses to teach students the best ways to animate and coordinate communication between citizens and local authorities for inclusive and sustainable urban development in the post Covid -19 era.<< Implementation >>HEIsCITI activites:1.Preparation of universal Methodology, Tools, Guidelines and Syllabus to animate and coordinate communication between citizens and local authorities for inclusive and sustainable urban development in the post Covid -19 era2.3 pilot actions in Cieszyn,Joniskis and Stuttgart with wide group of citizens, students and stakeholders3.Evaluation surveys4.Transnational meetings in Rijeka and Florence5.Final Conference in Poland6.Comminication and Dissemination activities<< Results >>HEIsCITI results:- a methodology for university lecturers,- tools for teachers, students, local authorities, educators,NGOs involved in the development of the city.- guidelines for local/regional authorities on how to work with citizens,- 3 pilot activities in Cieszyn, Joniskis and Stuttgart- 3 described ideas for sustainable and inclusive development of abandoned areas, - Vietnamese good practice - 3 surveys taken during pilots- full teaching materials in English (Syllabus)

There are ongoing and even disruptive changes in the media industry. Young media professionals are facing a volatile professional environment with new ways of multiplatform content production. Thus enhanced competences in digital production workflows are essential for their employability. Digitalization also offers a lot of opportunities to collaborate remote and in across boarders in a creative and efficient way. Therefor the main goal of our strategic partnership is to build up the European Media Cloud Campus (EMC2). We want to establish a digital, completely cloud-based content production and learning environment all the partners could use to produce different kinds of content.Following the idea of open innovation we integrate the students in our innovation process. All their solutions feed forward into the final cloud campus. The students cover these topics either in regular lectures in their home universities or in special international workshops. All the tools will get tested in pilot projects related to the main focus of our project, innovation in the creative industries.The five partners are specialized in media production and will provide their specific know-how to realize the cloud campus. Our partners from HvA, Amsterdam, are really strong in designing new workflows in digital publishing using state-of-the-art ICT technology. The involved colleagues from Bilgi University, Istanbul, have an excellent background in photography and visual storytelling. Editorial management and ethics in communication are two of the specific fields of knowledge of our partner university in Oslo, HIOA. Stuttgart Media University has a strong expertise in media management and will focus on content strategy and editorial management. The Danish School of Media and Journalism will provide profound knowledge in cross media journalism and web-design.Students and teachers will work on 21 activities in five different fields of knowledge: Technology is the core field of our strategic partnership. We’ll test, select, customize and implement different cloud based and open source ICT-tools to build up our digital learning environment. In the educational field we will develop an appropriate pedagogical strategy, define specific skill levels and implement new instruments of pear rating and self-assessment. In the content field we’ll develop a content strategy customized to the main topic innovation and the digital and international production environment. Regarding the editorial management we’ll develop, test and reengineer specific processes to run a digital collaborative media production. Additionally we’ll explicitly deal with ethical and intellectual property rights issues involved in the project.We’ll change the dominant logic of international education projects in content production. Traditionally students are creating ideas in remote online workgroups and are traveling to realize a product. To enhance the sustainability of our content project, we turn this process upside down: We’ll meet in international workshops with smaller group of students to develop concepts and tools, which can be used continuously in digital collaborative content productions. Furthermore almost every project activity is embedded in regular courses. And we will coordinate our curricula and develop a system of complementary international minor programs in English strongly connected to the project to foster the innovation process. Finally we’ll share our tools and results under a cc-license for education use to trigger an ongoing co-creation process to improve the quality of our cloud-based solutions.

<< Objectives >>The cooperation partnership for VET project “MegaStrat” co-designs a new curriculum and a corresponding online training course for long-term opportunity forecasting (LTOF). The main objective is to enable high-tech SMEs in the mobility and production industry to capitalise on individual opportunities megatrends offer by translating futurologic high-level trends into executable long-term strategies and actions for competitive advantages for a future more than 10-20 years ahead.<< Implementation >>MegaStrat consists of four work packages co-led by partners from industry and academia. It begins with a systematic inventory of existing knowledge and training offerings. Together with stakeholders (strategists, opinion leaders, think tanks), the curriculum is co-designed. The resulting components are thoroughly evaluated and published in the form of an online course. The project then develops a mainstreaming and outreach plan to ensure broad adoption of the curriculum.<< Results >>The main project result will be the MegaStrat Online Course, which will deliver the learning experience of the co-designed curriculum and make its training materials publicly available. The online course will also include guidelines for mainstreaming and outreaching its content. In this way, VETs and other facilitators will gain the ability to teach LTOF theory and methods to equip SMEs with personnel capable of using LTOF in strategic decision-making processes.