The Project Title: “Change in Classroom: Promoting Innovative Teaching & Learning to Enhance Student Learning Experience in Eastern Partnership Countries” (PRINTeL)The main goal of the project is to enhance student learning experience in Armenia, Georgia and Belarus by promoting development and innovation in teaching and learning (T&L), supporting integration of instruction with technology, and dissemination of good practices. This goal is achieved through the accomplishment of the following objectives:1. Strengthening Teaching Staff Development Centres (TSDC) in PC universities through enhancing capacities of staff and trainers, modernizing infrastructure and introducing innovative teacher training programmes. 2. Building up capacities of partner country higher education institutions (PC HEIs) teaching staff by developing their innovative and technology-enhanced T&L skills and competences.3. Establishing Virtual Academy of Teaching & Learning (VATL) as an international community of teachers interested in applying innovative T&L methods and tools and using open educational resources (OER).4. Promoting awareness on the types and methods of innovative and technology-enhanced T&L and disseminating best practices.The following outcomes and outputs are achieved as a result of the project implementation: • 30 staff and 100 trainers of the PC HEIs’ TSDCs have been trained on organization and operation of present-day TSDCs and on innovative technology-enhanced T&L and online instructional methods. • 4 new TSDCs have been established in the PC HEIs and the 5 existing TSDCs have been modernised and strengthened with new technology, trainers and teacher training and counseling programmes. • 18 technologically-enhanced Active Learning Classrooms (ALC) for teacher trainings and 9 multimedia Lecture Capture Studios (LCS) for video-content building have been established, 5 new teacher training courses on innovative and technology-enhanced T&L are introduced in the PC HEIs TSDCs. • Over 4,500 university teachers have been trained in innovative and technology-enhanced T&L methods, online instructional tools and technics, and OER development. • Virtual Academy of Teaching & Learning (VATL) has been established (https://vatl.ysu.am/ ) as an online interactive experience sharing and mutual learning platform to promote innovative T&L practices, creating digital educational content, and serving as an OER depository. • 5 Virtual Ccommunities of teaching practice, Annual virtual forum on innovative T&L and 9 Institutional annual award programmes for the excellence in T&L and promoting development and awareness on innovative pedagogy are created. • 800 copies of the good practice Teacher’s Handbook on Innovative and Technology-enhanced T&L are published and an e-version is made available in the project website: http://printel.am/uploads/page/pdfs/Teacher's%20Handbook__.pdf

Georgia ratified the UN Convention on the right of persons with disabilities in 2014; However PwDs still experience unequal approach and their rights are frequently violated. Low professional competence of school teachers towards working with pupils with disabilities and special educational needs (SEN ) is one of the main factors influencing quality of inclusive education in Georgian schools. Till now no university in the country has an academic program in special education - at the same time there are about 1500 special teachers working in schools- without proper knowledge and academic diploma/certificate. The training program in inclusive education carried out by the National Centre for Teacher Professional Development is an only way for teachers to enhance professional competence in this regard. With existed curriculum GEO HEIs cannot deal with two main challenges the country has towards inclusive education - (1) Special teachers' proper education - providing them with academic knowledge and diploma/certificate and (2) subject teachers’ low competence towards working with pupils wit SEN - ensuing them with proper education at the university and provide with related continuing education programs. The project is focused on development new academic modules in special education that will be integrated in teacher education program at four GEO HEIS - graduates from the program, future subject/general school teachers will have a proper knowledge to work with pupils with SEN. In addition the certificate program in special education creates opportunities to prepare special teachers with academic knowledge and diploma; short term training programs gives opportunities to school/ field practitioners to refresh professional capacity in inclusive education. And finally strong network of professionals (academicians, school practitioners, NGO/DPO and state agencies) arranged with the frame of the project will create good background for better police and practice.

LOVEDISTANCE project foresees to improve the access to and quality of inclusive higher education for minority ethnic groups, women in disadvantaged situations and in peripheral areas and disabled students in Israel and Georgia by supporting institutional capacities through the reinforcement and provision of student support services in both countries. The project also aims to enhance the access to education within and outside the classroom throughout a digital environment. Herein, courses already developed within the context of reinforcing the academic skills of target groups will be more accessible. The project reflects the importance to raise awareness on accessibility issues within Israel and Georgia as well as the necessity to ensure the long-term effect impact of the project for the benefit of women in vulnerable situation and minority ethnic groups.

The project is designed to define clearly the mechanisms of transfer and commercialization of knowledge and technologies, which are to be understandable unambiguously and executable within the reasonable timeframes. Realization of the project will enable to eliminate the existing difficulties and bottlenecks in cooperation with enterprises, to make structure of the cooperation more clear and robust and to give new opportunities and open new work horizons.The project is aimed to bring cooperation quality to a new level, to improve it and to enlarge. It means that new communicative, scientific and business links will be established between the enterprises and HEIs.The cooperation to be improved for the following groups: students, teaching and administrative staff of the university and the enterprise. The changes are to be executed at the level of the consortium and to be applied to all the participants. The cooperation for the abovementioned groups will be realized in the forms of internships, workshops, meetings, conferences and round tables. There are no spin-off network between Russia, Portugal, the UK, Spain, China and Georgia. The first steps to build such effectively operating network will be taken in the project by the specialists from the participating parties.The wider objective is promoting Bologna process implementation through enhancing university-enterprise cooperation via spin-off companies best practices. Specific objectives are the following: 1. Development of effective SOC-Model for university-enterprise partnership and piloting in RF and Georgia HEIs.2. Creating of virtual international spin-off network.Project outcomes: 1. SOC-Model for university-enterprise partnership.2. Guidelines for SPC-Model for university-enterprise partnership implementation in partner HEIs (EU countries, Russia, China and Georgia). 3. Training courses for spin-off developers. 4. Virtual international spin-off network.

The main goal of the project is to change the strategic framework in order to provide implementation of dual education in HE system of Georgia.The overall aim of the project is:• Improvement of the competencies of graduates in Georgia according to the needs of employers,• Increase of the employability of graduates and their motivation to study,• Improvement of accessibility to HE of students from lower income families.Dual Higher Education (DHE) will enable students to acquire more relevant knowledge and skills by combining classical school education with knowledge and skills acquired at the work place. Consequently, this will provide them with competences and skills that are more in line with needs of employers and it will significantly increase employability.Statistically, first employments are happening usually in the companies who offer work-based learning. This will not only raise the motivation of students, but also raise the interest of companies to cooperate with HEIs in design and implementation of the study programs based on DHE.It is expected that companies would give input to curricula, organise and eventually provide scholarships schema to selected students, offering organised training led jointly with HEIs and being involved in the assessment of the knowledge. In order to achieve these aims, the project needs to realize the following concrete objectives:• To identify needs and specific requirements of companies in different industrial sectors and businesses for DHE and to find companies willing to participate in pilot implementations of DHE;• To develop a flexible and generic dual HE model to support different needs and interests of all stakeholders, and to provide recommendations to HEIs for implementation of DHE;•To propose amendments to the national qualifications framework;•To test the specific DHE models generated from the generic model, by realizing their pilot implementations during the project and to analyse achieved results.