ADD-ONSKILLS project responds to an increasing need for taking up new challenges in digital and remote times, that set the bar high for teachers and trainers in technical universities. Thus, they need not only to follow quick-changes in the construction sector, but also face the prospect of remote or hybrid learning. Preliminary research about the competences of graduates of technical universities as well as results of analysis of our previous Erasmus+ project, showed inability to conduct comprehensive analysis taking into account different aspects and technical solutions to create the best energy-effective and ecology-friendly solution. The analysis of the previous project in this area showed a gap to be filled, thus, we decided to face the challenge. Moreover the pandemic situation made students stay home or conduct blended learning, that raised requirements to educators. Modern lessons would thus move from an approach centred on the teacher's performance to one based on the construction and development of new students' skills, guided by the teacher working with them on the evaluation of content, making it clear, comparing results, developing new ideas. The teacher would therefore not only be entrusted with the role of controlling learning but also that of facilitating the interaction of knowledge, managing relationships, developing practical hard and soft skills. Multimedia modules are aimed at stimulating subsequent reflections and activities to be carried out by students. They must deal with the topics with an integrated approach between different disciplinary areas, encourage questions and develop creative thinking. We need to prepare engineers to enter the international labour market. To achieve the aim of the project a cohesive consortium with active involvement of 5 HEIs and one association of engineers has been established. All partners understand inevitability of changes in the education system and have wide experience in different areas related to designing low energy and eco-friendly buildings for sustainable cities. Common work of our teachers, their participation in an international short training, project meetings will enable the exchange of knowledge about designing and workmanship of modern, smart buildings using eco-friendly solutions. It will also contribute to the creation of a long-lasting network of cooperation in the didactic and scientific field. We will create an innovative learning module for blended mobility course, taking into account that the full course could be done remotely if necessary. We will develop at least 4 e-labs that will provide remote access to the equipment or will allow to simulate operation of systems depending on external variables to replace typical labs on site. Our ideas, tools and methods will be tested on two groups of students working in international and interdisciplinary teams. All products verified during the courses (syllabus of the course, didactic e-modules, e-labs, e-book) will be delivered and available free of charge on the ADD-ON_SKILLS web page. The innovative ADD-ON_SKILLS module will be included in our HEIs programmes and offered to students from various universities as a facultative subject (4 ECTS), or/and as a course to upskill young engineers. The implementation of this module will allow to enhance the attractiveness of the studies, complement the programme with modern IT technology achievements and make the teaching content more consistent with the practical aspects to prepare graduates to enter the demanding international labour market. It is worth to note it will ease HEIs virtual teaching and sweeten the pot. Participants of ADD-ON_SKILLS project (students, teachers) will improve their language competence, interpersonal skills, raise their multicultural awareness and get specialist engineering knowledge. Employers taking part in meetings will find HEIs open for cooperation with business and industry in many fields (joint case-studies, thesis, trainings etc.).In the future, ADD-ON_SKILLS module that is open to new technologies and adapts to the needs of the labour market demand will contribute to the development of the economy, filling the gap in education observed. We will organize at least 3 multiplier events in Poland and Lithuania, to promote results of ADD-ON_SKILLS project and ERASMUS+ ideas at various levels. We will disseminate the results among students, teachers and scientists–we will share our outputs, facilitate access to materials that will be helpful in different disciplines and courses. The results of the project will be also submitted to the executives of HEIs to inspire them to further improvements in the educational process. Moreover, we will disseminate the results of our analysis among local citizens to make them more environmentally conscious, which hopefully will result in larger use of modern innovative solutions, reduction in energy consumption and decrease of greenhouse gasses emission in the future

"Through the current project ""Leadership for mid level managers"" we've created a consortium of 6 partner organizations, from 4 countries and all the partners were implicated until the end of the project, according to the initial agreements. The project had 3 main objectives being:1. Exchange best practices in order to improve the common knowledge base of all consortium partners in regards to development programs aimed towards mid-level managers from small, medium and large companies our specialist’s time management, development of a career plan path and communications skills.2. Create a common baseline analysis in regards to the struggles and issues that mid-level managers from small, medium and large companies are confronted in companies from various European countries.3. Identify areas of improvement for the partners’ current leadership training programs, mainly effective communication, feedback, motivation and engagement.The project results and activities were concluded in an international analysis report, covering the issues that mid-level managers from small, medium and large companies located in the partner countries are confronted with. It consist of series of case studies run by each partner organisation. Initially we considered to analyse 18 case studies in the consortium and we succeeded to analyse 20 case studies. Through the international report and the case studies, partners were able to exchange best practices. Furthermore, the best practice approach helped the partners to identify skill gaps within mid-level management. Broader HR skills and technical tools has been identified as the main elements to develop.At the five transnational project meeting we had a total number of 71 participants.The partners also conducted a total of 3 training demos on mid-level management, used to increase knowledge and training capabilities of the participants: educators, trainers, experts and middle managers. At trainings we had a total number of 41 participants. The trainings covered topics that should increase mid-level managers’ leadership skills like: communication, teamwork, delivering feedback and employees’ motivation. A few tools were presented and discussed like: feedback methods, job description forms, evaluation systems of the employees (KPIs system), personality tests. At the end of the project, all partner organizations and our representatives have extended knowledge, from a national to a European level, and we improved our expertise about leadership training."

<< Background >>The pandemic has forced various educational institutions to adopt an online teaching format quickly. From a technological point of view, this was not hard. A major challenge is the teaching methodology: learning online makes it more challenging to keep the student at the computer for a long time, as well as to involve the student in the lecture and help him/her avoid ‘distraction syndrome’. Months of lockdown, when teachers and students had to work in the format of distant learning, demonstrated that traditional methods are not optimal, it is necessary to change the approach and help lecturers to overcome the challenges posed by online teaching.Moreover, the pandemic has become a real challenge in organizing Erasmus+ studies. The onset of the pandemic, when the situation changed in a flash, the countries were closing their borders and the transport system completely disrupted, created a great sense of uncertainty for students and their parents; many families feel reluctant to let their children study abroad. A possible response to this situation is to offer students the opportunity of Erasmus+ blended mobility in order to recover trust and create international experiences taking full advantage of virtual mobility. However, the last few months have shown that students do not see the value of starting Erasmus+ studies online – if they refuse physical mobility, they do not choose to study online either and do not participate in the Erasmus+ programme at all. It would be very important to show students that even without physical mobility, studying online in the international environment could create value for them – working in an international online team can help students to develop important professional and transferable competencies, to expand their network and still, can create cultural experiences for them.<< Objectives >>The CityGo project aims to develop methodology and materials that enable higher education institutions (HEIs) to perform quality and engaging problem-based learning in a digital environment.This will be achieved through applying at HEIs a model of collaborative online communities focused around a particular topic. In business this practice already proved to be a successful one: in our info-age people feel overwhelmed with information and they wish to have a ‘guide’ who would orient them, connect with high-quality info-pieces or relevant expertise. The active community also provides peer-to-peer learning, which creates common experiences, gives a sense of belonging, and increases participants’ engagement. So during this project consortium will develop a methodology of efficient teaching/learning in collaborative online communities, where students will solve particular societal challenges on Sustainable City. The community will offer to their members (students and lecturers) a digital content library on relevant topics and a collaborative online platform, where members will meet each other and solve various issues.Project objectives:1) to improve HEIs lecturers competence in creating an engaging and efficient online learning environment;2) to advance competencies of higher education students to learn efficiently in international online communities addressing real-world challenges;3) to create an open-access content library for the modules in the field of Sustainable City that can lay the foundation for effective partnerships between HEIs for Erasmus+ blended mobility;4) to collect findings and best practice and share success factors and challenges of engaging digital problem-based learning in the various cultural and institutional contexts.<< Implementation >>The project will start with students' and teachers' survey in order to develop tools for efficient online communities – in Month 6 the work package will result in Procedures and strategies for setting up effective challenge-oriented online communities (facilitator’s rules and participants’ policies).Along with that, the consortium will start working on a platform with digital learning materials, which will be used by the participants of collaborative online communities. At least 6 modules will be adopted for online learning (3-6 ECTS each). After completion of the digital content library, at least 6 collaborative communities for students and 1 community for facilitators will be created in Moodle, Facebook (or other) environment. 180 students from 6 HEIs will be working on real-world challenges in the online communities. In order to consistently gather information and analyze the resulting experience from the perspective of students, lecturers, and institutions, a participatory-made framework will be developed. Partners will analyze adaptation of participants, interaction rules and work process, facilitation of communication, acting as a team, peer-to-peer learning, reaching the goals, transdisciplinarity, working in international teams. After analyzing and compiling all the experiences PR3 will result in Guidelines for HEIs, which would address the following concerns: choosing a platform that matches institutional/consortium needs, preparing community facilitators, developing guidelines and governance to fit the organization, creating awareness for the community, intercultural aspect (what to take into account running international communities). In order to multiply created knowledge and lessons learned, each partner will organize 3 multiplier events (webinar M9, webinar M15, offline event M24) inviting higher education lecturerers, local authorities, NGOs, business representatives from their region/country.<< Results >>The main results and outcomes reached by the consortium evolve from the project objectives:RESULTS1) Procedures and strategies for setting up effective challenge-oriented online communities (facilitator’s rules and participants’ policies) 2) An open-access digital content library on Sustainable City consisting of at least of 6 modules and laying a solid foundation for quality Erasmus+ blended mobility will be developed;3) Guidelines for HEIs on setting up collaborative online communities will be prepared.4) At least 30 lecturers will increase their competence in the facilitation of challenge-oriented collaborative online communities at 6 HEIs (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL);5) At least 180 students (including both local and international) from 6 HEIs (LT, DE, PL, CZ, PT, GR) will increase their competence of working on interdisciplinary real-world challenges in the virtual environment of collaborative online communities;6) At least 360 persons from outside the partner institutions will take part in the webinars/workshops (through multiplier events) where they will learn about created results and lessons learned.OUTCOMES1) Advanced HE lecturers’ competence for interdisciplinary engaging problem-based teaching in an online environment;2) Improved student competence and engagement for collaborative online learning;3) Created institutional know-how regarding quality challenge-oriented teaching/learning in the digital environment at 6 HEIs (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL);4) Laid a solid foundation for quality Erasmus+ blended mobility in the field of Sustainable City;5) Created new partnerships and strengthened existing cooperation within 6 consortium members (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL).6) Developed a learning approach in a digital environment easy transferable and applicable in HEIs across Europe.

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"<< Background >>The consortium is applying for this project because it is the ideal official framework to support innovative international educational strategies and resources related to the topic of “Life Sciences and Technology”, in particular, in the first approach for Medicine and Biomedical Engineering. The society and all the partners have the need of adapting to virtual education following the new paradigm supported by the European Commission including I & H, DIGCOMP and DigCompEdu frameworks core values and standards in all their actions. The Health Science sector is finding some troubles while adapting to these, as moving clinical cases to the virtual space needs of a development and innovation effort focused on gamification of the learning-training and the personalization using artificial intelligence for personalized learning and monitoring and smart gamified pedagogical activity.All the universities in our consortium need new virtual methodologies and modules to teach their disciplines related Health Technology. The University of Deusto has a new degree on Biomedical Engineering and one in medicine in hybrid learning that need an innovative virtual implementation of 30% of their ECTS credits, the université ESTIA is expanding the biomedical specialisation in their engineering degrees. Francisco de Vitoria University has found the need amongst the students in Medicine degree, specially after COVID19, to move some learning objectives of clinical clerkships needed for medical studies to a virtual campus and include immersive experiences for simulated clinical cases, a similar situation has been found at the University of Deusto, where medicine students need an effective and useful method to train clinical studies online and even from home. Finally, Bialystok University need innovative programs and technologies that allow them to teach through virtual campuses everything related to patient-student relations in Medicine and Biomedical Engineering. It was not easy before COVID19 and it is even more complicated nowadays for universities to train students in this relation, controlling environments, ensuring safety and educative feedback. The gamification strategies are designed to provide active and personalised feedback to students, which is improved and grounded in clinical cases. Universities with Health technology related programs need innovative programs using virtual campuses designed with immersive technologies shall solve this situation, including personalized artificial intelligence choices and disruptive strategies for students empowerment. The gamification strategies are designed to provide active and personalised feedback to students, which is improved and grounded in clinical cases.The students also have the need of receiving active feedback and studying in stimulating environments. For these reasons, the gamification strategies will be based on co-creation with students directly so that they are enjoyable and in I&H so that students can have active contact with students from around Europe and the other partner universities. They will also be able to have a more efficient and fast learning, as optimised case studies online allow the reduction of study-time. In real life clinical cases, time is wasted sometimes in displacements or non-educative parts of the experiences, while the online gamified environment allows for a reduction and optimisation of these situations. In the specific case of medicine, increasing European regulations to promote the safety and confidentiality of health services reduce the possibilities for students to act autonomously with real patients and limit their options for training in decision-making and risky interventions. Simulation in virtual scenarios allows for consequence-free performance in complex scenarios without risks and the necessary teaching mentoring.<< Objectives >>The Health Technology sector is rapidly growing worldwide, and the European Commission has recognized this phenomenon, placing it amongst its priorities both in Horizon Europe, Erasmus + and many other similar programs. Many leading universities and research centres have also focused on this field and started educational programmes within it. However, in this context, none of them has designed a virtual campus including a set of courses with the amount of innovations that this consortium is aiming to achieve. This proposal of the virtual campus HealthTEK works around 4 ideas: gamified immersion, flipped learning, internationalization at home and personalized learning. The proposal focuses on developing a “Virtual Campus HEalthTEK” including a set of courses for “Life and Health sciences and Technology” addressed to biomedical engineers and medicine students beyond others. The gamified training platform will include education games, biomedical mobile applications, and virtual patient simulations. There are many potential educational advantages of games for medical and biomedical engineering training as the promotion of the engagement and to offer opportunities for deliberate practice in biomedical reasoning. This proposal will inspire experimentation, stimulate discussions on cross-platform integration, and lay the groundwork for designing an extensive resource website or database useful to health practitioners of all levels—students, residents, fellows, and practicing providers. The general objective of the project is to design, implement and validate a virtual campus HealthTEK including a set of modules focused on training life sciences and technology students through immersive gamification experiences personalized using artificial intelligence. These modules will be based on direct interaction and feedback for students to be able to train in realistic scenarios without actually going to hospitals or acting over real patients. These modules will also increase cooperation between institutions with an integrated and better quality education services dedicated to medicine students and biomedical engineers through exchange of knowledge and good practices between organizations at an international level. The specific objectives are:SO1: Strengthen educational excellence in “health and life sciences and technology “ professions focusing on gamification educational strategies and artificial intelligence for personalized learning with immersive and active feedback technologies. It will be based on a Learning Management System (LMS).SO2: Enhance networking activities between all partners including exchange activities for staff and particularly young educators. SO3: Developing and including an Artificial Intelligence system to personalise the modules and improve the critical thinking capabilities of students and professionals. SO4: Support education in healthcare professions at the European level following DIGCOMP and DigCompEdu standards and LMS systems. SO5: Co-design the architecture and modules of a virtual campus including a set of modules based on serious gamification SO6: To develop new gamified activities for acquiring competences on Internationalization at home (I&H) and critical thinking. To train “critical thinking” amongst students and professionals, thanks to the active feedback systems and innovative contents with clinical cases.<< Implementation >>This proposal of the virtual campus HealthTEK works around 4 ideas: gamified immersion, flipped learning, internationalization at home and personalized learning. The proposal focuses on developing a “virtual campus” including a set of courses for “Life and Health sciences and Technology” addressed to biomedical engineers and medicine students. The activities we are planning to implement are divided in 3 types: Multiplier events, learning-teaching activities and development tasks. The multiplier events will be 4 as planned, they consist of activities in which the involved partners disseminate the results of the project. These events are key for a successful project, as without a general knowledge in the European Life Sciences field of our results, these will be irrelevant. Our proposal will bring important innovations to this sector, and for this reason, it is necessary to organise these events in which the involved staff from the different participating organisations will explain the diverse features of the platform, the handbook and the AI system to stakeholders. These activities, therefore, will be shaped as conferences. As for learning-teaching activities, one professor training will be necessary, as the platform can be optimised if those in charge of implementing its use have an extensive knowledge of it. This training activity will also erase any conservative tendencies against the implementation of this new technology amongst professors. It will be the best opportunity for a general presentation to the staff of the involved centres. Finally, the development tasks are the ones taking the biggest effort from the partners, as these are the ones that allow for the outcome creation. These include managing the project and coordinating the consortium, distributing tasks and timetables, developing the AI system, developing the gamification strategy, contributing to the methodological guide, developing the virtual platform, testing the virtual platform, modules implementation, designing and developing a set of clinical cases that cover the variety of problems to be solved by students of life sciences, supervising the technological development of the gamified environment that simulates the real characteristics of clinical clerkships, with special emphasis on the necessary interactivity in decision-making processes and feedback from tutors, testing the ""virtual clerkship"" through clinical cases in a gamified format and validating its use in a trial with a voluntary university population (teaching staff and students), measuring its theoretical impact on the resolution of the problems posed and on student satisfaction and assessing the practical effect that training in virtual clerkships produces on the student's clinical skills profile through an end-of-term OSCE, compared to student-controls who did not undergo such training and followed the traditional educational model. These are the activities to be carried out in this project and which shall conclude in the three outcomes: The virtual platform with the gamified modules, the methodological guide and the AI system for personalisation.<< Results >>The main results of the project are the following outcomes:a) OUTCOME 1: A virtual campus HealthTEK including a set of virtual modules based on serious gamification strategies with immersive and active feedback technologies. This shall be Integrated in up to three official degree programmes of the University of Deusto, in ESTIA and Bialystok as part of their specialisation module for Bioengineering and in Francisco de Vitoria and Deusto as part of their medical studies. This new platform will be based on moodle, meet synchronised lessons, link web simulators and, overall LMS, the Learning Management System which is widely extended throughout European educational institutions. The virtual platform will also follow the model of professor Tony Bates which focuses on overcoming the conservative barriers of many universities to improve the teaching and learning quality through technology. We propose a new way of education by innovative Virtual Platform Gamification. The main ingredients of the platform will be rewards, because gamification works on the principle of reward and reinforcement. Interaction is another crucial ingredient of our platform. Virtual Event Gamification Ideas will include the field such as: cardiology, biomechanics, computer-assisted orthopaedics, custom-made implant, rapid prototyping in prosthetic, digital radiology, virtual diagnosis. Moreover, the e-learning courses will be presented in the field: cardiology, biomechanics, computer-assisted orthopaedics, custom-made implant, rapid prototyping in prosthetic, digital radiology, virtual diagnosis.b) OUTCOME 2: developing an integrated handbook / methodological interactive guide for learning to use the modules, adapted to EU requirements; development of common guidelines for the education of biomedical engineers and doctors with the immersive gamification. There will also be online practical training for lectures and professors from all the institutions. The course and virtual platform instructions are key and they shall be well designed and available for everybody to have access. In this line, the involved research teams have experts in psychology, graphic design and technology in their multidisciplinary teams who are specialised in tutorial design and web page visibility. d) OUTCOME 3: Smart module using artificial intelligence for personalised learning and AI systems with the advantage of the personalization to better adjust to the potential profile including lifelong learning. For this purpose, we will follow the Learning Analytics module which includes the following possibilities: Descriptive, predictive, diagnostic, and prescriptive. This module is widely spread in the European educational environment with optimal results and will be effective and innovative in the Life Sciences field and as part of our virtual campus. We propose an Artificial Intelligence system based on the ontology definitions and user data, the skills associated with the education areas will be automatically updated through events. In order to determine the clusters (groups of students with similar features), the system implements the machine learning algorithms.There are also secondary results coming from the multiplier events as an increased awareness amongst the Life Sciences Community of the importance of new technologies in the teaching activities. We aim to expand our approach and virtual campus to an international network of professionals interested in innovating in the learning-teaching activities in this field and some publications and conferences that explain the educational platform based on computer games based learning with critical thinking and its artificial intelligence module for being adjustable to different profiles of students. Additionally, the virtual campus will offer services to different professionals related to “Life Sciences and Technology” needing an update as a Long Life Learning process using the virtual campu"