The importance of European cultural heritage has been generally acknowledged. A significant part of this heritage, however, modern and contemporary art, runs a great risk of getting lost for future generations, because it is particularly difficult to preserve. Proper care requires resolving fundamental questions concerning the identity and authenticity of modern and contemporary artworks and the consequences for their conservation, rethinking historically grown professional distinctions as those between the curator and the conservator, re-organizing the institutional ecosystem, and establishing frameworks for international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral research and training collaboration. The aim of this Marie Curie Innovative Training Network is to educate a new generation of professional curators, conservators and academic researchers who are properly equipped to face these challenges. The key notion guiding the research and training programmes will be the notion of reflective practice. Starting from the theoretical framework of practice theory, the research programme will investigate conservation practices through the comparative analysis of their impact on modern and contemporary artworks’ biographies. The training programme will focus on the development of a reflective professional attitude, which is a pre-requisite in this increasingly complex and collaborative field.

The “forced digitalization” of higher education came with many challenges, the key one being to ensure continuity of the teaching and learning process under the unexpected conditions imposed by social interaction restrictions. Innovative pedagogies were mobilized to facilitate instruction in the “new reality”. Despite the fact that universities managed rapidly to adapt practices by using existing digital tools and technological investments, the negative effects of students and scholars being isolated from the idly community, determined now the focus on the necessity to take care of the social, emotional and affective side, as it impacts on the academic performance. Data from a recent study carried on in 24 universities in Romania came to confirm it (ANOSR, 2020). Several studies during the pandemic situation have shown students experience decreased motivation and lack of social context, even a tendency for drop out within vulnerable groups, when higher education suddenly went online in spring 2020. We have reasons to believe that this tendency will increase on the duration of Covid-19 pandemic and after, due to lower engagement of students with the academic environment at various levels, determined both by individual and social factors, and expand the group of vulnerable people to other categories (ZAHEER et al., 2016, Davidson & Wilson, 2017; Bustamente, 2019; Respondek et al., 2020). For these reasons, we will address social and emotional needs of students and ways of approaching these needs by academics and educational specialists working in support services (Durlak et al., 2011), so that they can attend not just the cognitive development of students, but also their emotional and social needs (Bradley et al., 2010; Davidson et al., 2011; Gerson & Fernandez, 2013) in online learning communities (Peacock & Cowan, 2019).This projects aims at addressing two special sides of this pedagogical innovation not yet consistently addressed: (1) equity for vulnerable groups and (2) ensuring social-emotional conditions of learning in HE, as successful learning is not just about the quality of knowledge and skills to be trained, but is very much related to quality of social interactions among key stakeholders in the process, as well as to the emotional engagement with learning experiences. We can observe high level of concern and effort on using technology and digital tools to enhance teaching and learning and we consider equally important to address educational support services under the new digital conditions.The project aims at:- IDENTIFYING the best practices that could enhance teaching and learning when using digital tools and create conditions for social and emotional engagement of students in online learning.- PROVIDING a framework for transforming and adapting learning support services, with a special focus on vulnerable groups.- CREATING the tools to develop student’s sense of belonging in the context of virtual learning communities.Our target groups are:- Academics teaching online courses, with a focus on those with reduced digital literacy and limited capacity to transfer all teaching in online environment in an effective way. Participants to the project are members of the partner universities (AMU, NKUA, UB, AUM, UniRoma1, SU and EKTU).- Students learning online, who need to develop a sense of belonging, with a focus on those from vulnerable groups. Participants to the project are studying at the partner universities.When taking a perspective view of the needs this project comes to respond to, there are several areas of investigation and exploration, which were undertaken by the partners in this project, according to their expertise in the field. Each of these topics were translated into actions (working packs) that would lead to accomplishment of the general objectives of the project. Collaborative groups of academics will co-create knowledge, support mechanisms and services to be offered across all universities, such as analytical selection of the vulnerabilities in the education system, with a specific attention for the emotional and social impact of the pandemic and the identification of new categories of vulnerable people, a mapping of existing digital media used by partner universities for teaching and learning and evaluate their effect on sense of belonging, design thinking as a method to add knowledge about possibilities to enhance the sense of belonging among different categories of students in order to assist course design, support services and creation of digital tools.All intellectual outputs and other tangible materials will be open access resources to be used, adapted and improved by partner universities and other organizations that seek to offer high quality online teaching practice and ensure social-emotional conditions of learning for their students at the same time.

Pakistan higher education has been struggling to adopt 21st century modern teaching/learning methods, especially eLearning or online education. The reluctance to modernize higher education was exposed when COVID-19 hit the world and caused closure of campus life. Most of the Pakistani universities, especially in remote areas, suspended teaching/learning processes. Resultantly, students’ degrees were delayed by at least 6-18 months, also discontinuity affected overall students’ academic achievement. RAPID is intended to strengthen online education in Pakistan with the support of European partners. The main objectives of RAPID are to develop a national policy for online education, strengthen faculty capacity in eLearning and establish eLearning infrastructure at remote universities of Pakistan. RAPID has four Pakistani partners including HEC, the country’s regulatory body in higher education, SIBAU, IBA Karachi and LUMS. RAPID also includes three remote universities as associate partners including University of Balochistan, University of Turbat and University of Baltistan. The associate partners suffered most during COVID-19 closure due to lack of infrastructure and faculty capacity in online education. For learning best practices in eLearning, RAPID includes program countries’ partners including NTNU Norway, LNU Sweden and SAPIENZA Italy. The European partners have demonstrated excellence in eLearning and shown how eLearning assists in smooth transition of learning mode during catastrophes like pandemic. RAPID includes 60 Pakistani faculty/staff mobility to program countries for firsthand experience in eLearning, workshops at Pakistani universities for at least 120 faculty members, national summit for drafting online education policy document to be participated by at least 120 national stakeholder and establishment of eLearning infrastructure at remote universities. RAPID is expected to transform the overall landscape of eLearning in Pakistan.

"Traditional teaching methodologies mostly the lecture style teaching, with power point presentation are being used widely; but have been found ineffective and boring both for the students and teachers. Besides, students are in the state of passive learning, their critical thinking, problem solving and entrepreneurship skills do not improve with this traditional teaching/learning activity. Those adverse outcomes may cause serious consequences especially in health sciences and dental education when teaching goals could not be reached just by providing theoretical knowledge to the students. Research and dental literature grow tremendously day by day, introducing new technologies, methods, materials that require proper hand skills to be applied. However, by traditional teaching teachers could only have the chance to show those techniques, methods and their applications to students by power point presentation that is not acceptable anymore. Students have to possess problem solving and critical thinking skills to select the most appropriate information for the sake of their patients. However, we encounter problems with our students, when they start clinics to treat patients. We observe that most of the students do not rely upon their skills and knowledge, unconfident, could not recognize and select appropriate equipment to be used. Those outcomes inevitably are not related solely with the students but also with teachers/trainers as well. Time has come, even passed to change our teaching methods and adapt innovative teaching methods integrated with information communication technology (ICT) . When searched in the literature and read the policy documents both on higher education and dental education we came up with the idea of preparing this proposal aiming to bring innovation in teaching/training by inclusion of the ICT use, to implement a new pedagogical models enabling students to take the responsibility of their active learning. In this project we developed “Flipped Classroom Model” (FCM) teaching/training course for teachers/trainers in dental education by exchange of knowledge, experience and good practices. The reason of choosing Flipped Classroom Method is because flipping the class reverses the traditional class setup: students acquire basic content outside of class mostly through videos produced and posted by teachers and then work together on application oriented activities, to improve their hand skills, discuss on the topic for a better and deep understanding. The objectives of this project are to introduce this innovative teaching/training model to dental teachers/trainers, empower the target group to integrate ICT tools into teaching and training and empower students’ (indirect target group) active learning, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, communication skills by implementing FCM in teaching/training.To reach this objective, 5 universities from Turkey, Belgium, Italy, France and Denmark with key persons all experienced in dental education produced ""course syllabus and learning outcomes"", ""a teacher's guide to flipping the classroom"" and ""videos on flipping the classroom"". Results were disseminated throughout the project life time, partners prepared their courses by FCM and implemented to their own courses. The results will be promoted even after ending of the project."

A failure to quantitatively control adhesion costs billions of euros each year in failed components, suboptimal product performance and life-threatening infections. Nano-enabled and bio-inspired products offer practical solutions to overcome adhesion and friction problems in these application areas. Current tools and methodologies, however, have so far failed to produce any standardised interpretation of adhesion data linking nanoscale adhesion to the macroscopic data. OYSTER uses contact mechanics to bridge adhesion data at multiple length scales and link interfacial adhesion to physicochemical properties. OYSTER brings Europe’s first-class laboratories and SMEs to take existing nanoscale characterisation technologies towards widespread utilisation in process optimisation and model validation. OYSTER achieves this by sharing metadata in an Open Innovation Environment, where new paradigms of multi-scale contact mechanics are validated on selected application oriented reference materials through continuous interaction with the European Materials Characterisation Council (EMCC). This way, OYSTER generates wider agreement over adhesion measurement protocols by multimodal Atomic Force Microscopy and high-speed nanoindentation. Tools and methodologies at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 will be progressed to TRL 6 through unambiguous, standardised, quantitative measurements of adhesion from nano- to macro-scale. Nano-patterned wear resistant surfaces and chemically/topologically functionalised soft contact lenses will show case nano-enabled and bioinspired products for significant market impact. In this way, OYSTER implements the triangle of modelling, characterisation and manufacturing to the wider context of industrial exploitation specially through small and medium enterprises, stakeholders’ networks such as EMCC, European Materials Modelling Councils (EMMC) and European Pilot Project Network (EPPN), and international standard organisations.