<< Background >>The environment and fight against climate change are an urgent focus on national, EU and global scenes recognizing key role of higher education institutions (HEIs) contributing to the changes needed to become climate neutral by 2050. Developing competencies and future-oriented curricula that meet the needs of individuals and the respective industries are highly required as the construction industry holds great responsibility and potential for supporting this agenda. Developing green sectorial skills and future-oriented curricula are essential aspects of preparing students, lecturers, and practitioners to become actual change factors.The construction industry is responsible for 40% of energy use, one-third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and has one of the most significant waste streams generated within the EU. This underpins the urgency of addressing the environmental aspects, supported by the EU Green Deal strategy, Paris Agreement and the UN’s 2030 Agenda for SDGs.SUSTAINABUILD will support three HEIs in Denmark, Finland, and Belgium and a construction business association in Spain to develop activities to foster the acquisition of interdisciplinary green skills and awareness towards the environmental challenges of their students and lecturers based on solid input and needs from the construction industry, thus ensuring the triple helix approach throughout SUSTAINABUILD. Therefore, the overall aim of this project is to equip students at construction engineering programmes through increased sustainable knowledge, awareness, and interdisciplinary green sectorial skills in an international perspective using innovative digital didactic learning methods and digital mobility. Additionally, SUSTAINABUILD aims to provide valuable insights into the contribution of the built environment to practitioners and lecturers within the field and to ultimately push the sustainability agenda in Europe and accelerate the implementation by internationally exchanging ideas and good practices.<< Objectives >>The main objective of SUSTAINABUILD is to develop a 5 ECTS hybrid course (WP3) focusing in detail on how construction projects (new buildings and renovation projects) can support the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and implement the course in the educational programmes of the partners. The course will consist of a theoretical and a practical part. It will provide a platform for lecturers to digitally facilitate interdisciplinary and international learning activities, thereby strengthening the interdisciplinary capabilities and awareness of sustainable solutions among students within construction engineering programmes who can participate in group work transnationally on industrial cases using digital mobility.As a foundation for the course, a thorough analysis, with input from the national reference groups will be made (WP2), resulting in a strategy for enhancing SDG integration in construction projects, including details on what the curriculum should cover, along with practical cases of SDG implementation in construction projects. Based on the strategic design framework results, new educational material will be developed for the course and tested twice among 150 students at the HEIs, along with a digital handbook (WP4) aimed towards practitioners, lecturers, and students within the construction industry which will include cases from the industry and the education material. The handbook and the other educational material will be freely accessible and available through e.g. the Erasmus Project Result Platform to all parties interested, thus enhancing lifelong learning.<< Implementation >>WP2 focuses on the strategic design framework, developing a strategy for enhancing SDG integration in construction projects. This WP commence with establishing reference groups of industrial partners and conducting state-of-the-art analysis, based on mapping the explicit links between the SDGs and the built environment and input from the construction industry. These inputs form the foundation for developing the strategic design framework, consisting of (1) a strategy for enhancing SDG integration in construction projects, including an overview of the current state of implementation of the SDGs in the four partner countries along with the needs of the companies. (2) A list of sustainable construction dimensions related to the SDGs and targets that should be covered in the curriculum of the hybrid course (WP3), and (3) a collection of practical cases of SDG implementation to be included in the digital handbook (WP4) and in the educational material of WP3. WP3 focuses on the hybrid course that is designed, developed, tested, and evaluated. Initially, teaching material and online teaching didactic and methods are reviewed. Based on the learning goals, the overall training concept and a specification for a set of e-learning elements based on the learning outcomes will be developed. Educational material will be developed for the digital course and will be improved through a peer-to-peer review process among the lecturers involved in the project, transnationally. Two pilot tests will be run to test the hybrid course at the partner institutions. The students will use digital mobility to work in international and multi-disciplinary teams and planned accordingly to existing semester plans; 150 students are expected to participate. WP 4 focuses on the design and development of the digital handbook, which will provide practical guidelines for practitioners, lecturers, and students within the construction industry on how construction projects can contribute to achieving the SDGs. Initially, the framework for the handbook will be developed, including the digital platform and the structure of the handbook. Then, the actual content for the handbook will be developed, including practical cases for the target groups, and finally, the content will be collected and set up, forming the digital handbook.WP 5 supports a broad impact by regular communication and dissemination of the project results. The final conference (ME1) and local events (ME2, ME3, ME4) will bring together project partners, national reference group members and other interested parties.<< Results >>The expected key results of SUSTAINABUILD are:A STRATEGIC DESIGN FRAMEWORK (WP2) of how the SDGs can be integrated into construction projects, along with a list of SDG construction dimensions and targets that the hybrid course (WP3) needs to cover. The strategic design framework will provide insights into the current state of implementation of the SDGs in construction in the partner countries and current local needs in the industry. The strategic design framework will provide valuable insights and serve as foundation for both developing WP3 and WP4 as well as future education material that can be developed after the project ends, thereby ensuring sustainability. THE HYBRID COURSE AND COURSE MATERIAL (WP3) focusing on how construction projects can contribute to the 2030 Agenda will provide students of construction engineering educational programmes with interdisciplinary and international knowledge and skills. The hybrid course utilizes the results from WP2 and will consist of a theoretical and a practical module based on a reflective learning approach. Furthermore, the course will strengthen digital mobility through international and multi-disciplinary group work between the students. THE DIGITAL HANDBOOK (WP4) will provide practical guidelines on how the SDGs can be implemented in construction projects, focusing on the entire construction process, from early design and programming to renovation or demolition. The digital handbook will serve as an advisory tool and will be targeted at practitioners within the construction industry, such as advisors, professional buildings owners, contractors, etc. as well as students and lecturers at HEIs as the handbook will be included in the hybrid course curriculum as educational material. The handbook will be freely accessible to all interested parties. The project results created in SUSTAINABUILD underline that the challenges within the construction industry cannot be solved by one country alone. We must work together and create shared knowledge and solutions to reach our joint aim – to contribute to the UN’s 2030 Agenda and the SDGs by improving our HEIs through cooperation transnationally and interculturally by including the triple helix approach to develop new innovative educational material which ensures that our students – and thereby the future workforce – have the optimal competences and skills to implement a sustainable construction industry.

Building entrepreneurial competence is a key EU policy objective. It is a feature of the Strategic Framework for Education and Training and an element of many recent policy documents including the Green Paper on Entrepreneurship in Europe (EC, 2003), the Small Business Act for Europe (EC, 2008), the Communication on Rethinking Education (EC, 2012), the Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 (EC, 2013) and the New Skills Agenda for Europe (EC, 2016). The Council Recommendation on Key Competences (EC, 2018), confirms the importance of “promoting entrepreneurial mindsets” and encourages Member States to think about “nurturing entrepreneurship competence, creativity and the sense of initiative especially among young people”.ForEMLink seeks to address some of these policy imperatives by developing an approach that will offer relevant and practical learning to students in higher and advanced vocational education, increasing their entrepreneurship skills and helping them to start viable businesses.ForEMLink brings together five organisations for whom inspiring entrepreneurial mindsets is a common challenge. Through sharing their knowledge and expertise and working together the five partners will develop three concrete intellectual outputs:•ForEMLink Methodology: this aims to define and describe an approach to co-creation that may be adopted by educators in HEIs to deliver curricula in entrepreneurship (01);•ForEMLink Digital Platform: brings together educators, students and enterprises and provides a matchmaking service, enabling the latter (enterprises) to upload genuine, real-life problems that students will be able to access and attempt to solve as part of their learning (O2);•ForEMLink Handbook: developed using direct inputs from educators and students having made active use of the ForEMLink Digital Platform and/or participated in one of the transnational learning, teaching and training events; this will be an output that serves to support future users of the ForEMLink Methodology and/or Digital Platform as well as acting as an aide-memoire for existing users (O3).All three intellectual outputs will be developed through joint working by the five partner institutions supplemented by appropriate consultation with and inputs from enterprises, students and educators using the two core outputs of the project (methodology; digital platform). Consequently, transnational cooperation is not merely a necessary component of this cooperative approach but also a key feature of the targeted methodology and digital platform.A further tangible output centres on the two learning, teaching and training events, one aimed at educators (C1) and one aimed at students in higher education (C2). These will be attended by participants from all five partner countries and will generate input for the ForEMLink Handbook.Intangible outputs include an increased level of competence and usage of the developed digital resource (digital platform) among educators at the five institutions, increased confidence and competence among students, particularly those aiming to launch their own businesses and increases in the birth rate, and survival rate, of businesses in the five partner regions and countries.Partners identify the following additional innovative dimensions in the ForEMLink project:•LOCATION: the ForEMLink Digital Platform (O2) will support a transnational dimension in problem-based learning across five European countries extending to three distinct user groups: educators, students and enterprises. •PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: the ForEMLink Methodology (O1) and ForEMLink Handbook (O3) will be an asset to educators involved in developing and delivering entrepreneurial education in the five partner countries and beyond; this will be complemented by learning, teaching and training events (C1, C2) providing a space for professional networking and for comparing current approaches.•INSTITUTIONAL APPROACHES: the traditional role of HEIs is being questioned more closely than before by the public at large; the three intellectual outputs of the project and its underpinning rationale - providing real-life learning to enhance the development of students’ entrepreneurial mindsets, engaging with employers on practical problems which confront them and providing professional development for educators of all disciplines for whom the topic is relevant - is a concrete demonstration of how the involved institutions are prepared to embrace the modernisation agenda.

<< Objectives >>TECH2MATCH supports cross-disciplinarity and internationalisation involving nursing-, physiotherapists- and midwifery educations led by DK with partners from FIN, AT & ES. Due to missing technological skills in healthcare TECH2MATCH will educate future healthcare professionals to match and use the right technology for people with pain (PwP) to improve health and quality of life. TECH2MATCH will ensure HEIs strengthen the digital skills and competencies for min 60-80 students & 16-20 lecturers.<< Implementation >>TECH2MATCH implements a 5 ECTS blended learning course. To develop TECH2MATCH desk research, reports on needed skills and identified gaps will be conducted. 4 frameworks will be developed along with 4 focus groups with national stakeholders to inform the blended learning, the real-life scenarios, the training of lecturers and the xMOOC. A pilot will be conducted, and 4 WPs summaries reports will be carried out. Finally, interviews, surveys and events will be used to evaluate TECH2MATCH.<< Results >>TECH2MATCH results in 4 frameworks and a blended learning 5 ECTS course for healthcare students, improving the health and quality of life for PwP. Providing them with skills and competences to match and use technology by involving patients in other situations and disciplines of healthcare, having a constructively critical approach to technology. The innovative digitalisation, development of frameworks, and inclusion of stakeholder groups will inspire the further future development of HEIs.

STEM teachers play a key role in attracting pupils to STEM subjects via engaging, real-world classroom practices, which naturally involve interdisciplinary problem solving, inquiry and/or design. However, STEM teachers are not trained to implement such practices. In order for secondary STEM education to better represent real-world practices, STEM teachers need to be schooled in an interdisciplinary way in parallel to their discipline-specific pedagogical schooling. Furthermore, as one of the primary providers of digitally competent workforce, STEM education should pave the way for the accelerated transformation towards a more digital world. Future STEM teachers as well as their teacher educators must be prepared to take on that challenge. This project aims to engage teacher educators and researchers in investigating and developing efficient means and materials to immerse student STEM teachers in interdisciplinary cooperation, problem solving, and content creation via 100% online learning opportunities.This online training must prepare future STEM teachers for coaching pupils in high-quality integrated STEM (iSTEM) education with a sufficient amount of cross-disciplinary competence and self-efficacy. Having student teachers cooperate in multidisciplinary teams to design and implement iSTEM learning units is a powerful strategy to achieve this objective. However, how this training strategy can be implemented effectively in purely online training is yet to be explored. Therefore, teacher educators and researchers will work together in this project to prepare and develop a rich online learning environment that supports the student teachers in their online, interdisciplinary, team-regulated (and team-paced) learning (including problem solving, design, and implementation of iSTEM learning units). We will first construct a report on key competences of effective (i)STEM teachers (IO1), based on our national teaching contexts and current gaps in teacher education programmes, European and scientific publications, and societal challenges. Guided by these key competences, we will develop online training and coaching materials (IO2), and an online platform (IO4), including scaffolding questions, guidelines, tools, applications, e-assessment, and features supporting the student teachers in their online cooperative, interdisciplinary learning. The training materials and features of this whole online learning environment will be tailored to (1) the targeted key competences, (2) suggestions from research literature on the desired training strategy, (3) the scaffolding needs of the student teachers detected during the first project year. The online platform and training materials will be developed and refined via iteration during two successive academic years. We will develop and implement an instrument (IO3) to assess student teachers’ learning gains from this online training with respect to the targeted key competences. The digital iSTEM learning units designed by the student teachers as part of the online training (IO5) will be made openly available for pre- and in-service STEM teachers to use with their pupils.This project will be realised through cross-fertilization and collaboration of five partners in the field of higher education:- For exploring, developing, and field testing evidence-based digital training materials that will scaffold the online learning environment:> the academic STEM teacher education department of KU Leuven, with 9 campuses across Belgium, brings its expertise in effective iSTEM pedagogies and curriculum design, and in research-based pre-service upper secondary STEM teacher training;> the STEM teacher education department of University College of Northern Denmark brings its expertise in competence-, inquiry- and ICT-based pre-service lower secondary STEM teacher training; and> the Ágoston Trefort Centre for Engineering Education of Óbuda University in Hungary brings its expertise in development of e-learning materials, in coaching and mentorship in upper secondary technical/vocational STEM teacher training.- For developing the online platform that will provide the frame of the online learning environment:> the Software Engineering and Internet Technologies Laboratory of the computer science department of the University of Cyprus brings its expertise in design and programming of state-of-the-art educational technologies and digital materials.- For disseminating the project results:> SEFI brings its expertise in networking, and communication and its large network in the field of engineering education.This partnership hopes to propagate its enthusiasm towards the professional field and the research community, and to create awareness of the crucial role of interdisciplinary STEM teacher training. In the long term, we hope to see the effect of the online training reflected in an increased number of STEM-literate, motivated pupils taking up higher STEM study programmes or STEM careers.

<< Background >>Health Literacy (HL) is defined by the World Health Organization as “the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health”. Poor HL has numerous negative consequences, ranging from negative health behaviour (higher disease risk, decreased self-care skills) to misuse of health care. The promotion of HL is an important task of public Health and Social Care (HSC) systems, thus, there are recommendations that HL should be prioritized and integrated into educational curricula of the training of HSC professionals to close the existing skills gap in this field. On the other hand, dementia has been stated as a rapidly growing public health problem and its risk reduction is one of the seven action areas in the WHO Global Action Plan on the Public Health Response to Dementia. Poor HL is a likely risk factor of dementia since Persons at Risk of Dementia (PaRD) with low HL level have been reported to have a significantly higher risk of dementia and faster decline in cognitive function over time. The Skills4HL project aims at meeting the needs of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) to reduce skills gaps of HSC professionals to promote HL capacity-building when supporting PaRD with the aim to deliver personalized and relevant interventions. In this context, HEIs are demanding tools to develop their curricula in HL to increase the competitiveness and relevancy of their HSC educational programs as well as to promote the coordination and integration with European HEIs. Moreover, Skills4HL supports the digital transformation of HEIs education to provide learners with innovative learning practices and lecturers with digital pedagogy capacities through the use of accessible digital technologies and contents adapted to the requirements of the learners. The primary target group of Skills4HL comprise the potential and working HSC professionals wanting to build HL capacity. These students lack certain HL skills and knowledge that impede them to provide adequate support to PaRD. Skills4HL will allow these students to cover the existing gaps and mismatches building their capacity through an innovative approach and improving the quality of the support provided to PaRD. Thus, the project will improve the professional development, the access to the HSC labour market and career of the learners. Other target groups are the lecturers of the HEIs partners as well as the HSC stakeholders dedicated to PaRD and dementia support (HSC providers and companies, governments and local, national and European level authorities, NGOs and associations, citizens and relatives of PaRD, etc.). In the case of lecturers, Skills4HL will reinforce their pedagogic capabilities using digital solutions as well as to improve their capacity-building about HL in a PaRD support scenario. Finally, HSC stakeholders’ needs about tackling the HL as a public health issue will be addressed through a powerful dissemination campaign of the project results.<< Objectives >>Due to the current relevance of HL in public health and its potential benefits for PaRD and dementia, ensuring the knowledge and skills of HSC professionals regarding HL when supporting PaRD is crucial to provide tailored interventions aimed at reducing the impact of dementia. Thus, the primary objective of the Skills4HL project is to meet the needs of HEIs in training their future and current HSC professionals, through digital education technologies, to promote HL capacity-building when supporting PaRD to deliver relevant and personalized interventions. For that purpose, the following specific objectives are defined: 1.To improve the awareness regarding the knowledge, skills, and abilities for HL capacity of HCS professionals when supporting PaRD.2.To strengthen the strategic and structured cooperation in HL education to develop a learning-outcomes-oriented curriculum and educational contents in the HEIs’ context. 3.To increase the use of innovative and accessible digital technologies, to generate open education resources (OER) for skills development about HL of HSC professionals and build digital pedagogy capacities of lecturers. These objectives respond to the horizontal priority of “Addressing digital transformation through the development of digital readiness, resilience and capacity”, and the specific ones “Stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices” and “Promoting inter-connected higher education systems” by: - Contributing to stimulating innovative learning practices to tackle skill gaps and mismatches through competence profiles that HSC professionals need to improve their HL capacity-building when supporting PaRD.- Structuring transnational cooperation of HEIs to ensure the achievement of the project objectives along with a sustainable perspective aimed at maintaining and exploiting the outcomes during and after the project life-cycle. - Addressing the digital transformation of education by implementing a new curriculum as well as contents delivery with innovative and accessible online learning technologies and OER into HEIs curriculum. The Skills4HL project provides a new solution to the problem, challenges and needs by building HL capacity of HSC professionals when supporting PaRD based on the quality and digitalisation of thematic higher education in HSC. The project intends not only to be the first mover in developing a thematic curriculum, e-learning platform and OER much required in HL, MCI, and dementia but to also address UN's SDGs in these fields through higher education and skills development. These outputs will be made available to all EU HEIs through an OER approach and will be disseminated with extensive dissemination activities.<< Implementation >>The project proposal is planned jointly with committed partners by exploring their needs, strategies and expertise. The tasks and responsibilities are shared equally to involve all the partners fully in the project implementation.The different activities are implemented through work packages (WP) where tasks, deliverables and milestones are planned accordingly:• WP1: Project Management and Coordination (led by KI): This WP comprises all project management and coordination activities including financial management with the aim of achieving the results described in the project as planned. The different management groups and figures (Project board, project support, operational project management team, etc.) will carry out their tasks as well as their meetings within this WP. The different Transnational Project Meetings (TPM) are coordinated in this WP as well as the Evaluation Quality Action Plan definition and implementation through the entire life-cycle of the project.• WP2: Development of competence profiles for Health and Social Care professionals to promote HL capacity-building when supporting PaRD (Led by SeAMK): The first results of the Skills4HL project are planned to be implemented in this WP. First, intensive research labour will be carried out to collect and analyses sources of knowledge, skills, and abilities of HSC professionals about HL when supporting PaRD nationally in each partner country. This activity is complemented by setting reference groups with HSC stakeholders aimed at gathering their knowledge and experience about HL and PaRD support. These two tasks will be employed as input to define the competence profiles for HSC professionals about HL when supporting PaRD.• WP3: Thematic curriculum of HL and learning courses (Led by UCN): This WP aims at designing a learning outcome-oriented curriculum of HL education for supporting PaRD (10 ECTS credits) including its profile and four courses (3, 2, 2 and 3 ECTS respectively) since the HSC sectors need professionals who can support PaRD by having HL skills and qualifications. At the end of the project, the Quality and impact of the curriculum and its delivery through the courses are assessed by calculating the number of course certificates issued and by executing a lecturer survey with satisfaction ratings and recommendations for improvement before and after each course implementation by the partners responsible for course delivery. In addition, this WP also envisaged the details about integrating the curriculum and the digital courses to HEIs offering. For this purpose, a handbook of best practices will be produced to achieve successful integration and deployment of the curriculum in HEIs education programs. Finally, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the partners about further cooperation, integration and continuation of the curriculum and its courses is signed. •WP4: e-learning platform and Open Educational Resources (led by KI): WP4 will create and pilot the courses and OER contained in curriculum design through an e-learning platform. This WP supports HEIs in taking up digital technologies and innovative open pedagogies through one learning, training and teaching activity for the lecturers. The first introductory course about HL and dementia will be delivered as an xMOOC course to maximize the number of students. The other three specialization courses will be offered through HEIs Moodle platforms. As a consequence, the result increases the use of innovative digital technologies, methods, and tools as well as OER for skills development for supporting PaRD. A quality assessment task is contained in this WP to evaluate the courses by the students.Skills4HL will develop an extensive dissemination activity where the project outputs will be shown by engaging relevant HSC stakeholders at a local, regional, national, and European level like for instance, a multiplier event will be held at the end of the project.<< Results >>Skills4HL will produce three relevant project results, one Multiplier Event and one Learning, Teaching and Training activity.In practice, the project develops and implements the following results:a) Development of competence profiles for HSC professionals to build HL capacity when supporting PaRD: A complete description of key knowledge, skills, and abilities for HSC professionals to increase understanding of the needed sector-specific skills regarding HL when supporting PaRD. b) Thematic curriculum of HL and learning courses design: The curriculum content consists of 4 courses (1 introductory + 3 focus HL areas) with 10 ECTS credits in total at Bachelor/Master level each forming a minor/specialization module: • Introduction course: Health Literacy (definitions, variations, areas); Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and dementia (impact on memory, thinking, reasoning, language, attention). Consequences and participation in everyday life activities (3 ECTS). • Specialization course 1: HL in relation to dementia and progressive MCI: language, memory, level, individualization, consequences and participation in daily activities (2 ECTS). • Specialization course 2: Pedagogical and didactic approaches about HL: how to meet and support the individual PaRD and his/her family in their daily activities and everyday life (2 ECTS).• Specialization course 3: Implementation of HL competence profiles in praxis: how to use the skills in praxis (new approaches development and incorporating into existing praxis) (3 ECTS). Skills4HL intends the curriculum developed to be integrated into either existing or new level curricula in HEI partners (EQF levels 6 and 7). By the end of the project, each HEI partner should have the study modules integrated into their curricula. In addition, a handbook of best practices will be developed along with the curriculum to ensure a correct integration in the HEIs’ education programs.c) e-learning platform and OER to deliver the curriculum as follows:• A xMOOC with digital learning materials and tools for the delivery of the introduction course. • High-quality e-learning contents using the open-source Moodle platform with digital materials, tools, and hands-on assignments for the delivery of the specialization courses. • These modules will be piloted in 2 phases to have a refined and enhanced version of courses and materials at the end of piloting based on the learners and lecturers’ feedback. During both piloting phases, 100 students have attended at least one of the above training modules. One multiplier event will be organized at the end of the project with the aim of publicly disseminating the outcomes and amplify the impact generated by engaging relevant HSC stakeholders in the areas of HL, dementia, and MCI. Partners will also organise a Learning, Training and Teaching Activity in Seinäjoki- Finland to improve online teaching skills based on learners' needs to develop and pilot courses. This intensive training-of-teachers LTT activity will increase the digital pedagogy capacities of 8 teachers from the HEI partners to teach and train in HL and PaRD subjects.In the field of project management, the results of the project are a detailed management plan and updates (incl. financial plan, GANTT-chart and actions table, risk analysis); interim and final reports; and project website and media. Skills4HL project gives high importance to quality assurance of outputs by defining an Evaluation Quality Action Plan (EQAP) that implements Key Performance Indicators and Impact + Tool on the project outputs and processes.Regarding dissemination, project dissemination and exploitation plan is defined at the beginning of the project with particular actions by each of the partners that comprises digital activities (social media channels) and publications (newsletter and press releases, conference and scientific papers). Presentations in various national conferences and network events are also considered.