The MS FSCC project brings five leading Southeast Asian higher education institutions in agriculture and life sciences from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia to build a joint master’s degree on the topic of Food Security and Climate Change. These HEIs have been working together within the Southeast Asian University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC) since 1989 and have a concrete experience of exchanges in Science and Academic programmes but never reached the level of building a joint degree. The MS FSCC was designed on the model of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees in Europe. It aimed at responding to acute needs in the professional sector that developed recently, where each individual university may not have all the disciplinary resources to address such topics at the highest (postgraduate) level. This difficulty is generally increased when the professional targets of the learning objectives lead to multidisciplinary orientations of teaching and research. A consortium of universities sharing common learning objectives and organising the mobility of students according to their individual academic strengths was assumed to be in a better position than individual Universities to produce graduates relevant to the market needs. This is the case with Food Security and Climate Change to prepare graduates to work at implementing the commitments of the member countries at the last Paris Conference on Climate Change, while taking into consideration the challenges of food security linked with the recent implementation of the ASEAN integrated market. This corresponds to a new professional challenge in the area of agriculture in SE Asia. The UC has the necessary skills to address this challenge, but individually, none have all the skills needed to properly address the training needs in this domain. Building a joint degree and using mobility to get the best offer in the region may better address that new challenge rather than what they would do individually. Simultaneously with the development of the synopsis of joint MS FSCC programme was the challenge of offering a dual/double degree, an innovation that the UC had never done before. By building common rules to govern within the MS FSCC: exchange/mobility of students, mutual recognition of courses between pairs of Universities within the UC, organisation of summer schools to offer courses to accommodate all students, option to have one semester mobility in Europe to complement the local supply of courses, FSCC-wide quality assurance system recognised by each of the collaborating Universities, and joint evaluation of master thesis between academic teams, Departments, Faculties of the different co-graduating Universities, the UC has experimented agreements that lead to building other post graduate joint programmes, a major institutional innovation in the SE Asian academic world. Whereas building this joint degree was much inspired by the European experience of the Erasmus Mundus programme, it required several adaptations and innovative rules in the participating Universities’ academic systems. These adaptations took more time than initially expected as it had to be accepted in five Universities in parallel and in real practice, for real students, in a real joint programme, and not just in theory. These innovations have been clearly identified, and at least they have been addressed in the case of a first collaborative programme, run with three successive cohorts of students.

The adoption of Industry 4.0 by developed countries poses a significant threat to other countries and nations. It is expected that each country will face a number of challenges related to the skill level of its employees. Industry 4.0 will provide expertise in information technology, data analytics… in the industrial sectors. The result is a growing need for skilled employees trained in cross-cutting areas and capable of managing new processes and information systems. The aim of this project is to build Skills 4.0 THrough UniversitY and Entreprise Collaboration (SHYFTE) by analysing the gap between the skills acquired in HEIs and the skills required by industry 4.0, and develop a new model of emergent skills in line with the needs of the industry of the future. To provide a performant job market platform in Thailand, China and Malaysia. SHYFTE project will provide an emergent skill development strategy in both EU and Asia with main focus on four research domains: Industrial engineering and management, Software Engineering and Big data analytics, Wireless and Networks analytics, and Artificial Intelligence by incorporating the competencies of all partners to fill the skill gap in Asian partner countries. The overall aims of SHYFTE project are:- To support academic and administrative staff in Asian HEIs to design and implement new methodology and learning materials to enhance and improve the competences and skills related to Industry 4.0. That will enable HEIs organizations aligning their learning program strategy both to the requirements of the regional industry and the global labor market. - To build and strengthen links between HEIs and Industry 4.0, and promote the job market by minimizing the skills gap.- To build Skills 4.0 LABs or Learning centers of excellence in Asian Partner's HEIs to enable each of them to become the reference center in its country and disseminate the outcomes of the project nationally and regionally.

The aim of the project ‘MultiMind’ is to establish an international, multidisciplinary and multisectorial training network on multilingualism. Given the current migration and refugee crisis in Europe, there is an urgent need to provide an in depth investigation of multilingualism from a multidisciplinary perspective that will bridge the gap between fundamental and applied research and will addresses societal challenges within the education and health sector as well as challenges related to the education of migrants and refugees in Europe. MultiMind addresses the benefits and challenges of multilingualism through an innovative research programme that combines fundamental and applied research across disciplines in a range of different social and educational settings. It investigates the influence of multilingualism on language learning, cognition, creativity, and decision making, on brain function and structure, and its role as a reserve in atypical populations using a combination of cutting edge research methodologies. MultiMind is composed of 9 academic and 2 non-academic organisations as well as 16 partners in leading academic institutions, companies, health organisations and 5 branches of Bilingualism Matters, a leading international network of centres that provide outreach activities on multilingualism. The consortium brings together researchers with complementary expertise within the disciplines of linguistics, psychology, education, neuroscience, and speech & language therapy along with non-academic partners within the education and health sectors, IT and publishing. This will enable to address societal challenges within education and health as well as challenges related to the migration and refugee crisis in Europe whilst training a new generation of researchers in world-leading labs using cutting edge methodologies and allowing them to build the necessary skills fostering their career progress as independent researchers in academic or nonacademic sectors.

Advanse aims at promoting the modernization of financial management practices and income diversification strategies in HE institutions at regional level, with a view to sustainably strengthen the Higher Education systems and maximize the social return on investment in Higher Education in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. More specific it aims at:-enhancing human, organisational and technical capacities of partner countries HEIs to increase efficiency in financial management (FM) and income diversification, promoting accountability and transparency through systematisation and promotion of good practice.-promoting regional integration through creating a network of financial managers pursuing modernisation of financial management systems and practices.The prjoect will have a sustainable impact on following levels:1. Increased awareness on regional level HEIs & policy makers on common challenges and existing initiatives in modernising FM and income diversification strategies in HE, through systematisation of experiences and supra-regional promotion of good practice; 2. Enhanced human, organisational & technical capacities at institutional levels to improve efficient FM and create a pool of qualified human resources capable to effectively implement reforms, using modern tools and methodologies; 3. Sustainably strengthened institutional modernisation capacities, through development of strategic action plans and joint strategies for efficient FM and income diversification; 4. Region-wide impact and replication of project outputs through creation and implementation of a supra-regional network; 5. Active involvement of relevant actors & non-partner HEIs and region-wide up-take through consistent dissemination strategy

The overall aim of the project was to build the foundation for more media literate societies in South East Asia (Malaysia, Thailand & Vietnam) in order to cope with the challenges of social change in modern societies. Important drivers for such transformations are media effects on social practice (mediatization and medialization), influencing culture, economics, politics and other societal spheres.In contrast to many other programs that deal with these phenomena by focusing on digital literacy skills like programming, media production, and education to tackle problems like fake news, filter bubbles & hate speech - this project operated on a more comprehensive level. The project aimed at a transformation of the operating system itself, by using Higher Education Institutions as places to connect important stakeholders within these societies to think about arising needs as well as societal and cultural goals in the face of global and local developments. To implement this future-studies-guided approach the project defined, planned and realized multiple work packages: • An Action-Research oriented Delphi Study to do research on the current knowledge and future demands of Media Literacy combined with the attempt to find and activate stakeholders was conducted. This made it possible to incorporate desires and needs of stakeholders beyond the higher education system.• A series of Train-the-Faculty workshops that presented different perspectives and tools within a diverse theoretical concept of Media Literacy and its educational institutionalization were organized. By educating and training HEI lecturers the project lay the foundations for future impact on media-related courses, curriculums but also for future basic and applied research.• Additionally, lecturers were trained to plan, develop and test E-Learning materials to put their newly acquired knowledge to use. Part of this training process was to develop MOOCs that address students as well as the general public. While it was originally planned to create one MOOC in multiple languages, it was later decided to launch three different MOOCs, one for each country, as this allowed for greater acceptability and sustainability since the courses could be tailored to the needs of the individual HEIs, allowing also the use as blended-learning materials for the regular curriculum courses. All MOOCs are available via the openlearning.com platform. • Furthermore, the consortium was extended into a Media Literacy Network (MEDLITnet) that promotes Media Literacy and develop future projects. Partners from Malaysia are leading this network for the next two years.