‘While there are many opportunities arising from digital transformation, the biggest risk today is of a society ill-prepared for the future. If education is to be the backbone of growth and inclusion in the EU, a key task is preparing citizens to make the most of the opportunities and meet the challenges of a fast-moving, globalised and interconnected world’. (COM/2018)Digital advances have brought new challenges for Europe’s pupils, students and teachers. Algorithms used by social media sites and news portals can be powerful amplifiers of bias or fake news, while data privacy has become a key concern in the digital society. EU citizens, but above all young students are vulnerable to cyber bullying and harassment, predatory behaviour or disturbing online content. Everyday exposure to digital data driven largely by inscrutable algorithms creates clear risks and requires more than ever critical thinking and the ability to engage positively and competently in the digital environment. These issues have been brought even more to the fore by the move to online teaching brought about by the global Covid pandemic.In the above context, the MeLDE project, which started in 2018 and completed in 2021, sought to-Identify, through wide-ranging research, the key digital skills gaps amongst secondary school teachers and students in the target countries of UK, Cyprus, Germany and Greece;-Map professional development opportunities and online resources to support digital literacy in key topics;-Create educational resources (including web-lectures, ebooks, as well as lesson plans and handouts for use with students) in online courses for teachers to strengthen teachers’ digital skills and professional profiles;-Offer open education and innovative practice in the digital era by providing open and free access to the educational tools and materials developed by the MeLDE programme with online assessment and validation of the skill acquired through the option of earning Open Badges;-Strengthen the digital skills and competences amongst secondary school students through the upskilling of their teachers.To this end the MeLDE consortium has produced a FRAMEWORK mapping out the approaches in schools related to the promotion of media literacy skills for digitial citizenship, an ePLATFORM with accompanying assessment tool to measure media literacy skills acquired; a TOOL BANK of resources and teaching materials, an ACADEMY of teacher training materials, and a TOOLKIT to guide teachers to implement the MeLDE skills in their schools.The MeLDE skills cover 17 topics (including social media and classroom collaboration platforms, fake news, managing digital identity, cyberbullying, creating compelling digital content for educational purposes, digital copyright, distance learning, self-promotion, and digital citizenship ) within 4 online modules: 1.Digital Teaching & Learning Skills 2.Online Communication & Collaboration3.Digital Content Creation and 4.E-Safety The consortium has developed the educational materials within each Module as well as the teacher TOOLKIT in English, Greek and German thereby extending the reach of the project. The materials have been reviewed by experts and piloted by teachers. Feedback has been constructive and positive with an estimated 8000 people having been reached directly or indirectly through project activities at the end of the three year project. This number is set to grow as the MeLDE materials are adopted by more teachers and schools. A follow-on project DigiTEAL examining the lesson learnt by the move to online teaching necessitated by the Covid pandemic is already underway. The MeLDE consortium comprises 5 organisations representing a wide range of background and expertise coming from 4 different European Countries.

To use sociology, psychology, healthcare and legal principles to develop a multi-dimensional outcome measurement model that is capable of bridging a sector-wide knowledge gap.

"The focus of this project is students who require some level of support or consideration to be fully included in HE. While HE organisations have a stated mission to be inclusive and accessible places, anecdotal evidence from both students and teachers suggests that this is not always the case. Furthermore, awareness of accessibility and support strategies can tend to be in ""silos"" of knowledge such as equality and diversity units, student support centres, student enabling centres, faculty representatives for diversity and inclusion. HE lecturers , already under pressure to transfer their teaching materials and methodologies from classroom-based to online within a short timescale, have often had to focus on online teaching which suits the majority of their students. They may not consider or take into account additional accessibility options unless they are formally asked to do so by an organisational policy or a student's specific request for accommodation. It is accepted that when students have to request accommodations in advance, they are already being penalised or excluded to an extent, since students who do not require those same accommodations can simply turn up to any lecture without notice and be able to participate fully. To build a really inclusive higher education system, therefore, lecturers would need to incorporate as many accessibility features as possible, *without* waiting for student requests. InclUDE therefore has three objectives:•Provide an easy way to search and access free and open tools for online accessibility. •Create a practical, step-by-step resource that guides lecturers through setting up online teaching sessions that are accessible to a wide range of students. •Create guidelines of considerations that can help lecturers to make their teaching scheduling and practice more inclusive. These objectives will be reached through the production of 3 intellectual outputs: •IO1: Web repository of existing digital access tools (e.g. online transcription tools, website visibility checks for users with sight loss…);•IO2: Guidelines for accessible online teaching – how to make teaching via e.g. Zoom or Teams accessible to specific groups, for example:D/deaf students; students with sight loss; autistic students; students with mental health issues; economically disadvantaged students with limited access to technology/wifi (including Roma);•IO3: Guidelines for inclusive online teaching – looking at considerations for teaching practice that don't fall under the category of legally mandated accommodations, but can facilitate attendance and participation for students with a range of challenges. The outputs respond directly to this call in that they focus on activities to support learners, teachers and trainers in adapting to online/ distance learning, while facilitating quality and inclusive education. The direct target groups addressed by this project are:•HE lecturers - the main beneficiaries of the objectives and outputs mentioned above; •students - who will benefit from lecturers using best practice in online teaching. Indirect target groups include:•HE managers and administrators;•teachers from other fields (e.g. schools, adult education, VET);•learners from other fields;•local councils and ministries of education; •other policyholders in the field of education; •disability support and service organisations.The project will be managed using the Waterfall methodology, which works well with strategic partnerships that have the budget and outputs agreed from the very beginning. This project addresses the need to gather the best practice discovered under stress during the spring 2020 lockdown, as well as through ongoing online teaching. It further addresses the need for lecturers to have quick, practical and clear resources that they can use at their convenience, and without taking a lot of time away from everything else they are involved in. It aims to ensure that students in a range of circumstances do not get left behind as online and blended learning becomes more prevalent."

Transportation sector undergoes a considerable transformation as it enters a new landscape where connectivity is seamless and mobility options and related business models are constantly increasing. Modern transportation systems and services have to mitigate problems emerging from complex mobility environments and intensive use of transport networks including excessive CO2 emissions, high congestion levels and reduced quality of life. Due to the saturation of most urban networks, innovative solutions to the above problems need to be underpinned by collecting, processing and broadcasting an abundance of data from various sensors, systems and service providers. Furthermore, such novel transport systems have to foresee situations in near real time and provide the means for proactive decisions, which in turn will deter problems before they even emerge. Our vision is to provide the required interoperability, adaptability and dynamicity in modern transport systems for a proactive and problem-free transportation system. OPTIMUM will establish a largely scalable, distributed architecture for the management and processing of multisource big-data, enabling continuous monitoring of transportation systems needs and proposing proactive decisions and actions in an (semi-) automatic way. OPTIMUM follows a cognitive approach based on the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act loop of the big data supply chain for continuous situational awareness. OPTIMUM's goals will be achieved by incorporating and advancing state of the art in transport and traffic modeling, travel behavior analysis, sentiment analysis, big data processing, predictive analysis and real-time event-based processing, persuasive technologies and proactive recommenders. The proposed solution will be deployed in real-life pilots in order to realise challenging use cases in the domains of proactive improvement of transport systems quality and efficiency, proactive charging for freight transport and Car2X communication integration.