The main aim of the project is to modernize, improve accessibility and internationalize the higher education in Physical sciences and Environmental protection in Kazakhstan and in Russia. To achieve this aim the capacity of the academic staff will be built in partner universities in Sustainable Waste Management, the latest European eLearning pedagogical approaches and English language skills. Further, eight online learning modules reflecting the local needs will be built on the topic to benefit the secondary target group, students and staff members of private companies and local/regional authorities in partner countries. The focus of the pedagogical approaches used will be on student-centered learning, integration of industry-university cooperation and innovation activities into the learning modules and eLearning. The modules will be available online first on the platforms of ITMO in Russia and KazNU in Kazakhstan for the partner university students. After accreditation the aim is to transfer the piloted courses on the national online platforms opened.ru (Russia) and moocs.kz (Kazakhstan). The theoretical parts of the courses will be available for the wide audience free of charge. After the project, a reasonable fee will be charged for intensive studies linked to the previously developed basic parts and certifying them increasing the sustainability of the project’s results. The modules will be available on Russian and Kazakh languages. The project will support resolving of the acute problems of Sustainable Waste Management in both partner countries by providing relevant and modern educational materials on the topic for under-graduate students and for continuous training. The online learning modules will offer flexibility and inclusion for the personal learning paths of the students. The increased capacity of the academic staff is expected to have spill-over effects on designing learning materials for other disciplines.

The project is developed under the initiatives of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Computational Linguistics as interdisciplinary educational program does not exist in the partner countries, though as a research area it has been developed since beginning of 2000. Computational Linguistics is crucial for development of high information technologies, absolutely necessary for the industrial, social and civilizational progress. These technologies are in progress almost everywhere in the world but at different speed in the concerned countries. Despite of a number of software working with recognition of a number of world languages; the Kazakh and Uzbek languages still drop out. Thus it is practically impossible for the world community to retrieve any information in Uzbek or Kazakh. The aim of the project is to develop the master program curriculum and to enrich KZ & UZ universities’ capabilities to enhance access to higher education with blended learning in computational linguistics master program for students with linguistics and computational science background. To achieve this aim it is planned to establish and maintain strong collaboration between linguistics and computational technology in HEI; blended learning pedagogical skills for enhancing computational and linguistic competencies of master students; building the capacity to network effective inter-universities collaboration in the joint researches in linguistics and computer technology. It means that the academic staff from linguist and IT field will be trained. Moreover, the academic materials on new interdisciplinary master courses, NLP tools, online course, e-books and methodological books will be developed for teaching with blended learning under EU supervision.As a result the students will be able to access learning materials, teacher interaction with digital tools. New NLP tools for Uzbek and Kazakh languages will be obtained.

Global Health (GH) is a vital discipline, generating knowledge on current and emerging GH issues, promoting international collaborations, and setting a framework for understanding of how countries can collectively respond to GH challenges. However, due to a lack of internal resources and/or limited access to external funding, GH has not been established as a discipline within middle-income countries of Eastern Europe/Central Asia (EECA). This lack of GH capacity poses health risks to these countries’ populations and globally.The project’s over-arching aim is to enable 3 EECA coountries – Georgia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan – to build capacity and integrate GH into academic programmes. This will be achieved through development of technical knowledge in priority GH topics and GH-relevant research methods, capacity building of academic staff in pedagogical and methodological approaches to designing/delivering new curricula, jointly developing GH courses, and the forging/reinforcement of collaborations between HEIs and non-academic organisations in Partner and Programme countries. Curricula for 6 new GH thematic courses and 3 GH research methods courses will be produced in English, Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian and Kazakh. These courses will be integrated into Partner HEIs’ existing masters and PhDs and delivered to 25 – 165 students in year 1 of implementation. In addition, Partner HEIs will be supported to develop and deliver an intensive EECA Regional GH Academy course for staff and public health practitioners. A EECA Regional Alliance for GH will be established to serve as an inter-institutional and inter-sectoral mechanism for collaboration, knowledge exchange, training and research on priority GH issues. The project will develop a strong platform of GH knowledge and expertise in EECA and ensure mechanisms are in place for the discipline to grow. Staff and students will be equipped with knowledge and skills needed to meaningfully enhance international cooperation.

The main aim of the current project is to enhance business-HEI cooperation in consortium countries by changing the paradigm of education in line with Bologna process requirementsThe current world economic situation and ongoing social changes, create special needs for education systems to satisfy. Growth of competition and widespreading of IT has a significant impact on educational process and increased the need for closer ties between business activities and university knowledge. But the real progress is slow due to the growing gap between the expectations of employers and competencies of graduates, as well as the obstacles in making a link between businesses and universities in partner countries. The absence of State level benchmark of such cooperation in partner countries leads to huge and unnecessery controversy. In order to change this situation, the current project is aiming to achieve the following sub-goals:-To locate gaps between partner universities experience in cooperation and interconnection of the study process with business practices and corporate supervision;-Identify the current professional and learning outcome structure required by modern employers in partner countries through in-depth research;- To introduce a new system of HEI – Business interaction based on leading practices of European Universities with combination of practical-oriented teaching and thorough involvement of business into the study process;-To retrain teaching staff for fulfilling new roles in the changed learning environment and applying active teaching methods in shaping the future employee capacities;- To contribute to elaboration of new generation of methodological documentation supporting the HEI-Business interaction systemThe impact of current goals achievement would remove the obstacles of bringing the academic and business practices together, increase graduate employment in partner countries and contribute to spreading of advanced European values in the society.

ENTER aims at creating a novel multicultural and international approach for formal post-graduate professional and pedagogical education for engineering educators. Furthermore, it is focused on low cost and convenience, thus strongly based on e-learning technologies, whenever feasible, and designed with the objective of being internationally recognized and accredited.In order to design the ENTER iPET programme, a thoroughly market and requirements analysis of HEIs and educators needs will be conducted, focused on the EU and partners’ countries, but also considering opportunities in other markets like North Africa, South America and Asia. The ENTER iPET programme, accredited internationally by Estonian Centre for Engineering Pedagogy at TTU, proposes a hierarchy of 3 structured educational programs for engineering educators, in the context of the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning. The actual design is to one of the outputs of the project, but we foresee 3 educational programs with different content and duration (names are tentative):- iPET-1 Short-focused (e.g. 2 ECTS) – “Qualification Development” Certificate;- iPET-2 Professional Retraining (e.g. 8 ECTS) – Diploma ‘’Higher Education Teacher”;- iPET-3 International recognized (e.g. 20 ECTS) – a full programme leading to international accreditation as “Engineering Educator”. Programmes have modular structure, i.e. modules of iPET-1 are included in iPET-2, and both are included in iPET-3. This provides a sustainable improvement path that educators can walk at their own pace. It will also be possible for the educators to combine modules from different ENTER network members. Whenever possible, ENTER will avoid duplicating existing offers. For example, the International Engineering Educator Certificate ING-PAED provided by IGIP will certainly be a reference in the iPET programme design.