<< Background >>Erasmus is the most successful mobility programme in the world. By the beginning of 2020, it was estimated that around 10 million students had already participated in this exchange programme since it was launched in 1987. However, according to statistics this represents only 1.7% of the European Union’s population, which means that the programme is still far from reaching its full potential. Most of EU surveys and reports carried out in the framework of European projects revealed that the reasons behind low participation are related to lower economic capacity of the majority of students and their families to support their stay abroad which results in unequitable access to quality higher education studies and to future employment opportunities. Mobility is politically desirable and HEIs all over Europe are currently faced with extremely demanding targets concerning the increase of students undertaking an international mobility experience. Universities have therefore a clear need to find the most effective strategies to be able to comply with such targets, and this implies not only financial resources but also the necessary conditions to allow for the widest possible participation of all students potentially undertaking a mobility experience abroad. The overall budget available for KA1 Mobility of individuals is normally satisfactory for universities and in general allows them to provide an effective answer to the existing demand of the academic community. The main issue, however, remains the fact that a significant number of students does not have the necessary financial support to complement the grant awarded by the Programme and to allow for the full coverage of basic expenses in the country of destination.<< Objectives >>Keeping in mind the findings in EU Surveys that the majority of HE students are excluded from the Erasmus programme for financial reasons, the Erasmus for All Project wants to tackle the low levels of HE student participation in Erasmus mobility exchange by proposing a more economically viable scholarship scheme that will allow any HE students to spend part of their studies abroad in any of the 33 programme countries. Contributing to reducing the existing asymmetry in the EU, promoting fairness, inclusion and equity of mobility grants between individuals and among the EU economic diversity are the ultimate goals that this project wishes to pursue. In terms of concrete objectives, they are to:- Keep the topics of inclusion and equity in the policy agenda;- Build a shared understanding among key stakeholders on the desired trajectory/evolution of the Erasmus+ grant system;- Engage with policy and decision makers on resource allocation strategies that address the needs of the political goal of widening participation in mobility;- Provide relevant and in-depth input for the mid-term review of the new Erasmus+ programme.The partnership is composed by highly compromised institutions with quality mobility in the European Higher Education Area and therefore the goals of E4A are anchored in a wider vision for the future of the Erasmus programme.<< Implementation >>The implementation of E4A will encompass the organisation of a series of activities, events and publications with policy relevance to reach the decision makers in Brussels and produce real transformation in the programme’s design, particularly concerning the funding of individual mobility at Higher Education level. Firstly, the team will conduct a mapping of other scholarship funding models to benchmark for the more advantageous examples of grant schemes. This activity will be complemented by a desk research to extract best practises of other studies in the same field and include the results of the feedback gathered during the E4A Student Social Labs – a series of local events in the partner HEIs to engage Erasmus students in voicing their needs during mobility for a reality-based and co-designed solution. These activities will culminate in the organisation of the first multiplier event: Is the new Erasmus for all? » proposals towards a more inclusive Erasmus scholarship where it will be presented the Mapping and Research Report and opening the floor for the discussions around what will be the proposal of a new scholarship calculation methodology. This second round of activities will be led by a transdisciplinary scientific working group in charge of considering multiple variables to design a more inclusive grant scheme and publish a document that gathers the methodologies used in developing this proposal. Thirdly, the organisation of a small-scale impact study will set a pilot-experiment with a sample of real Erasmus participants with similar financial conditions (economically disadvantaged), randomly selected and divided in two groups: the first will test the current Erasmus scholarship scheme and the second will test the impact and feasibility of the more inclusive scholarship calculation formula(s) developed previously. This activity will include financial support from sponsors associated to the project to assure the necessary top-ups in a more inclusive scholarship proposal. Lastly, the E4A partners will prepare a Policy Paper with recommendations based on the conclusions of all the previous activities. The partner institutions will address policy makers in a final high-level conference in Brussels: The future of Erasmus is for all! » Making participation more inclusive through a better grant mechanism to call on the need to prioritise economic inclusion as a way to increase participation in the Erasmus programme through a more equitable scholarship.<< Results >>The partnership expects to publish the following documents until the end of the project lifecycle:- Mapping and Research Report - Guidelines for a more inclusive grant calculation formula- E4A Impact Study- Erasmus4All: Recommendations towards a more social and economically inclusive Erasmus scholarship | Policy PaperWith the preparation of these publications it is expected to raise awareness and support from the main target group, the HE students, by having them engaging actively in the projects’ activities, voice their challenges and pressure political leaders to change. The aim is to achieve a more equitable and a fairer grant system that may provide a clear answer to the real needs of participants, and contribute to promote inclusion in HE.It is also expected the reinforcement of the reliability of the Erasmus programme label. By analysing and identifying the potential weaknesses and strengths of the current system, the E4A project is providing the programme an active quality monitoring system. The type of activities designed for this project will also allow the HE students to participate in the co-creation of the programme and feel their needs are heard, addressed and actually produce a real change.This reinforcement of the programme’s visibility in terms of quality will also contribute to increase the circulation of students and improve and facilitate equal access to the European Higher Education Area, which is one of the strategic priorities of the European Commission having as background the Bologna Process.A last outcome is the promotion of a continuous political debate, throughout the project implementation and after its completion, on inclusion. One of the project’s results being the Policy Paper including recommendations resulting from the overall project’s conclusions plays an important role to push inclusion higher in the policy agenda and produce substantial impact in the mid-term review of the Erasmus+ programme.The powerful project values, mission and goals anticipate a guarantee for sustainability in this framework, both partners as well as other European institutions beyond the partnership involved in student mobility are committed to and share the vision of a future truly democratic Erasmus programme.

The main objective of NEWSREEL project is to improve such skills of a new generation of European journalists that are required in the present media fields to be a credible and stable factor of the European democratic public debate who can benefit from the digital information ecosystem in order to make complex public issues understandable. To achieve this objective, NEWSREEL will make innovative learning materials and teaching programs Europe-wide available. Furthermore the project aims to facilitate the efficient international cooperation between university-based journalists ecosystems to: a) develop critical understanding of the breadth, depth and scope of credible journalism; b) help journalists reporting more credible stories, based on the more precise information with the help of computer-assisted reporting or data journalism . Putting data in a visual form may reveal patterns and insights that weren’t identifiable otherwise. In this way, the audience can understand better complex issues; c) develop new business strategies and models of journalism.The technical and economic development brought significant risks for journalism as well. By the weakening of the traditional forms of the exploitation of media products and services, the stable financial fundamentals of high-quality journalism have more or less disappeared; the weaker the media market of a country is, the higher the risk for financial problems of quality journalism.; d) establish collaborative journalism. Transnational team-working is a key element in the field of collaborative journalism. European cross-border investigations can improve the transparency of the European political and economic decision making and the expenses of the European public money. Moreover, the increasing complexity of journalism projects makes necessary the cooperation between experts of several fields, such as journalists, data journalists, IT experts and designers; e) be able to handle ethical challenges of the digital public sphere. Journalists still should provide credible information on the public issues, but they have to compete with a mass of non-professional, often inaccurate information, and fight against aggressive communication against particular social groups or their own performance. To handle these challenges, journalists should embed robust ethical norms into their work. The methodology used in the project's implementation phase is based on the following 7 steps process: 1. Mapping the journalism education and the needs of the stakeholders, 2. Developing syllabuses in order to embed the skills and tools concerned into the programs of journalism studies, 3. Developing electronic learning materials and teaching methods to increase the necessary new journalism skills, 4. Having courses at the participating universities as a pilot teaching activity, 5. Publishing a teacher’s guide that summarizes the professional and methodological content of the project, 6. Developing student career profiles, 7. Organizing an international student competition that aims implementing cross-border investigative journalism projects with visualized. NEWSREEL will be implemented by - the Department for Communication and Media Studies of the University of Pécs which has a strong focus on the social impact of the journalism in the research and education activity; - the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Bucharest which has an academic offer, does research and develops activities in all the areas of the project; - ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon which has several post-graduation offers in the communication/journalism areas, and a specific one in Executive Media Management; - the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, an affiliated institute of TU Dortmund which has participated in several transnational research projects. In the long run, NEWSREEL will contribute to - the extending the journalism education to the new fields of the digital public discussion, - the improving of high-quality journalism, - the strengthening of the common European democratic public sphere by improving the collaborative and cross-border journalism that is able to elaborate and make tangible the big amount of available data, and that is based on a predictable business strategy and a firm ethical foundation.

Technology impact on our todays life along with the concept of the “shrinking” world is creating a constant need to develop and improve new tools including these used in the fields of research and education. Together with technological development there is a growing influence of the social media as a tool used for diversified goals. From the conventional point of view they are often seen as the key driver of communications and marketing. Furthermore, growing number of schools and teachers are utilizing social media in the classroom to further engage students in the learning process. Social media is a tool that teachers on all educational levels can use to make their classroom more engaging and relevant. Results of the survey carried among the students showed the non-negligible demand for the up-to-date, hi-tech educational tools based on social media. Over 90% of the respondents indicated the lack modern approach to pedology classification teaching and scarcity of digital tools usable in the teaching process. Moreover Higher Education is facing presently enormous challenge connected with generation “Z” - 'digital natives' entering the universities needing different educational approach. On the other hand, technical languages used in environmental disciplines, such as soil science, necessitate to be unified and correlated on European and global scale to be useful for academic purposes. The WRB (World Reference Base for Soil Resources) is the soil classification system designed as easy means of communication among scientists to identify, characterize and name major types of soils and has also been accepted by the European Commission as the official system within the European Union.The idea of the SYStem project is to create edutainment social media dedicated to soil description and classification using the WRB. It will be based on mobile application for uploading soil profile photos with description of soil horizons, materials and properties along with its coordinates and students (users) proposal for the soil classification. The application would be working both on and offline. Application users will have the possibility to interact with each other and share their knowledge helping less experienced colleagues through comments on other students and researchers uploads within the international SYStem application community. The project will be based not only on the creating the advanced international social media tool for soil science classification and education issues which is the main goal. It also includes the preparation of exercises manual on how to use SYStem application and social media in edutainment-focused teaching. In addition the soil Omnibus dedicated to support the teaching of newest edition of WRB system (2015) on a university level suitable in various environmental science courses (e.g. environmental protection, geography) will be prepared. Afterwards the evaluation of prepared edutainment module will be carried out during students workshops focused on using the application. Studying the usefulness of the WRB classification for the soil cover of partner countries and its evaluation of the WRB with regards to varied European environmental conditions will help develop the classification system itself. WRB based soil data from application users across the world are the most important added values of this project.The consortium brings together specialists from 10 Institutions from 8 countries (Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia and Spain) having research and educational experience in soil science issues of different regions of Europe. Individual members of the consortium also participated in a number of works related to the adaptation of the WRB in regional research (national scale), as well as international (testing WRB for improvement of next editions) and its use in the context of learning and teaching at the higher education level. Such experience is essential to reach the project objectives. Moreover, in the context of spatial dimension, the heterogeneity of the countries that research members originate from is fully covering the European landscapes and soilscapes variability.All of the project outcomes which are the edutainment social media tool, user’s manual, soil classification Omnibus and excersises leaflet will be freely accessible throughout EU and world. All students and teachers will have open access to register , use it and ask for experts feedback. The soil data uploaded will be also available for other users as an active collection of various soils with multimedia and geolocation features. The obtained products will comprise an innovative and powerful for the university level teaching tool. It is expected also to be the supporting tool not only the HEI teachers, but also High School teachers and active environmental researchers and practitioners. All of the above mentioned results will last many years after the founding period of SYStem project.

<< Background >>The United Nations’ Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is one of the most ambitious and important global agreements in recent history. In order to achieve the 17 SDGs, it is necessary to educate smart, creative and entrepreneurial individuals that have confidence and critical thinking. Education, specifically, STEM education is essential for the achievement of the SDGs, but Universities have struggled to introduce SDGs into their regular courses and degrees especially in STEM subjects due to the lack of both awareness and resources.Moreover, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, education has been transformed. Universities and higher education institutions have had to adopt online learning activities. Therefore, there is a need for online training that facilitates students' learning during the different stages of their studies. This methodology makes learning functional and efficient while achieving learning outcomes, increasing students’ interest and their motivation. This can be achieved by implementing life-long learning courses on different topics fundamentally in Blended-Learning environments that allow either a hundred percent virtual, hybrid or in-person learning. This methodology is particularly effective in interuniversity learning.The JOIN-RISe project aims to revolutionise higher education STEM teaching and learning by designing an innovative virtual blended SDGs training environment that has two distinct functions, one specifically targeted at lecturers and the other at students. As STEM lecturers are a key part of educating future experts in this area, it is important for lecturers to receive training to become more aware of the SDGs and the importance of including them across the STEM curricula. JOIN-RISe will therefore create a course specifically for University lecturers related to how to include SDGs in the teaching of STEM subjects. Students will in turn receive a more holistic education in the STEM discipline by completing the courses that will be created as a result of the project.In addition, Universities and higher education institutions will have a methodological guideline at their disposal to adapt the Certificate of Sustainable Commitment (CSC) to the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and to the idiosyncrasy of the involved university.Thanks to JOIN-RISe, students will be ready to use their knowledge and expertise to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs, through a more inclusive and digital approach.<< Objectives >>The main objective of JOIN-RISe is to make higher education STEM students develop into citizens that are critical thinkers and are fully committed to the SDGs. In order to achieve this, it is crucial to change the current curricula and to include the SDGs in the STEM degrees educational processes. Evidently, lecturers are key players in meeting the project’s main objective. Therefore the aim is to make STEM lecturers more aware of global challenges and the need to integrate values and ethics into their teaching to help students develop a sustainable mindset and to use science to do good in society.The SGDs will be implemented by means of courses, optional subjects, adapting current subject contents by using tools, resources and blended learning methods specifically designed for university degrees.JOIN-RISe will provide a database of Service-Learning projects and Bachelor’s and Master’s final dissertations related to SDGS in STEM which will help students to put their knowledge and social commitment into practice. JOIN-RISe also aims to improve the quality and integration of critical citizenship education at University level.At the end of the project, all these resources will be available for all European HE institutions that are willing to tackle this common challenge.The implementation of this project will improve the quality of STEM higher education by including the common values of the SDGs enriching the knowledge that students need for their future. The resources will be accessed from a VLP to make them more digital, inclusive and innovative.<< Implementation >>The activities to be implemented are as follows: Firstly, for the first objective related to training Lecturers and Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree Coordinators, two online courses will be created. The first course (for Lecturers) will include material related to how to integrate SDGs in the current subject content and in the final dissertation. The second course (for Degree Coordinators) will show how SDGs can be integrated in the curricula. For the second objective regarding the implementation of the SDGs within Higher Education, an introductory course will be created for first year University students entitled (“My role as a University student and future professional with the SDGs”) as part of Bachelor’s Degrees. An optional subject for different degrees will also be created, as well as, an interdisciplinary repository with Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees and Service-Learning Projects related to the SDGs in order to serve as inspiration for the final dissertation. Specific content for STEM degrees will be created with special emphasis being put on SDGs numbers 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. This new content will be organised by SDG and discipline. The needs of the lecturers will be analysed in order to define the topics and the adequate approach needed to increase the engagement and motivation of STEM students.Finally, a Certificate of Commitment to Sustainability and a protocol will be developed to adapt this certificate to the European Qualifications Framework and the idiosyncrasies of each University involved to improve the quality and integration of critical citizenship education at the University level.A Virtual Learning Environment will be created that will contain all the JOIN RISe courses and resources.<< Results >>JOIN-RISe will have three main project results. Firstly, the Toolkit `Integrating the SDGs in the University curriculum´ for lecturers and degrees coordinators which will include a strategy on how to integrate SDGs into STEM degrees. There will also be a certification system protocol to adapt the qualification to the EQF.Secondly, a SDGs Virtual Learning Platform (VLP) will be designed including several courses in an interactive and digital approach and adapted to people with disabilities. It will be an open resource that includes online courses for lecturers and Bachelor Degree Coordinators, an online course for first year University students and an optional subject for all degrees. This VLP will also include an online repository with interdisciplinary Service-Learning Projects and Final Dissertations related to SDGs for different degrees, interactive activities and self-evaluation activities. Finally, a methodologic guidline to adapt a Certificate of Sustainability Commitment to the European Qualifications Framework will be designed and implemented, and can be adapted to the specific needs of each participating university.Some of the outcomes we expect from this project include that STEM lecturers will be aware of global challenges and the need to integrate SDGs into their teaching. This will help students to develop a sustainable mindset and to use science to do good in society.As a result of the project new subjects, courses, tools, resources and methods specifically designed for STEM university degrees will be available. These resources will be adaptable to several contexts and educational systems thanks to the multinational make up of the consortium which means that the project has a wide geographical reach. As regards students, JOIN-RISe aims for students to be able to participate in interdisciplinary Service-Learning Projects and in final Bachelor and Master’s Degrees dissertations related to SDGs. Moreover, one of the main outcomes that the project is expected to have is to provide a better insight and comprehensive research on how to improve the quality and integration of critical citizenship education at the University level.