<< Background >>The OECD published recently “Higher Education to 2030”, two volumes focusing the future challenges for higher education: demographics and globalization, both related to the potential of digital transformation and the urgent need to implement innovative learning and teaching practices. Higher Education to 2030 discusses trends and prospects regarding changes in the population of students (demographics, inclusion of people with disabilities, migration and gender equality), academic teaching staff and graduates in higher education in OECD countries, particularly the link between these demographic changes and higher education policy, and on the academic teaching profession. OECD reassures that higher education institutions need to create synergic consortiums to better face the new reality and reduce inequalities in access and participation, the diversity of paths, provision and institutions in higher education, the possible social marginalisation of those persons least educated, building inclusive higher education systems, but also consider the need to rethink the role of the academic profession, stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices.Higher education drives and is driven by globalisation. It trains the future talents, with the young generation of graduates, but also the highly skilled workers (LLL)and contributes to the research base and capacity for innovation that determine competitiveness in the knowledge-based global society. Knowledge has no borders, and higher education plays a central role in facilitating international collaboration and cross-cultural exchange. Cross-border flows of ideas, students, teachers, researchers and external stakeholders, coupled with developments in information and communication technology, are changing the environment where higher education institutions function. Co-operation and competition are intensifying simultaneously under the growing influence of market forces and the emergence of new players, HEIs and teachers need to be prepared to continue leading this path. Digitalization and innovative learning and teaching practices, as well as inclusive higher education systems need to be reinforced ensuring HEIs ability to answer the society needs and challenges.The OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has been focusing the “openness” movement on higher education. Globally HEIs are confronted with the increase in open forms of educational delivery, as IT and the availability of educational tools and offers via the Internet are changing the meaning and the method of knowledge distribution and how and where learning happens. Open higher education includes various phenomena: open educational resources, open access and enrolments, open universities, open degrees, open data, open science, etc. The concept of openness thus is expanding from content-oriented resources to cover the entire educational and learning process.The impact of these new innovative practices in education and learning on higher education institutions might be very significant, if not only the tool is changed, but also the concept, methodology and objective of teacher practice. Innovative learning and teaching practices and the open higher education approach it definitely will be a game changer in higher education. Innovative learning and teaching practices should address societal challenges, offering a support for an approach focusing learning outcomes and student-centred courses and curriculum, better answering the needs of students and reducing skills mismatches between HEIs, students, graduated and the market. In such a way HEI will assume relevance for the community, regional economy and global market. Several international policy makers have already stressed the need for HEIs to develop, test and implement flexible learning pathways.<< Objectives >>This project will develop a digital future challenge-based learning joint programme designed within an innovative and flexible academic structure and framework: multi-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and future skills-oriented modules (micro credentials), new curricula and learning pathways, that include digital literacy and prior knowledge recognition models.<< Implementation >>Innovative projects will be developed and implemented, together with stakeholders (in a total of 180 engagements), to address local and global societal challenges. The approach will strengthen interaction and engagement among education, research and innovation, with a positive effect on communities, ultimately leading to sustainable economic growth in the post pandemic reality.Transnational, collective learning and research are the pillars of the innovative pedagogy for the multidisciplinary cocreation knowledge-creating teams where participants acquire the future skills for and produce innovation, societal impact and valorisation, with methodologies from the Educational Design Research and Design Thinking, adapted to the digital learning. The learning programmes and individual learning trajectories will have four layers: Expert knowledge; Expert course modules (flexible learning paths: prior knowledge recognition and micro-credentials); One Joint course (flexible learning paths; 150 students); Collective learning and research (Knowledge co-creation teams; 150 people involved). The project does not use one solution fits all approach, instead guides de learner in defining their own path, in this sense is open to engage all types of learners from 18 to 81: students, citizens, researchers, employees, civil servants, as long as driven in developing their digital, 21st skills and transformational competences. Each learner will have the opportunity to select the modules (micro-credentials) more adapted to their learning objectives. Prior (formal or informal) knowledge and skills will be recognized and certified by the consortium HEI’s and knowledge gaps filled in with flexible modules, that will lead to micro credentials. The partner HEIs already have some previous test beds with learning contexts that bring together learners with different profiles, and the results are exciting. DIFUCH will expand these experiences to an international, digital context.The curriculum will consist of flexible modules, based on transnational, cross and multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches, integrating innovative digital adapted pedagogies. Each module may award the learner with micro-credential.Students will be able to customize their choice of where and what to study within the confines of pedagogically sound and logically structured programmes.Digital learning spaces will be created, integrated in a common virtual, inclusive, open, social, fluid and agile campus, that is not segregated from the internet, other virtual platforms, social media and streaming channels used by students, but instead enables easy communication with those. Embracing technology as a variety of tools to build the innovative virtual campus is essential to guarantee they are updated and attractive to younger generations, with the ultimate goal of creating unique learning experiences. The virtual Campus will facilitate learning, implementing new models for engaged, collaborative learning in an inspiring and gamified 3D online campus (1000 users and 200 Students actively participating in training).<< Results >>This partnership will achieve as expected results: 1. promote cooperation between regional authorities and contribute to the European value creation addressing the grand societal challenges (180 stakeholder engagements (E1 and E2)).; 2. establish a digital and inclusive campus where students, teachers, researchers, and staff collaborate virtually, to co-create relevant innovative solutions; 3. Design a curriculum for digital learning that foregrounds innovation, builds a strong sense of European identity, and stimulates civic engagement (150 students); 4. Design, test and implement a framework of new educational methods for digital future challenge learning, in a co-creation setting (150 students); 5. Promote virtual mobility of students (n=600) and staff (n=30), building a pan-European learning community; 6. Integrate multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches in the educational and research systems aiming to establish engaged inter-university knowledge creation teams working together on societal problems; 7. Engage HEIs in the regional and European transition processes to the future-ready economy, building an inter-regional innovation academy to identify, analyse, and address existing and emerging challenges.The partnership expects longer term benefits, either with sustainable long lasting joint digital and blended study programme to be implemented with the digital future challenge learning methodology; increased mobility within partner institutions in particular virtual mobility as a future driven, ecological way of being mobile. The long-term sustainability is guaranteed by the materials, toolbar and platforms developed being available after the end of the project, and in the DIFUCH virtual collaborative campus as main repository and information sharing, which will grow continuously and collaboratively.

The number of successful cyberattacks has grown tremendously over the past years; often it is only a matter of time when a company, government or institute is hacked. As it is almost impossible to prevent attacks and breaches, it is important to have a strategy and personal that react properly after a successful attack. This will decrease the impact on the company and help preserving evidence. Consequently, industry and public sector is investing in incident response teams and incident response plans. While it is an important topic and relies on many technical skills and planning, there is barely any freely accessible material or University courses that offer training in this domain. Most of the current offerings are from industry or institutes, e.g., the SANS Institute.This project aims to form a Digital Forensics Incident Response (DFIR) Alliance who can serve as experts in the domain but more importantly will develop an update to date curricula. First, the alliance will analyze the most needed skills jointly with other experts in the field (e.g., law enforcement agencies) which will result in a skillmap. This skillmap will be shared so that cybersecurity / digital forensic programs can adjust their curriculum accordingly. Second, this project will develop course material -- theoretical as well as hands on -- which will be shared with the public and utilized by the partnering institutions. The resulting material may be as a semester long course or a 1-week intense seminar. In summary, there are three major objectives:- Build a network of DFIR experts that can be utilized when needed (e.g., supporting law enforcement, deliver modules or provide training). - Create a ranked skillmap for DFIR specialists (i.e., identify / rank most needed skills that can also be delivered in the given time frame).- Develop DFIR course materials (theory / hands on) including evaluating and testing of the developed materials.To ensure that the developed curriculum will address the needs of industry and public sector, this project will involve an interdisciplinary consortium that has expertise in various areas of cybersecurity and digital forensics:- University of Liechtenstein (Mobile forensics, hashing and machine learning), - University Albstadt-Sigmaringen (traditional digital forensics, cybercrime and open source intelligence),- Waterford Institute of Technology (small device forensics, network and online investigations, and data mining), and- Brno University of Technology (Network security and forensics).Additionally, some consortium members have / had collaboration with law enforcement agencies and worked jointly on projects. This project will generate impact on higher education and help reducing the shortage of skilled incident response personal. Since we will disseminate the outcomes of this project across our networks, and share our findings and insights on various online platforms, we expect that this project will be taken up by other universities (either as a whole curriculum, or parts of it).

Knowledge-driven global economies demand more emphasis on social inclusion, social equality and engaging society in research and innovation processes to generate solutions responsive to societal needs. Such aspirations can only be achieved through open collaborative, cooperative engagement between quadruple helix (QH) actors in any given society. The foundation stone of developing such a socially aware entrepreneurial society is: Education. To fulfil these goals, the European Corporate Social Entrepreneurship curriculum (EMBRACE) project, resulting in EMBRACEedulab, will (i) establish, within the framework of the Social Business Initiative, a favourable climate for all QH actors to be actively informed of the need for Corporate Social Entrepreneurship. This will be achieved through the consortium’s unique horizon scanning mechanism that identifies disruptive technological and societal trends; (ii) co-design, co-create, co-develop and co-implement an innovative, multidisciplinary European Corporate Social Entrepreneurship Curriculum (ECSEC) to be incorporated into HEI education programmes across all disciplines. The output of which will be more rounded, employable graduates capable of contributing immediately to their employers’ intrapreneurial and social responsibilities, and (iii) establish a sustainable environment that facilitates the co-creation and exchange of knowledge between HEIs and enterprises; resulting in the creation of new business opportunities addressing societal needs.Together, these will generate a scheme of transversal skills learning and application throughout HEIs which are transferable to industry/business communities – the EMBRACEedulab. The legacy, therefore, of the EMBRACE project is the multidisciplinary EMBRACEedulab - a set of tried and tested educational programmes and stakeholder collaborative engagement methodologies and methods to facilitate embedding Corporate Social Entrepreneurship within regions.

<< Background >>High-performance computing (HPC) is one of the most relevant technologies today with a variety of applications. The ability to efficiently process huge amounts of data is a game-changer not just for science, but also for real economies, which are now required to solve more complex problems and respond to more challenging market demands. It is not only used for academic pursuits, but can also be applied to develop and redesign products, optimise production and delivery processes.<< Objectives >>The overall aims of SME/HPC are: i) to enhance the levels of innovation capacities and capabilities of SMEs in peripheral regions by co-designing high-performance computing (HPC) awareness and education programmes for SME staff and owner/managers. While achieving this, SME/HPC will also ii) increase the levels of innovation, adaptability, relevance and responsiveness of HEIs to the needs of enterprises, to be able to deliver much more specialised and tailor-made courses for SMEs.<< Implementation >>The project's 8 partners (3 HEIs, 3 SMEs and 2 gov agencies) contributed to the project above and beyond what is stipulated in the Detailed Project Description. All partner organisations were well presented at the Steering Committee meetings, monthly on-line conference calls, and the Final Conference. All partners took an active role in all the deliverables. The interactions, exchange of knowledge and experience, and the supportive environment between all partners was excellent.<< Results >>Not alone have all targets been met and all deliverables submitted, two additional deliverable have also been created and submitted. Overall, the major learning from the SME/HPC project was that the HEIs, SMEs and public sector organisations learned each other’s organisation’s languages, concepts and needs. This helped the project team to compile and deliver meaningful outputs that are applicable to and usable by HEI, SME and public sector staffs.

WLF aims at fostering a positive Work-Life-Flow (WLF) in post-Corona legacy arising from remote working and social distancing. WLF refers to the dynamic equilibrium between an individual’s professional and social roles. The EU-Directive 2019/1158 (European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019) on work-life balance and their concretization at national levels (e.g., in Spain The Royal Decree-Law 6/2019, of March 1) and the aim of the International Labour Organisation for ‘Decent Work’ (Article 7 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) show relevance of WLF. Because of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, work and life is changing and becoming focused on remote work. This will change practices and boundaries of work and life.Mastering a healthy WLF is a challenging key competence to maintain an effective work performance while increasing social, physical and mental health, including working parents and informal carers. A needs analysis of reports (Joint Research Council of EC) and trends in European policy on key competences and work-life balance discovered a skills gap. Such non-cognitive skills are underdeveloped across the EU’s education systems but expected to grow in importance. Therefore, the projects’ competency-based approach to WLF, is key to foster individual well-being within current and future workforce. The WLF envisioned competences represent one of the eight key competences of life-long learning (“Personal, social and learning to learn”) identified by the Council of the European Union.The objectives of WLF are to offer three main outcomes/products apart of new knowledge on WLF: to develop and test an a) innovative concept- and web-based self-assessment tool for WLF linked to EFQM model b) innovative blended, virtual/distance training materialsc) integrated solution (assessment tool and training) to tackle the skills gap on WLF-related competences of future and current professionals for a positive WLF to reduce negative health- and performance-related outcomes. Related to these objectives the project activities will range from research for WLF-index development and educative materials to the assessment tools software and multimedia training implementation, its real-world testing of the integrated solution at HEI and companies. WLF uses a scientific-practitioner approach for developing an assessment WLF-index and blended multimedia virtual/distance training materials to yield the most transferable results. Desktop research on the contents for the assessment tool and training materials will be applied. Findings will be aligned with the Excellence dimensions as described in the EFQM Model. The software implementation will build upon researched parameters and make use of the existing design of LOPEC’s Personal Excellence Tool. Multimedia modules (animated screens, video clips, virtual add-ons) of the overall training solution will be developed by multimedia specialist UBT. The project will follow a combination of the agile software development approach and the rapid prototype cycle with its parallelism of development and testing (Alpha, Beta & Gamma Cycles).The WLF project envisions a transnational approach since cultural and national legislative contexts need to be taken into account. In this sense, the assessment tool allows transnational comparisons. Project partnership consists of four HEI and three business partners. The choice of the partners was based on criteria as knowledge and experience in WLF relevant fields, existing networks for dissemination and impact possibilities, sustainability of the project measures, experience in European projects. The partners complement each other: The university partners (UB, UC, UBT, WIT) are experts in the fields of occupational health, WLF and health-promoting organizational processes, ‘Decent Work’ and HRM. IBK is a leading expert on the topic of Excellence and an EFQM’s certified Partner Organization and will provide the software for the assessment tool. IIE and Eskilara represent the industrial end-user and will be involved in development and testing. The project result will be a multilingual and pilot-tested E-Platform providing a web-based Assessment tool and virtual Training Solution to diagnose and manage WLF. This E-Platform will enable students and employees to foster key competences for positive WLF based on identified potentials. For the HR sector, it allows an evidence-based identification of improvement areas for HRM and training to integrate in appropriate WLF strategies. Dissemination will done regionally and inter/nationally using the partnerships’ and Advisory Boards’ networks as well as congresses and journals.Short/medium benefits will be analyzed for students and employees. In a longer term, benefits are economically and educationally the development of a new ICT-based training product. For society, WLF seeks a more resilient and psychologically healthy current and future European workforce.