News

On June 9, 2020, the first coordination meeting of the ACCESS project was held, bringing together representatives of 2 higher education institutions from Costa Rica, 4 from Cuba and 5 from the Dominican Republic, the Ministries of Higher Education of these Latin American countries, the University of Macedonia and the University of Alicante, the project coordinator. The meeting, scheduled for July at the University of Macedonia, Greece, was held virtually because of the current inability of the project partners to travel. The objective of the meeting was to present the current status of the project, the next activities to be carried out and the responsibilities of the partners. During the meeting a question-and -answer session was established to solve the doubts of the partners both at technical and financial level. Also, for the review of the financial aspects of the project an evaluation test was conducted among all the attendees, being the dynamics of the meeting more participative.

The University of Alicante hosted more than 30 representatives from 4 Moroccan and  4 Egyptian Universities in order to train them on inclusion and accessibility for students with disabilities from 17^th to 21^st February.  Within the framework of the PACES - Progression of Accessibility Centres in Higher Education for Students with Disabilities in North Africa, the University of Alicante contributed with their expertise on disability to share practices and lessons learnt on how to develop an inclusive Higher Education environment.

Therefore, partners had the opportunity to work closely with the staff of the Student Support Center of the University of Alicante on improving their peer to peer-volunteering services, understanding the experiences of students with disabilities at the University as well as harnessing the application of Assistive Technology to increase the scope of these inclusion actions. Besides that, partners also visited the Archaeologic Museum of Alicante which displays a very innovative and cutting-edge system on accessibility collection, providing an excellent example for inclusion on didactics and tourism.

From 4th to 7th February 2020, the Erasmus+ project ENTENDER “Enabling Students with Neurodiversity” held its Kick-Off meeting and good practice visit at Coventry University’s Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment (UK). The University of Alicante, partner in this project, was represented by Eric Sánchez, OGPI IT Expert. The general aim of ENTENDER is to improve access, retention, attainment and employment prospects of people with neurodiverse conditions (Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum and Tourette’s Syndrome) in Argentina and Mexico, allowing them to achieve their full potential by capacity building of neurodiversity support across higher education and employment sectors, fostering inclusion, and building knowledge.

From 14^th to 15^th of January 2020, OGPI Senior Project Manager, Noelia López, participated in the DEFINE project Kick-off meeting that took place in Paris. During the two-day meeting, representatives from the 7 partner institutions from Austria, Denmark, Spain, Italy and France were gathered to decide the content of the DEFINE training about online banking and finances, specially tailored for seniors. OGPI representative made a presentation on the quality plan for the project, the desk research and the focus group conducted, in which attendees shared their views on existing trainings and best practices on digitalized financial education, the needs of seniors in the area of financial education and digital skills and gaps between existing trainings and training needs