higher education

OPEN Consortium celebrated the 1^st National Round Table in Vientiane (Lao PDR) on 4tth March 2021. The gathering was attended by the Vice minister of the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES), high-representatives from other ministerial bodies of the Lao PDR government and the  European Union Ambassador to Lao PDR. During the meeting, 2 crucial publications, as result of the coordinated work of the OPEN consortium, were officially presented to the audience: “Needs Analysis“document and the “International Relationships Offices Management Guide”.

They were joined by a numerous delegation of at least 50 participants of  the Higher Education Institutions of Lao PDR, including high-representatives from the managerial staff, representatives from international organisations, together with the members of the International Relationships Offices of the 5 public Universities which take part in the OPEN consortium. The 1^st OPEN National Round Table was a blended conference in which Laotian partners participated on face-to-face basis, congregating in the Crowne Plaza Hotel of Vientiane, and the EU representatives of the OPEN project from Italy and Spain contributed online.

More than 90 participants from Costa Rica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic took part in the 2nd Training of the ACCESS Project, organized on February 17 and 18, 2021. The workshop was taught virtually by the Digital Accessibility Unit of the University of Alicante. The training focused on familiarizing, in an eminently practical way, attendees with tools and methodologies for creating digital and inclusive teaching materials. These contents are especially useful in this context of a pandemic that has forced most of the Universities to deliver their educational actions via online or hybrid methodologies

January 15th 2021 signals the official starting date of the news Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project “Promoting the employability and entrepreneurship of Higher Education graduates through innovative ways in the Philippines”, also known as PATHWAY.

Partners have been actively at work behind the scenes to help the project get a strong start when it has its public launch on February 23^rd. This work has included several online meetings, first with the new project officer in a bilateral meeting organized in the framework of the Erasmus+ Grantholders’ Meeting, on January 28^th, and then during a pre-Kick-off Meeting with the project managers from each partner institution on February 2^nd.

ACCESS consortium held its first coordination virtual meeting of the year on 2^nd February 2021. The online gathering was attended by 35 delegates from Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Greece and Spain,  representing all the 13 Higher Education Institutions and  3 national Ministries of Education which take part in the ACCESS project. The reunion centered around reviewing progress undertook during the last year and laid the basis for ACCESS project actions during the next month such as the upcoming online trainings on  inclusion for 17-18 February.

ACCESS partners convened to celebrate the official approval of the extension of the project up to January 2024 on account of the disruption generated by COVID-19 pandemic within the pace of all project activities and the normal functioning of the University system in Cuba, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic as well as Spain.

Between January 19^th and 21^st, the V2WORK Vietnamese partners gathered together at Thu Dau Mot University, with the EU partners joining in online during the afternoons, to present the work they had done in the framework of project work packages 2, Capacity Building, and 4, Implementation of Enhanced Services.

During the workshop partners shared their experiences (including the challenges they had to overcome) and results in the implementation of online courses, career days and new employability, employment and entrepreneurship services by the career centres. As each partner presented their work, the others had a chance to ask questions, share recommendations for future actions, and do a short evaluation of each of the results.

Overall the results were very positive, with many of the partners getting very useful advice from their colleagues on how to continue implementing these activities, and others getting inspiration on how to develop something similar in their own institutions

EMINENT partners organised an online Project Meeting on Friday 21^st January 2021. Colleagues in Haiti and Europe Union reunited after the Christmas vacations via videoconferencing to formulate a feasible workplan to catch-up delays of project implementation. Along these lines, partners welcomed the good news about the official approval by the EACEA to extend the period for the implementation of the EMINENT project up to April 2022. This will become a great opportunity for the project to compensate the disruption generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and recovered action.

EMINENT consortium will focus the next 4 months to finalise the design of their internal quality assurance systems at faculty level, conduct self-assessment activities as well as articulate policy proposals within the Roadmap document action.

The China Intellectual Property Management Network (CIPnet) Launch Event was virtually hosted on December 11, 2020 by Southwest University in Chongqing, China. The Launch Event included a presentation of the China Intellectual Property Management Network and its activities, and was followed by the conference “Managing IP at Universities. From IP Awareness Building to Commercialization of Research Results”. Presentations were delivered both by the CIPnet project partners and invited guests and structured into the following panel sessions: IP awareness building at universities; IP management at medical sector; Specifics of commercialization of research results. The event was attended by more than 80 managers, directors, leaders of TTOs, persons involved in commercialization and management of IP at Chinese universities.

On account of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis, ACCESS project is scaling up its virtual presence across a wide array of conferences, seminars and events, directed towards raising-awareness on inclusion, accessibility and disability at Higher Education level in the Caribbean region. In consequence, ACCESS partners have recently participated in III INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF INCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION – CONTIE 2020 with representatives from TEC Costa Rica, the INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION WEEK organized by the INTEC and the “Dialogue: Interaction and dignified treatment of people with disabilities from a rights perspective" celebrated by UNAPEC.

This strategy obeys to the necessity to bypass international travel restrictions and face-to-face gathering limitations stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.  As such, ACCESS ensures maxim outreach of dissemination actions directed towards key stakeholders at University level, which work towards building up a Higher Education system for all and leaving no one behind. Connecting with students with disabilities, general student population, administrative and academic staff from the Universities, political actors and disability NGOs is key to ensure exploitation and sustainability of ACCESS project results. Virtual events are now and considering circumstances an optimal platform to maximise engagement in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Cuba.

Víctor F. Climent, UA Employment Center Technician and Associated Professor of the University of Alicante -Department of Sociology, together with representatives from OGPI-UA, participated on 26^th November 2020, in the INSPIRE Online Final Conference, which was hosted online by Parahyangan Catholic University from Bandung (Indonesia). Víctor F. Climent delivered a summary presentation on the Best Practices examples from EU partners on social entrepreneurship support within the context of Higher Education, which has contributed to enrich Indonesian exposure to this topic and study adaptation to their own context.

The virtual event was attended by all INSPIRE consortium members from Austria, Poland and  Indonesia with an outstanding turnout of more 250 participants from all relevant stakeholders groups: students, higher education management, private sector and international agencies, including  Vincent Piket, EU Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam. During the conference, partners dialogued on the concepts on social entrepreneurship and its applications to Indonesia as well as reviewing the main outputs of the INSPIRE project. The conference was adorned with inspiring audio-visual material from students involved in project activities and traditional performances from Indonesia which helped to reinforce project ownership and appropriation of the results. This final conference represent a crucial milestone for the INSPIRE project, pushing towards sustainable promotion of the interplay of business-university policy within the field of social entrepreneurship in Indonesia.

The OPEN project held its 1st training of trainers module which due to the COVID-19 emergency was organised on-line from November 9th to 12th, 2020 for the staff from 5 Universities International Relations Offices and Ministry of Education and Sports in Lao PDR. The training was jointly delivered by the University of Alicante and the University of Bologna.

This workshop was centered on the following topics:

• Globalisation vs. Internationalisation
• Introduction to Fundraising and Project Management
• Information and communications technologies for IROs.