The project Towards Modern Slavic Studies stems from the need of modernizing the study programs in Slavic studies at the engaged universities. The project aims to reduce the shortage and mismatch of skills in Slavic philology and to promote internationalization in higher education. This will be achieved by developing international study programs in Slavic studies.The project addresses the demand: despite the high demand on the market for Slavic scholars with competences in Slavic languages and cultures (manifested, for example, by the insufficient number of registered sworn translators in the combinations of Slavic languages included in the project), there is a decline in interest in such studies. From the point of view of the labor market and society as a whole, it is therefore necessary to make the educational offer more attractive and improve it. The same conclusion has also been reached in surveys among graduates. One of the promising ways to better meet the educational needs of students, and at the same time the desired modernization and improvement of Slavic studies, is to enable candidates to complete international Slavic studies. In such studies, the student will firstly benefit from the human, technological, and social resources of several university centers. This will allow the student to get to know the reality and culture of the other country in practice already during his studies and in a much more profound form than in the framework of standard mobility, thanks to the fact that the entire study program will be designed as a coherent scheme of joint teaching at two different universities (in a Polish-Czech and Macedonian-West Slavic combination). This dimension of the project will enhance strategic and structural cooperation between the universities involved.The main result of the project is therefore a program of international Slavic complementary MA studies with detailed syllabi and educational materials for the courses provided in the program. The intention of the applicants is to create study programs which will be trans-disciplinary and which, in addition to the literary and linguistic background, will also equip the graduate with well-established knowledge of contemporary social and economic life of both cultures. These materials will also be partly developed in the form of e-learning. This will also make the course of studies more flexible. Currently, due to the small number of students enrolled in Slavic studies, in practice the student has no influence on the path of his or her studies and adapts to linearly planned modules. Distance learning in combination with mobility are ways to make teaching more flexible. The second inherent dimension of the project is to improve the teaching competences of Slavic staff at the universities involved and to promote student-oriented learning. This ambition will be achieved through two series of training courses on modern educational methods and innovative pedagogical methodologies (distance learning, flipped classroom, tandem teaching, etc.) and consolidated and disseminated through the publication of guidelines for Slavic teachers in the form of a Book of Good Practice.Both the developed educational materials and the guidelines for pedagogical methodologies will be tested already in the project - during pilot courses.The project involves three partners: The University of Silesia (Poland), the University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) and the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje (Republic of North Macedonia), and one associate partner. The project team has a total of 10 participants. A total of 35 people will take part in training activities: 15 Slavic studies educators as part of the training and 20 students participating in the pilot activities, which will be led by previously trained teachers. In the long term, the programs of international studies are to be of long-term importance: they are to be used to implement international Slavic studies with a double degree. The position of a graduate of such studies in the labor market will increase significantly. The success of this project will open the possibility for the universities involved to apply for an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree grant in 2023.

In view of the growing phenomenon of international migration on a global scale and taking into account the current situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to rethink the models that work in practice for the integration of groups of newcomers at risk of disadvantage and the role played in them by the prospect of professional success. In modern European societies, professional success is closely linked to the quality and level of education. At the same time, the acquisition of good quality education is particularly important for the long-term integration process of migrants. Migrants face a number of additional barriers to their education. These barriers are related to the social, psychological, economic and legal conditions for adaptation to a new way of life in the host society. This means that children migrating with parents working abroad have special educational needs. In this context, the overall aim of the project is to equip future and current teachers and pedagogy students with the tools and knowledge to work with migrant children. The implementation of the intended activities will contribute to the development of the competence of teachers who, using new methods, will counteract early school leaving of students from disadvantaged groups such as refugee and economic migrant families. A detailed result of the project will be the development of materials in English describing innovative methods of teachers' work with children from migrant families, which will be generally available as a module of an online educational platform addressed mainly to people working or learning in the fields related to work with migrant children. The preparation of these materials will be preceded by an empirical analysis of needs, expectations and cultural norms in the implementation of intercultural education in primary schools in Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Finland. At the same time we plan to develop a strategy for the development of teachers' and students' competences in the field of pedagogy concerning working with children of migrants. The development of model solutions (online learning module) in the field of intercultural education by project teams will be of universal character - they will be developed in cooperation between four project partners from different EU countries, where the partner from Finland will act as a leader in the transfer of knowledge and experience gained during long-term cooperation with Finnish schools. In the project we intend to focus on the issue of broadly understood educational support for children from migrant families, not only by developing new, innovative and empirically established teaching strategies, but also by increasing the competence of teachers and students of the pedagogical faculty and their knowledge and skills through an e-learning platform, where all the results of the project, i.e. the educational module and strategies, will be available and which will serve as a place to share knowledge about working with children of migrants. This platform will be a living organism that will be constantly developing as it will allow users to participate in the creation of its content and new modules. In order to maintain the highest quality of the content and education of the platform, it will be monitored on an ongoing basis by specially appointed experts of the WSB Academy and the project partners.We assume that the quality of education of the children of migrants will contribute to the long-term social integration opportunities in the host country.The participants of the consortium responsible for the implementation of the project are Universities from Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic with significant achievements in the education of pedagogical staff and the organisation from Finland with extensive experience in implementing Finnish educational solutions and acting as a model institution for the rest of the project partners.

<< Objectives >>Digital learning materials are a core element of educational practice, determining the inclusive potential of digital education. In all partner country there is, however, a lack of quality criteria or assessments for digital learning materials. By building a scientifically based digital ecology of tools and materials, as well as connecting these results to higher education and academic communication, a multilateral discourse about inclusion-oriented digital learning material will be ignited.<< Implementation >>A digital portal will be created becoming the focal point for the intersection of inclusion and digital education in the context of learning materials, offering educators, learners, future teachers and researchers a space with tools and materials to critically engage with digital educational resources. A peer-reviewed journal connects these newly emerging discourses with researchers aiming to assure quality and equality of inclusive digital education by improving learning materials.<< Results >>The project aims to create spaces to highlight the importance of learning materials for inclusion-sensitive digital education, to provide teachers with support, and ultimately to promote scientifically based quality assurance - so that digital education in Europe becomes more inclusive.Beyond that, however, it is important to work preventively on today's challenges in the design of inclusion-sensitive teaching by better preparing students for the critical use of learning materials.