The OTCT project will build on the results and recommendations of the OPTIMALE network, an Erasmus Academic Network of 70 academic and language industry partners in the field of professional translation. The OPTIMALE online survey of language industry employers’ competence requirements showed that awareness of and the ability to implement professional procedures throughout the translation process are key factors in the employability of university translation graduates. This led to the definition of good practice in specific areas of translator training, in particular in the integration of professionally-oriented practices in the curriculum.The OTCT project (Optimising Translator Training through Collaborative Technical Translation) aims to enhance the professionally-oriented content of university translation degree programmes via intensive collaborative technical translation sessions in simulated professional conditions (referred to as “Tradutech sessions”), and by exchanging good practice and resources on the implementation of project-based teaching and learning in the field of translator training.The project will involve students and staff in advanced translation degree programmes from seven academic institutions (Rennes 2 University, France; HE Vinci, Brussels, Belgium; Swansea University, UK; Univerzita Karlova V Praze, Prague, Czech Republic; Universitatea Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Universita ta Malta, Malta; Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain). It will primarily involve 1st and/or 2nd year Master’s degree students (i.e. 20-80 students in each institution) but may also involve students in the final year of Bachelor’s degree programmes where relevant (i.e. Sevilla). Two to three members of the teaching staff from each institution will be directly involved, but a larger number will benefit from the outcomes of the project.The project will center on the “Tradutech” intensive sessions, with preparatory activities leading up to the sessions and material from the sessions feeding into further resources for use in the classroom. Four “Tradutech” sessions will take place during the project. Each five-day session will involve students setting up simulated translation companies (i.e. teams of 5-10 students, with specific responsibilities and roles assigned to each team member), who will then carry out large-scale multilingual technical translation projects according to the specifications and deadlines set by their “clients”. Source documents will be authentic technical manuals, reports or multimedia materials which will be translated into the main target language(s) of the partner institutions. The source documents will be in English or French as the case may be. Projects will be managed in turn by students from each partner institution, using collaborative software to exchange resource materials and files and computer-assisted translation software to carry out the translations. Prior to the Tradutech sessions, students will receive training in technical translation, project management, quality control and translation technologies, using resources produced by different partner institutions and shared with the other partners within the project. Participants will be briefed on the conditions and implementation of the Tradutech sessions, using tutorials produced by students from Rennes and Cluj with prior experience of such sessions. A joint terminology project will involve students from all the partner institutions, in order to promote cooperation and familiarize them with the use of the collaborative platform set up for the project. Output from the student “translation companies” will be assessed according to professional criteria by language industry professionals and feedback will be provided to the students and used as learning materials in classes following the Tradutech sessions. All students who have completed a Tradutech session (i.e. have successfully carried out the responsibilities and tasks allocated to them within one or several translation projects) and the preparatory work prior to the session, will be awarded 4 ECTS credits as part of their study programme.Two of Rennes Tradutech sessions will be attended by teaching staff from the other partner institutions, who will take part in a parallel training of trainer session. Two other sessions will be attended by students from the other institutions, who will be integrated as full members of the Rennes teams.Sustainability will be ensured by teaching and learning resource production and dissemination, the training of trainer sessions, and the production of a Handbook on the implementation of project-based translator training which will be made freely available to other institutions. Participating students will benefit from the hands-on experience and professional feedback, while teaching staff will gain experience of project-based collaborative learning methodologies.

The low success rates of students in science courses and the negative attitudes and perceptions towards these courses are frequently mentioned in the science education literature.As a solution of this problem,out of school environments can provide important contributions as a complementary tool in formal education.In this project,it is aimed to develop an out-of-school curriculum for teacher education programs by following these steps:(i)finding out about different out of school learning environments,approaches and resources used in countries where out-of-school education has been successfully conducted over years,(ii) acquire and possess high-quality skills, competences,knowledge and skills related to strategies,methods and techniques that can be used in out-of-school activities,(iii) collaborate with partners to construct scaffolds which will help us to develop an out-of-school curriculum,and(iv) test and refine the curriculum first in Hacettepe University (the applicant university)(v) translate and apply the curriculum in participant countries.The curriculum will consist of following aspects:interdisciplinary connections, STEM education,using mobile applications,virtual museums,augmented reality, assessment.Although in service and pre-service teachers (PSTs) know some out of school environments such as science centres,they have difficulty in planning how to follow a methodological way in these environments and learning how to use them as a complementary tool in their teaching.As a result, these kinds of trips are often an ordinary sight-recognition visits.To overcome these deficiencies,teacher education programs need a structured curriculum which will provide pre-service teachers opportunities to experience and implement out-of-school lesson plans.The goal of this curriculum is to combine the theoretical background with applied activities by creating on-site learning environments. The theoretical knowledge will be developed via intensive collaboration with the input emerged from national and international out of school practices and examples given by the teacher trainers and project experts.In order to support theory with practice,pre-service teachers will create learning environments by choosing one of the out-of-school learning environments (e.g. planetarium,museum,zoo, etc.)The project will start with a need analysis collecting input from different stakeholders (e.g. academicians, teacher educators from formal (private school [Sınav Koleji] and public schools [Etimesgut District National Education Directorate]), and informal institutions (Muğla BİLSEM). The need analysis will inform us what teacher educators, pre-service and in-service teachers expectations are from a new curriculum, what they believe that is important to focus on out-of-school learning.The project will be carried out by four program member countries (Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Turkey) and three associated partners from Turkey. As a result, a common training content will be developed with the participation of each member. In this process, each country will hold a meeting and prepare a visit to out of school learning environments in that country. During these visits,out of school practices will be experienced in the European dimension.These meeting will facilitate to establish the theoretical infrastructure of out-of-school curriculum, and the team members will have access to reliable sources of information.The project will produce two major outcomes:(1)Out-of-School Learning in European Countries as an ebook,(2) The out-of-school learning curriculum for teacher education programs.To measure the effectiveness of the project; the quality of the out-of-school learning environments developed by PSTs during the implementation of the newly developed curriculum will be analyzed. Additionally, we will have different assessments for PSTs to help us identify how their ideas about out-of-school learning developed.These assessment tools include interviews during the course, documentation which presents PSTs’ experiences during the course (e.g. pre-service teachers’ journals),field trip evaluation form, lesson plan evaluation rubric, and course evaluation survey. Totally 7 partners will organize appropriate dissemination activities and meetings with relevant institutions.At these meetings, outputs of the project will be discussed in detail and detailed analysis will be carried out along with stakeholders in all participant countries.This last meeting of the project will host an Out-of-School Learning Conference including invited paper and poster presentations.The purpose of this conference is providing an opportunity for researchers to make connections with the practitioners and enable dissemination of the curriculum and the ebook.The project will be followed up on the webpage after the project ends with an emphasis on how the curriculum will be applied in different universities to ensure dissemination.

The Biomedical Center of the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen, which has recently been established at the Charles University with support of the European Fund for Regional Development, represents a high-grade regional research infrastructure in the fundamental field of cancer biology and oncology. However, despite its advanced research and innovation performance, the potential of the Center is still not fully exploited, dominantly due to its unsatisfactory attractiveness to top-class researchers, concerning both established experts as well as promising young scientists and PhD students. This represents a major structural weakness of the Center. To directly address this issue, we propose the Chaperon action with the main goal to recruit a world class researcher and research manager to 1) establish and lead new Laboratory of Translational Cancer Genomics filling a thematic gap in the structure of the Center; 2) become the head of Research Programme 2 of the Center, thus strongly boosting its excellence; and 3) take a position in several institutional advisory and supervisory bodies in order to moderate the transformation of human resource policies and managerial processes at the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen and Charles University on their way to excellence. Attracting high-quality human resources and assuring their sustainability by bringing the institution in close compliance with the ERA priorities and the Regional Smart Specialisation Strategy, the project will substantially increase the research and innovation (R&I) performance of the Center, provide crucial international networking opportunities with respect to all key stakeholders and increase the competitiveness of the institution in obtaining international funding such as ERC. By achieving these goals, the Chaperon ERA Chairs project will help diminish the inequalities in R&I performance within the ERA.