<< Background >>Several national and international studies have shown that higher education institutions (HEIs) need support to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic consequences such as decrease of students' competence level (Aristovnik et al., 2020, Kinnari Korpela, 2021). During pandemic, universities have had to lower the competence requirements of the courses and to lighten their evaluations. In order to be minimized by the effects of pandemic, teaching staff of universities should be trained to use pedagogical and digital methods for active students and instruments that support the development of the student's personal knowledge.The primary context of the DigiSTEM project is STEM education. The objective is to promote innovative utilization of educational technology, learning analytics and use of open educational resources (OERs) in online, classroom and blended learning, especially in HEIs STEM subjects. The project aims to support professional development of HEI educators by increasing their technological and pedagogical skills and competence. The objective is to build HEI educators' competence of such instructional design that improves students’ active learning, self-regulated learning and learning engagement with the help of educational technology and learning analytics to provide more effective and personalized support of learners. In Europe, there doesn't exist a framework or model for learning digital skills and pedagogy in HEI STEM education. When teaching/learning STEM subjects, there are also special needs of digital tools/environments for example in presenting mathematical language, equations etc.The needs analysis of the project is based on literature review and educational research conducted in partner universities. Different educational research studies (e.g. Fernandez-Cruz & Fernandez-Diaz, 2016; Huang, Han & Wang, 2017) have highlighted that educators have an inadequate competence regarding effective use of digital tools and resources in education from both pedagogical and technological perspectives. The most common reasons for not to use digital technology in teaching/learning are a lack of confidence, a lack of competence and a lack of access to resources (e.g. Joy et al., 2014; Kinchin, 2012). The research has shown, that students would like to use digital learning possibilities and methods more widely in STEM courses (i.e. Rinneheimo et al., 2018; Kinnari-Korpela & Suhonen, 2017). However, utilizing educational technology in STEM subjects is very limited and it lags behind the expectations (e.g. Clark-Wilson, Oldknow, & Sutherland, 2011; De Witte & Rogge, 2014), even though using instructional design that utilizes educational technologies has a great and recognized potential to increase students’ motivation, attractiveness of subject, promote active learning and improve learning outcomes (e.g. Dunn et al., 2015; Loch et al., 2014; Kinnari-Korpela, 2019; Kinnari-Korpela & Suhonen, 2017). The needs analysis shows that there is a clear need for instructional design that increase pedagogical meaningful use of digital learning possibilities among STEM education and academics must be trained to utilize such instructional design. These are also needed to ensure that universities can better recover from the students’ passivation and decreased learning outcomes caused by Covid-19 pandemic (Aristovnik et al., 2020, Kinnari-Korpela, 2021).<< Objectives >>The objective of the project is to increase digital and pedagogical competence of HEI educators and availability of digital resources in STEM subjects on a large scale to achieve long-lasting effects in everyday activity on the project partners and other European HEIs. By increasing such competences of educators, it gives them tools and knowledge to redesign their teaching and implement digital resources and activities (e.g. learning analytics, digital languaging, screencasts, visualizations and intelligent assessment) for different personalized learning scenarios. The agenda for the modernization of Europe's higher education systems supports the project idea as it suggests the need to exploit new technologies and ICT to enrich teaching/learning experience and providing ubiquitous and personalized digital learning possibilities for students. Also, the Digital Education Action Plan set by the Commission has a priority to make better use of digital technology for teaching and learning. The project aims to enhance educators’ technological and pedagogical competences by organizing different kind of pilot events and providing OERs and learning environment for competence development. By increasing such competencies of HEI educators (main target group), it gives them tools and knowledge to produce and implement digital resources for different personalized learning scenarios and resources that supports students’ activation. Hence, the project aims to promote digital and pedagogical competence and skills of HEI educators nationally and transnationally in Europe. Simultaneously based on literature, this is expected to affect positively on HEI students’ engagement and learning outcomes (secondary target group) but also support to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic consequences such as decrease of students' competence level.<< Implementation >>The main activities/results of the project are: - developing DigiSTEM methodology that encapsulates innovative pedagogies, best practices and concrete examples for implementing digital learning/teaching of STEM and other similar subjects (PR1)- building, maintaining and developing a digital platform for STEM subjects’ digital teaching and learning to support educators’ continuous professional development with high-quality resources (PR2) - developing guidelines for European STEM educators to increase digital and pedagogical competence and implementing good practices and new methods smoothly into daily teaching activities and curricula (PR3) -enhancing HEI educators' competence of such instructional design that improves students’ active learning, self-regulated learning and learning engagement with the help of educational technology and learning analytics to provide more effective and personalized support of learners (PR1-PR3) -to organize/participate 3 LTT (C1-C3) events and participate dissmination events (E1-E6) aimed at providing technological and pedagogical training/knowledge to STEM educators in the context of the project. Participants of training activities will be awarded with digital competence certificate.-developing MOOC as a form of OER that will combine all the tangible results of the project to be able to promote and integrate developed good practices and innovative methods into daily activities of European HEIs. The MOOC is based on piloted PRs, which have been developed on the basis of feedback received during piloting. The project's pedagogical innovations and technological choices will be made as sustainable solutions that can be utilized after the project, for example 10 years after the end of the project.<< Results >>The objective is to build HEI educators' competence of such instructional design that improves students’ active learning, self-regulated learning and learning engagement with the help of educational technology and learning analytics to provide more effective and personalised support of learners. In this way, it is possible to achieve the effectiveness of the project from the curriculum level to practice. The project is divided in three main Project Results (PR1-PR3). One of the partners is appointed as the coordinator of each output even though each output will be developed in close cooperation with all partners. The Project Results are described in previous section.As a consequence of the exploitation of Project's Results (PRs), it is expected to improve HEI students’ motivation and to decrease dropouts (Kinnari-Korpela, 2019). Although the project focuses on HEI STEM subjects, the PRs can be applied to other disciplines with some adaptations. Hence, the project can contribute to improve educators’ skills to apply modern methodologies, novel pedagogy and digital teaching/learning solutions on a large scale.

The ECC-SMART is oriented towards assessing the feasibility and identification of safety features of an intrinsically and passively safe small modular reactor cooled by supercritical water (SCW-SMR), taking into account specific knowledge gaps related to the future licensing process and implementation of this technology. The main objectives of the project are to define the design requirements for the future SCW-SMR technology, to develop the pre-licensing study and guidelines for the demonstration of the safety in the further development stages of the SCW-SMR concept including the methodologies and tools to be used and to identify the key obstacles for the future SMR licencing and propose a strategy for this process. To reach these objectives, specific technical knowledge gaps were defined and will be assessed to achieve the future smooth licensing and implementation of the SCW-SMR technology (especially the behaviour of materials in the SCW environment and irradiation, validation of the codes and design of the reactor core will be developed, evaluated by simulations and experimentally validated). The ECC-SMART project consortium consists of EU, Canadian and Chinese partners to use the trans-continental synergy and knowledge developed separately by each partner. The project consortium and project scope were created according to the joint research activities under the International Atomic Energy Agency, Generation-IV International Forum umbrella and as much data as possible will be taken from the already performed projects. This project brings together the best scientific teams working in the field of SCWR using the best facilities and methods worldwide, to fulfil the common vision of building an SCW-SMR in the near future.