The proposed IMEP Project will address wider International Higher Education and Quality Assurance agendas and build on the IHE work done as part part of previous Tempus projects in Uzbekistan and British Council QA and IHE programmes. There are several reasons why we decided to apply for the Project:- our considerable knowledge of the situation and needs of the HE of Uzbekistan which was gained through previous Tempus QAPD Project and other projects we have completed with our partners;- urgent need to train new teachers for the HE which are specified in the Presidential Decrees and Resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Uzbekistan - please see part E1 of the Detailed description of the project for more information;- education is a national priority and the government takes steps to align the system of education with international standards, enhance the quality of teaching and learning, and equip students with the skills required by global and local markets.The Project will specifically focus on developing the following:- new approaches in CPD for academic staff and managers in the HE: running pilots in partner institutions and new programmes recommended to the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialised Education of Uzbekistan (MHSSERUZ);- establishing consistency and enhancement of standards of teaching and learning across a variety of subject areas in the HE: Economics, Business, Education Management, Tourism, Medicine, Language Teaching and Learning and many others, and presenting the analysis of standards and recommendations on the process of enhancement to the MHSSERUZ;- engagement of students in teaching and learning: Guidelines on Student Engagement;- engagement of employers in enhancement of standards, teaching and learning: Guidelines on Employer Engagement.IMEP Project will contribute to Uzbekistan - EU Dialogue in the Higher Education and make proposals to the MHSSERUZ and other public organisations dealing with the HE.

The project is developed under the initiatives of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Computational Linguistics as interdisciplinary educational program does not exist in the partner countries, though as a research area it has been developed since beginning of 2000. Computational Linguistics is crucial for development of high information technologies, absolutely necessary for the industrial, social and civilizational progress. These technologies are in progress almost everywhere in the world but at different speed in the concerned countries. Despite of a number of software working with recognition of a number of world languages; the Kazakh and Uzbek languages still drop out. Thus it is practically impossible for the world community to retrieve any information in Uzbek or Kazakh. The aim of the project is to develop the master program curriculum and to enrich KZ & UZ universities’ capabilities to enhance access to higher education with blended learning in computational linguistics master program for students with linguistics and computational science background. To achieve this aim it is planned to establish and maintain strong collaboration between linguistics and computational technology in HEI; blended learning pedagogical skills for enhancing computational and linguistic competencies of master students; building the capacity to network effective inter-universities collaboration in the joint researches in linguistics and computer technology. It means that the academic staff from linguist and IT field will be trained. Moreover, the academic materials on new interdisciplinary master courses, NLP tools, online course, e-books and methodological books will be developed for teaching with blended learning under EU supervision.As a result the students will be able to access learning materials, teacher interaction with digital tools. New NLP tools for Uzbek and Kazakh languages will be obtained.