GLOCAL is a project that teaches future engineers to think globally and act locally. It responds to the current needs of the European labor market through changes in the higher education system. It takes into account the need to improve the standard of living in cities, expectations addressed to the engineering industry, the availability of ITC technology and greater professional mobility's need. Assessment of current skills of technical university graduates showed lack of competence in the field of cooperation in multi-disciplinary teams dealing with difficult interdisciplinary projects, responding to location, technical, social, legal, ecological, cultural heritage, image and brand development, improving the quality of life in the city's complex conditions. Engineers working in the broadly understood architectural, construction and civil engineering industry must now demonstrate the skills of creative action and cooperation in interdisciplinary and international teams of designers and contractors. They are expected to act in engineering teams to understand the non-technical values of their activities. The GLOCAL project will promote among summer school's participants the extension of interdisciplinary technical knowledge, language competences and work in international teams. A consortium of 3 European universities will carry out the main objective of the project. There are universities open to the modernization of their education programs to current needs, having a wide range of technical science, including research aimed at public space's modernisation and raising cities's standard of living. The partner universities' academic staff (24 teachers) will be trained on three short methodological training sessions, where it will improve its skills in a modern education as well as exchange of interdisciplinary knowledge and establishing scientific contacts. The most important effect of the project will be innovative summer school (implemented in the mixed education system), in the form of 2 parts of the course with teachers (2 weeks in Spain and 2 weeks in Poland / Lithuania) and a 3-week e-learning part (3 modules). Teaching methods developed in the consortium (original didactic materials, e-laboratories) will be tested on two groups of 24 students (8 students from each university, from engineering departments) in summer 2020 and 2021. The learning outcomes will be verified after each edition of the course. All products verified during the courses (course syllabus, didactic and e-learning materials, e-laboratories, 4 languages branch e-dictionary) will be available free of charge on the GLOCAL website. There will be also two studies: a book and a guide to good design practices in the e-book version. The printed version will be sent free to the libraries of 30 universities. The innovative GLOCAL module will be included in the programs of partner universities and offered to students from various universities as an optional subject (6 ECTS). The implementation of this module will make it possible to increase the attractiveness of technical studies, complement the program with modern achievements of ICT technologies, and will influence the connection of teaching with practical aspects responding to European labor market's needs. Participants of the GLOCAL project (students, teachers) will broaden their interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, improve language skills, team work skills, get to know the cultural values of cities and partner university countries. Local government administration, producers, professional engineers will gain the opportunity to influence the education process and at the same time expand their own knowledge. In the future, the updated GLOCAL module will prepare students well for the labor market's changing needs, which will positively affect local and global economic development. The GLOCAL project provides many (at least 8) events in partner countries, addressed to various receivers (students, academic staff, researchers, high school students, producers, engineers of various industries, local government authorities, state administration). The purpose of the events will be to disseminate the results of GLOCAL project, promote the idea of the Erasmus + program and encourage them to be used in personal education, improving competences, scientific development and courses. The results of the project will be passed to the university authorities as a learning module that could be used to expand the university's teaching offer. In addition, the GLOCAL project assumes dissemination of scientific work's results among local and regional government authority and administration to help them make planning and investment decisions to improve the standard of living in cities and their economic development.

During the COVID-19-induced pandemic, the entire European Community has been facing serious challenges. The COVID-19 has a strong influence on higher education. The European universities switched to distance learning for the safety of students and teaching staff. The shortcomings of the traditional teaching practice to adopt to pandemic conditions have become more explicit. The main challenges have been: 1) Motivating students for active participation; 2) Organizing laboratory exercises; 3) Assessment of students´ competences.Besides challenges imposed by COVID-19 pandemic, there is a strong need for transformation of education: 1) While in the industrial society the main focus of education was to contribute to the development of procedural knowledge, in the information or knowledge society the development of conceptual and metacognitive knowledge is increasingly considered important; 2) According to modern learning theories, knowledge cannot be transmitted, but has to be constructed by each learner in the appropriate social context; 3) Student-active teaching methods with emphasis on student collaboration and reflection on the learning process are shown to be much more appropriate for the new needs. 4) Assessment methods are shown to be the key factor that steers the way students learn. It is therefore of great importance to develop assessment methods that support development of 21st century skills. Constructive alignment of learning goals, teaching methods and assessment practice is therefore a key issue.The project aims to address the needs of adapting teaching and assessment methods to pandemic conditions, but also adapting the education system to the 21st century (or knowledge-society) needs and state-of-the art pedagogical research; This general objective will be achieved by applying the holistic approach through mutual transnational cooperation among four university partners from Poland, Norway, Serbia and Bulgaria, and a number of additional industrial partners. The basic innovation lies in the holistic approach covering the set of the activities: novel teaching methodology, elaboration of new courses programmes, edition of digital materials (manuals, reports, problems, exercises, tests, etc.), writing textbooks and training of academic teachers to involve them in this new teaching way.The specific objectives of the project are as follows:1) To develop a methodology for problem-based teaching and corresponding assessment methods suitable for use in pandemic conditions, and put them into context of modern learning theories;2) To develop methodology for teacher training that facilitates adoption of the new teaching and assessment practice;3) To develop digital teaching and learning materials in the selected areas of ICT based on the above approach.The following results will be achieved:1) The innovative problem-based methodology under pandemic conditions will be developed and will be supported by appropriate digital presentations. 2) Digital resources will be created in educating teachers for acquiring new skills related to the problem-based methodology. Detailed schedules, presentations and recorded movies will be accessed at the project website.3) Digital teaching resources will be created in selected areas of ICT applicable for a group of problem-based courses. At least eight courses will be modernized. The introduction-to-lecture movies, interactive lecture presentations, project statements, lab exercises and online exam tests will be created.4) At least three multimedia books will be prepared with the aim to enable students to follow online lectures and prepare exams under pandemic conditions. A collection of students’ lab projects sharing best practices within partner universities will be edited. The target groups that will be addressed are students, teachers, higher education institutions and industrial companies.The innovative products in the field of education produced during project duration will be available via a website. Results will be presented to the higher education and industrial community through multiplier events, TV and newspapers interviews, as well as on social and professional networks. We will share the results of this project through four conference or journal papers in the field of education. These results will make higher education to be more attractive for nowadays students and will improve its quality. The level of digital competence of teachers and students will be improved. The links among students and companies will be established or enhanced. The universities will attract a larger number of domestic and foreign students. Some of the long-term goals are to continue collaboration among four partner universities through the programme “European universities” and to increase students' employability.

<< Background >>“DYL-HP” (Digital Youth Life Health Platform); It is a digital health platform where it can provide live health services and sports lessons to its users in a virtual environment with its specialist doctors and yoga-pilates-fitness and sports trainers.The COVID-19 epidemic, which swept the whole world, has brought the health systems of almost all countries to the point of collapse. According to scientific data, it is known that face-to-face meeting and contact are one of the biggest factors affecting the spread of this epidemic. For this reason, people now rightfully avoided going to the hospital. Thus, people could not cure their diseases and were deprived of health services. It is known that hospitals all over the world have problems with both bed problems and health services. Although people wanted to go to hospitals, they could not go due to the contagiousness of the pandemic, but as a result, many people died at home due to their illnesses. In addition, hospitals in many parts of the world have had problems treating their patients due to excessive workload. As a result, the epidemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has significantly affected health systems all over the world, reducing both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patient treatment opportunities. In order to overcome this bottleneck and to ensure the survival of the health systems of the countries, it has become necessary to rapidly create alternative health services and treatment methods that can distribute the health service burden.While this is the case for developed and rich countries, it is also a frightening fact that poor and low-income people cannot receive adequate or no health services anyway. There are 107 middle and underdeveloped countries that cover almost more than half of the world's geography, and most of the people living here cannot receive adequate health services not only during the pandemic but throughout their lives due to financial difficulties. 5.7 billion people living in these countries (this number constitutes 76% of the world's population) live in multidimensional poverty (A., Sabina et al., The 2020 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), University of Oxford, 2020). This rate is a tragedy, especially in terms of human health and importance. Although countries allocate a large part of their income sources for health care, unfortunately, more than half of the world's population cannot receive adequate health care.Therefore, the main purpose of this project; With the DYL-HP platform that will be created, people will be able to get health services by meeting with volunteer doctors who are experts in their fields on the internet without going to the hospital. In the volunteer doctor pool of the platform, from psychiatrist to dietician, from obstetrician to pediatrician; Specialist doctors from all fields of health such as otolaryngology, ophthalmology, dermatologist, internal medicine, neurologist and chest diseases will be available. In addition, for those who cannot go to gyms or do not have the opportunity to do quality sports due to the Covid 19 pandemic, users will be able to take live or video recording lessons from volunteer yoga-pilates-fitness and sports instructors who are experts in their field, with the DYL-HP platform. Thus, with the DYL-HP platform, health and sports services will be offered to all people from all over the world, whether rich or poor, with the awareness of a healthy young life, which is their greatest right to life.As a result, DYL-HP will be a digital platform that will offer health and sports services live and free of charge, with the awareness of healthy young life that all humanity needs during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, as an alternative to established physical hospitals.<< Objectives >>DYL-HP (Digital Youth Life Health Platform); It is a digital health platform that can provide live health services and sports lessons to users of specialist doctors and yoga-pilates-fitness and sports trainers in a virtual environment.This service will be realized with the Digital Youth Life Health Platform, which is the output of the project. DYL-HP will be a digital platform that will offer health and sports services live and free of charge, with the awareness of healthy young life that all humanity needs during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, as an alternative to established physical hospitals. Thus, the delivery of health services as well as other social activities (such as sports, yoga, pilates and fitness) to all people will be provided over the internet via a digital platform. There will be volunteer specialist doctors and volunteer sports trainers at the service of the platform. On the platform, specialist doctors will be able to meet with their patients live over the internet, as well as these meetings can be in the form of appointments for the doctor's convenient hours. In the same way, sports trainers will be able to give live lessons over the internet as well as in the form of video recording at any time.With the DYL-HP platform, especially people will be able to get health services by meeting with volunteer doctors who are experts in their field on the internet without going to the hospital. In the volunteer doctor pool of the platform, from psychiatrist to dietician, from obstetrician to pediatrician; Specialist doctors from all fields of health such as otolaryngology, ophthalmology, dermatologist, internal medicine, neurologist and chest diseases will be available. In addition, with the DYL-HP platform, users will be able to take live or video recording lessons from volunteer yoga-pilates-fitness and sports instructors, who are experts in their fields, for those who cannot go to the gym or have the opportunity to do quality sports due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Thus, with the DYL-HP platform, health and sports services will be offered to all people from all over the world, whether rich or poor, with the awareness of a healthy young life, which is their greatest right to life.With the project called the digital health platform handbook(DHP),which was jointly carried out by the World Health Organization and Istanbul Technical University, there is a study on the work-flow and management of health institutions(Digital health platform handbook: building a digital information infrastructure for health. Geneva: WHO and International Telecommunication Union, 2020). Although this study showed us that the creation of a digital platform related to workflow and management in the field of health was made out of a need, it created the belief that a need for health services that a digital health platform would provide to people would be much more beneficial.As a result, with DYL-HP, we want to achieve the creation of an alternative digital health platform where the Covid-19pandemic process and afterwards will provide free healthcare services that humanity needs.<< Implementation >>For DYL-HP, first of all, a needs analysis activity will be conducted within the scope of field work. The scope of DYL-HP will be determined by the needs analysis studies. These studies will cover the first three months of the project. In the first TPM to be held at the end of the first 3 months, the operation, revision, mail guidance and needs analysis of the project will be presented. Workshops on the creation, development and sustainability of DYL-HP will be held in every TPM and LTT event.The main purpose of this project is to create a remote-virtual digital electronic health platform with DYL-HP that will create the application required by healthcare and spor services, especially in the fields of medicine and engineering. Thus, patients will be able to receive home healthcare services remotely with digital facilities without going to the hospital.In particular, they will realize virtual and real time applications in both the health and engineering fields withthe digital system module expertise of AYBU, the project coordinator. In this way, doctors will be able to take both virtualand real-time reactions from their patients and make decisions more easily in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease.People who cannot go to the hospital due to economic difficulties or who do not want to go to the hospital due to theCovid-19 epidemic can be treated with DYL-HP at home. With this feature, DYL-HP will contribute to the health system with areal-time remote digital health application for people and all users. Thanks to the above contributions, DYL-HP will beincluded in the European Commission's database as a project output that will bring international benefit. DYL-HP project will consist of the following processes: 1-Preparation Phase (3 months): Fieldwork (surveys) to determine the needs will be carried out by all partners under the leadership of AYBU. During the preparation period, studies on the project process(financial process training, revisions and determination of duties / responsibilities) will be carried out by AYBU. At thisstage, it is necessary to determine the contents and needs for the creation of the digital platform called DYL-HP. Needsanalysis studies will be conducted in the country of each partner. In this study, needs, expectations and suggestions willbe collected and analyzed. At this stage, 1 TPM (Ankara / in Turkey) and 1 LTT (in Malatya / Turkey) will be made. In1.TPM, the planning, financial rules, bilateral agreements and distribution of duties and responsibilities will be carried outin the two-year period of the project. In 1. LTT, transfer studies from DYL-HP's first needs analysis study to digital studies willbe carried out. 2- Software Development Phase (12 Months): Digital Application Coding Applications and Design Phase, under the leadership of AYBU, with the support of PUT(Poland) and with the support ofall partners, international meetings and workshops will be held and the integration of the DYL-HP application with thesoftware and platform will be ensured and realized. Each partner will collect the feedback of these trials in their circlesand target audience and send them to the coordinator. 3- WEBINAR (6 Months):It will be carried out by the WEB modular education platform DGH AR-GE and DRL Group (Turkey).4- Handbook/Guide Creation Phase (4 Months): User handbook/guides including the use of DYL-HP digital electronic healtcare platform and modular WEB will be created by DGH AR-GE and DRL Group (Turkey). 5- Multiplier Events Stage (6-8 months): The EIB in Turkey (45), Belgium (35) and 30 promotional events will be held in Poland.6- Final Phase (3 months):It will be in the form of a general evaluation of the project work, sustainability studies, final meetings and making the outputs produced in 4 languages accessible to higher education institutions and informing public institutions and NGOs via mail chain, making final reports.<< Results >>DYL-HP (Digital Youth Life Health Platform) will have the feature of a virtual-online digital youth life health platform that will providefree healthcare and spor services that all humanity needs during and after the Covid-19 pandemic process, as an alternative toestablished physical hospitals. “DYL-HP”; A digital health platform that will provide its users with live health services and sports lessons in a virtual environment will be the output of the project with its specialist doctors and yoga-pilates-fitness and sports trainers. DYL-HP will be an alternative digital healthcare system to the current cumbersome and overworked healthcare institutions. In addition to all theseimportant outputs, the DYL-HP platform will create great business opportunities especially for young individuals in theformation process of the project output and in the subsequent sustainability and renewability part, and will enable youngpeople to develop themselves in the fields of our digital age and take a role in active life. Our age represents the youth zgeneration,which means the digital age and the digital young generation. We now know that almost all works andactivities in the world are carried out in a virtual digital environment with smart phones. Our food, all our needs such asstationery-clothing-hobby, education and training, job applications, vacation appointments, travel tickets, personaldevelopment, intercultural exchange activities, information needs, business plans, business, money transfers and manymore, we are now digitally. we have come to do it with devices. We are in an age where it is very difficult to survive if youdon't have your smartphone and apps. All these concrete developments in our life have brought us the question of whyhealth services should not be made digitally. Although there are small examples in the field of health in the literatureresearches, it has been determined that there is no product or application that has been perfected or embodied in its fullsense. The most similar to our project goal in terms of infrastructure and logic is the Digital Health Platform (DHP)handbook study jointly carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Istanbul Technical University (İTU). Thishandbook is about the management and work flow in healthcare institutions. It is quite different from the purpose of ourproject output (DYL-HP). While DYL-HP (Digital Youth Life Health Platform) is a digital health platform that can provide free live health services and sports lessons to its users in a virtual environment with its specialist doctors and yoga-pilates-fitness and sports trainers, DHP provides administrative services such as how healthcare systems are managed or how the workflow should be. As a result, both platforms are the product of a need. The target audience of the DYL-HP platform is disadvantaged individuals who cannot go to the hospital and have financial difficulties (this number constitutes 76% of the world population) and individuals who avoid going to the hospital due to the Covid-19 pandemic (A., Sabina et al., The 2020 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), University ofOxford, 2020). In particular, these individuals and all other people will be able to receive free healthcare from the DYL-HPplatform, only through smartphones and the Internet, without the need for a comprehensive technology. DYL-HP will be andigital healthcare platform that can provide health services to people who are elderly, connected to home or in quarantine, people in need of careand all other patients within the scope of combating Covid-19 and afterwards. The increase in health expenditures all over the world has made all governments and people search for sustainability.

"The COVID-19 crisis brought organizational and educational challenges for universities throughout Europe. All teaching content had to be converted to digital formats at short notice.Answering the call STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS COVID-19 IN RESPONSE OF THE SITUATION, the Consortium (Bialystok University of Technology (BUT), Leipzig University (ULE), Tampere University of Applied Science (TAMK) and Technical University of Crete (TUC)) conducted in-depth research on the needs of the academic community in connection with the pandemic. The research results are based on over 5,000 student surveys and over 1,000 surveys among lecturers carried out at Partners universities after ""digital"" semester. They show general experience and perception of both groups about conversion.In the overall view of the survey results, digitization was largely successful. Most of the teachers confirmed that they were able to conduct all courses online and most students had to postpone only a few planned courses due to the situation.What do students like in distance learning? In the first place: availability, mobility and possibility to work at home. In the second place - I do not like anything! What do they dislike the most? In the first place - lack of contact and help from the teacher. In subsequent positions - technical challenges, the chaos, lack of coordination, lack of direct contact with the teacher, lack of direct contact with the group.After one semester with distance learning, we can expect that the chaos can be reduced. From the organization point of view, we are better prepared, we have collected some experience etc. Organization aspect is very important. However educational aspects are still in the experimental phase.Nearly half of surveyed ULE students (46%) indicated that they found it difficult to participate in courses. A lack of motivation (61%), lack of social contacts (60%) were cited as the main reasons for this. Many lecturers (72%) also stated that communication with students did not always run smoothly. During online education, it is very difficult to involve students to actively participate in the classes. And the biggest challenge is to build trust with digital educators. Education process, at least at universities, will probably never be the same. Over 70% of BUT students expect that in the near future the mixture of the traditional approach and the form of distance education will be implemented.How to address these challenges just in front of possible next lockdown? These are the things we are aiming for and with the following outputs, we want to achieve these goals.Based on our extensive experience in successfully building trust through the use of coaching in the educational process, we are willing to introduce a coaching method in distance education (e-coaching). This method enables to ""activate"" students (inclusive education) and personalizes the education process (each student receives ""material"" which is required, not a general lecture directed to ""everybody""). Coaching is a method of shaping skills based on the art of asking questions that mobilize the questioned (coachee) to self-analyze, act and seek knowledge.The time of the pandemic in which we find ourselves is the time of limited contact between students and teachers and this time can be used to introduce a coaching methodology that can make our students very ""independent"", increasing their creativity and commitment. But first, Academic teachers need the activation program. Many times services are available but some reason or another there is no knowledge how to obtain, access, use and assess the tools and methods available. It will be executed through improved e-learning platforms of the Project Partners i.e https://sites.tuni.fi/digitaltoolkit/ (TAMK) and http://coursevo.com/ (TUC).We will reach our goals through the following outputs:O1. An innovative didactic methodology for distance education (E-Coach), which will create the basement to build trust between parties of the educational process,O2. Integrated e-learning platform on the application of e-coaching methodology; it includes the activation program for teachers,O3. Pilot examples of e-coaching courses i.e.12 recorded Calculus, Algebra, Programming and Entrepreneurship classes using the innovative e-coaching methodology dedicated to higher education institutions. These outcomes may be relevant also for other fields of education, training and youth.Our direct target groups are academic teachers. The implemented methodology will have also a direct influence on students. It is planned that over 50 teachers and students will be involved in the project during the execution phase. At least 160 people from target groups will take part in the dissemination events.To reach the objectives and deliver the results, the consortium will use PCM (Project Cycle Management) methodology. PCM is recommended by the EC in the planning and implementation of the EU-funded projects."

VIPSKILLS project responds to an increasing need for changes in the higher education system due to developments in the construction sector, availability of ICT technologies, need for higher mobility and employers’ expectations.Preliminary research about the competences of graduates of technical universities showed inability to conduct comprehensive analysis taking into account different aspects: technical, economic ecological, social, climatic and legal to choose the best energy effective solution. Nowadays, creative thinking, language skills and ability to cooperate are indispensable to work in the international labour market. Engineers working in the area of construction and energy systems are expected to be not only designers solving their own tasks but also energy advisors, who share their knowledge with investors to decrease energy consumption.To achieve the aim of the project a cohesive consortium with active involvement of 3 HEIs and one association of engineers was established. All partners understand inevitability of changes in the study programmes and have wide experience in different areas related to the high-efficiency suitable buildings and energy resources. Joint work and participation in 2 short trainings, each for 16-20 teachers from the partnership, enabled the exchange of knowledge about constructions, energy resources and innovative heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. It also contributed to the creation of a long-lasting network of cooperation in the field of teaching and research, judging from results (common papers, projects etc.). We created an innovative learning module including two segments of a face-to-face course (2 weeks in Poland and 2 weeks in Spain) separated by a 2-week-long e-learning part. Our ideas, tools and methods were tested on two groups of 24 students each (8 students from each HEI, from faculties connected with civil, environmental, energy engineering) in summer 2017 and 2018 to verify and evaluate them after each edition of the course. VIPSKILLS project focused on the necessity to exploit benefits of ICTs. We used modern software during classes and a distance learning module. We will developed 6 e-labs (instead of planned 4) that allow to simulate operation of systems depending on external variables. The project supports personalized learning by providing additional e-materials for individual use as well as cooperation in international, multidisciplinary teams on joint projects. All products verified during the courses (syllabus of the course, didactic and e-learning materials, e-labs, e-dictionary, results of analyses conducted within the project in 4 languages) were delivered and they are available for free on the VIPSKILLS web page. We also provided 2 parts of the book in printed version (to be sent free of charge to libraries of 30 HEIs) and as an e-book available on the web pages. The innovative VIPSKILLS module was included in our HEIs programmes and is offered to students from various universities as a facultative subject (6 ECTS). The implementation of this module allows to enhance the attractiveness of technical studies, complement the programme with modern ICT technology achievements and make the teaching content more consistent with the practical aspects to prepare graduates to work in the demanding international labour market. Participants of VIPSKILLS project (students, teachers) improved their language, computer and interpersonal skills, raised their multicultural awareness and specialist knowledge. Employers taking part in joint meetings found HEIs as opened for cooperation with business and industry in many fields (joint case-studies, trainings etc.) We intend to improve VIPSKILLS module every year by new technologies and flexible to information from the labour market to be au courant and prepare students for future tasks. We organized at least 6 multiplied events in 3 partner countries, to promote results of VIPSKILLS project and ERASMUS+ ideas at various levels. We encouraged high school students to apply for technical studies that guarantee good preparation for future work. We will also disseminate the results among students, teachers and scientists – we shared our outputs, facilitated access to materials that could be helpful in different disciplines and courses. The results of the project were presented to the executives of HEIs to inspire them to further improvements in educational process and show possibility to adopt the syllabus of VIPSKILL course to their requirements and capabilities. Moreover, we disseminated the results of our analysis among citizens to improve their technical knowledge about highly-efficient systems and materials in buildings etc. to make them more environmentally conscious, which hopefully could result in larger use of modern innovative solutions, reduction in energy consumption and decrease of greenhouse gasses emission.