The FernUniversität in Hagen, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNl) are three leading European distance learning universities firmly devoted to further the principle of equal opportunity by safeguarding equal access to top quality higher education to everyone, using a methodology based on the principles of modern distance learning focused on the needs of the student. In 2014, after eight years of successful cooperation in the organization of international common teaching activities on the bachelor level, these universities established a Strategic Partnership to further cultural exchange and best practices in the internationalisation of high quality education in law for all three Bologna cycles. Developed within this framework, the EDELNet (European Distance Education in Law Network) project is the first building block in the implementation of an ambitious scientific and pedagogic concept of Blended Active Learning and student oriented teaching facilitating a personal learning path with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and intercultural communication skills as a basis for a better understanding of each other’s legal cultures and practices throughout Europe and beyond.The goals of this project address the current need in the European society for widening the access to top quality higher education through international academic cooperation, as identified in the 2011 EU Modenisation Agenda (COM (2011) 567 final). For this purpose, EDELNet is geared toward the modernization of teaching methods in law with an innovative combination of student-centered blended learning tools and activities. This innovative combination also draws on intercultural communication and interdisciplinary processes for the production, learning and application of relevant inter-subjective knowledge in addition to the traditional contents of legal education. This will be implemented through an international and cross-cultural cooperation that is devised to broaden access to and participation in international and European education, especially for disadvantaged groups such as students with disabilities, economic, social or geographical obstacles, health problems or cultural differences.In order to achieve these goals the EDELNet project aims to develop and implement virtual and face-to-face teaching and training activities and courseware in key methodological and substantive areas of the law, including language competences, intercultural communication skills and interdisciplinary methods of knowledge production applied to legal practice and scholarship.The EDELNet project is based on the full commitment and support of the key academic and administrative units of the three partner universities, especially those working in the fields of quality management, IT and media, dissemination and knowledge transfer, and the central management units (Deans’ and Rectors’ offices).On completion of the project more than 200 persons have participated in our learning activities. 153 students participated in our LLB, LLM and PhD intensive study programs and more than 180 in the different virtual mobility courses hosted in the EDELNet Vortal. Also more than 50 teachers and managerial staff have partaken in our staff trainings. Moreover, the produced courseware, the results of the learning activities, and the institutional know-how acquired is available as open source on the EDELNet Vertical Portal. The availability as open source of these project results is coupled with active dissemination activities, like the organisation and participation in international and national workshops, newsletters and the active engagement in cooperative dialogues with a wide range of relevant stakeholders. In the timespan of the project (2015-2018) our students and staff had a high quality international experience that has enriched their learning and professional paths; overcame language inhibitions by taking English as a common language; and cultivated their intercultural competences while operating in a cross-cultural environment. The project did also grant students easy access to an international network of professionals of the law, including both academic and practitioners. All this has decisively improved our students’ chances to get access to the international and European labour market and has brought forward our plans to merger different European teaching cultures, traditions and didactic formats to improve teaching practice in the entire European community of law teaching. In the long run, we expect students from associated universities and other potential public and private institutions from all over Europe and beyond to participate in our program and benefit from the EDELNet project results. Through affordable, relevant, high quality and internationalized higher blended-learning education in the field of law, we expect our project to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive growth in the European Union.

<< Background >>Covid-19 epidemic has created new challenges for the development of Smart and Sustainable Cities. It has been proven that it is not sufficient anymore just to focus on providing services for quality of life, or for a better business ecosystem, but we need to prepare cities, so that they are able to manage, adapt, maintain and ensure city services and enhance the quality of life in the event of hazards, shocks, and stresses. Following this concept analysis, resilience does not include only earthquakes, fires, floods, etc. but also whatever disrupts significantly the operation of a city either occasionally or periodically as well. Examples include high unemployment; endemic violence; health epidemics and chronic food and water shortages. Even though some standards and projects exist in this area, we have not yet reached a consensus on a common city resilience model that will able to describe what exactly constitutes resilience and how a city becomes resilient. Furthermore, up to now, little emphasis has been given to the way municipalities are organized for addressing hazards; and even less on training the personnel on the new skills required. Currently, these new required job competences do not exist, they are overlooked, or they are partially described. Rockefeller Foundation, in 2013 founded the “100 Resilient Cities (100RC)” project, having as key objective to help cities face three major threats and challenges: urbanization, globalization, and climate change. In parallel, other projects e.g. “Smart DevOps competencies for smart cities” (devops.uth.gr) are attempting to define the required skills and job profiles needed for Smart and Sustainable Cities professionals. According to our point of view, a new job profile named “Smart CIty Resilience Officer - SCRO” needs to be defined, which will sufficiently describe the required competences for facing these needs in the context of smart cities. This is because cities are becoming smarter and smarter and while this transformation creates more threats for cities’ resilience (e.g. cyberattacks), it also puts more arrows in the quiver of future cities on the road to achieve satisfactory levels of resilience (e.g. GIS monitoring). Apparently, we need to address the competences gap between current and desirable future competences of the municipalities workforce by emphasizing on these emerging needs. Exactly on this subject area, this technical report presents the results of a survey that attempts to define the required skills for the “Smart and Resilience City Officer”.At the same time, Europe 2020 strategy set the use of innovative, digital, and flexible learning as the means to increase employability, boost growth and enhance innovation and competitiveness across the EU. Europe 2020 strategy identifies the need to address the lack of sufficient digital transformation skills and competences in general, but as well to target the shortage in skills needed for making cities resilient, while at the same time developing innovative learning and teaching practices, for boosting the end result.The proposed project is targeting to fulfill the above-described societal and cities' needs that are considered both significant and necessary especially after the current COVID-19 crisis, which proved that European societies were not sufficiently prepared. Furthermore, this need is evident as it is suggested by recent reports, studies and surveys.<< Objectives >>CRISIS project relates to the Horizontal priority “Addressing digital transformation through development, resilience, and capacity” as it targets a shortage in digital and transferrable skills identified in resilience officers of smart cities municipalities. It will develop a new job profile for Smart City Resilient Officers (SCROs) and it will design, develop and deliver a pilot training program to certify the first cohort of SCROs. It proposes a holistic approach for the professional development of trainees envisioning to enrich their fan of competences and increase their employability on the basis of actual competence gaps and. It addresses the situation driven by the COVID-19 crisis, which has heavily impacted education by accelerating the need for individual flexibility and the ever-increasing demand for digital skills.Secondly, CRISIS project relates to sectoral priority “Stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices”, and it will design and implement a learner-centered curriculum, an objective that will be better achieved through flexible learning journeys enabled by the curriculum’s modular structure. Following, market needs analysis done as a preparation activity for this project, the selected competences of the SCRO job profile will be analyzed on a Learning Outcomes (LO) basis translating needs into assessable outcomes for learners. The LO-based approach will facilitate the shift from the conventional teacher-centered learning model to the learner-centered approach and ensure compliance with the labor market’s commands reducing skill mismatches. Moreover, to support learners in efficiently achieving the identified learning outcomes, CRISIS will rely on a Learning Journey Design (LJD) tool that will be developed to determine the appropriate educational strategy for each learner (why, what, and how to learn). Therefore, CRISIS will focus on implementing trans-disciplinary approaches and novel pedagogical models including contemporary approaches such as concept mapping, problem-solving, group-based, project-based, peer, and participatory learning in order to engage, inspire, motivate, and stimulate learners throughout the learning process.Upon its completion, the project will help to accelerate the HEIs transformation throughout Europe, in order to train the future generations in co-creating knowledge for a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable society and cities. This project will have a positive impact on the individuals in developing key competences, the municipalities that hire or will hire them, and finally on a much larger scale in European cities that want to develop resilience capacity.Overall the objectives of CRISIS project are concrete, important, and numerous:a) Provide in a structured and systematic way a framework for educating smart cities staff on resilience, a need that recently was proven of paramount importance, b) Develop an innovative curriculum for SCROs (currently there is non available),c) Provide innovative learning tools,d) Close the competence and skills gap for municipalities officials,e) Promote the European Collaboration on smart cities’ education,f) Increase the awareness of the Member States, Local Authorities, Municipalities and of various stakeholders that resilience of smart cities is a complex and difficult to acquire competences,g) Build-up on important work delivered from other ERASMUS+ projects, such as SmartDevOps project.<< Implementation >>CRISIS project mainly focuses on improving digital, transferrable, resilience, and smart city-related competences of people interested in seeking job opportunities and careers as Smart City Resilience Officers (SCROs). The need for such trained personnel will grow rapidly in the next few years as more and more cities are becoming digitalized and interconnected. At the same time, growing urbanization, globalization, and climate change constitute three major threats that demand effective resilience strategies and mechanisms. The project activities are to:a) Develop a self-assessment tool to identify learning gaps in SCRO competences and determine individual learning experiences and traits. b) Implement a tool to design learning journeys tailored to the city-specific needs and the individual competence level.c) Realize a modular SCRO curriculum that will facilitate flexible learning paths.The CRISIS curriculum will reflect the vision and intentions of this project. In order to meet this objective, the curriculum for the new job profile will be developed aiming at people interested in seeking job opportunities and careers as SCROs. An overview of what the curriculum document will contain is the following: Curriculum information, Learning Outcomes, Competences Outline, and Content Design, Competences Dependencies and Schedule, Competences Assessment policy, Curriculum policies, Learning journeys, etc.d) Produce digital OERs for the SCRO competences:In order to implement and deliver the curriculum designed, the CRISIS Training Kit (TK) needs to be developed which will include all appropriate objects required for the delivery of the course. The TK will address modules that support skills in the following main areas:1) transversal skills (e.g., crisis management, decision making and problem-solving, e.t.c.), 2) smart city planning and organizational skills (e.g., smart city stakeholder management and citizen engagement, smart city standards for resilience, e.t.c.), 3) resilient management skills (e.g., risk assessment and quantification, evaluating smart city assets e.t.c) including risk response planning and effective disaster response (e.g., smart city response planning, coordination of critical systems, e.t.c.)., and 4) business and financial management skills (e.g., planning financial recovery programs).The training modules supported by digital OERs will lead to the development of at least 20 core competences from the aforementioned areas that the CRISIS project will deliver.e) Create different teaching and learning activities to address a range of learning needs and stylesf) Develop an integrated online platform with adaptivity mechanisms to tailor the teaching and learning process to individual learning goals and strategies. The platform most probably will be based on moodle LMS with custom tools and mechanisms to reflect the needs of the individual learning journeys.g) Pilot the SCRO curriculum in 4 project countries with participants from smart cities and from the project associate partners and produce the first cohort of certified SCROs. One main objective is to certify the first cohort of SCRO in four partner countries. This action will increase the awareness that resilience competences are needed if we have to achieve resilience for our cities.h) Evaluate and update CRISIS tools, methodologies, platform, curriculum, learning material, and pilot course to identify inadequacies and best practices- Promote, disseminate and exploit the results at national and European levels.<< Results >>The tangible results of the CRISIS project are:•Reports: report on required SCROs’ competences based on the needs analysis conducted during the preparation of the project proposal (PR2). The project will also produce reports for the curriculum design (PR2), the instructional planning and development methodology (PR3), the evaluation results of the pilot phase (PR4), as well as dissemination and exploitation plans including roadmaps (PR5).•Methodologies: A novel pedagogical approach will be explored determining impactful teaching and learning activities (PR1), while an instructional design methodology for producing learning-outcome based training content that will synthesize a modular high-quality curriculum will be used (PR3).•Curriculum: A competence-based curriculum for SCROs will be developed following the needs analysis (PR2). For each competence, learning outcomes (knowledge and skills) will be defined. This approach enables the dynamic composition of the SCRO curriculum to provide a high degree of flexibility and address diverse professional needs and market requirements.•Digital content: Digital OERs that support the acquisition of approximately 20 competencies (PR3), such as digital, resilience, management, and smart city competences. ESCO, eCF, and other standards will be considered as a source of competences.•Online platform and courses: An online learning platform to mediate the learning process providing flexibility in learning paths and adaptability to different educational strategies will be realized. A course for acquiring the SCRO competences will be piloted to all partner countries (PR4), with the ability to be re-offered after project completion.•Tools: A self-assessment tool to identify SCRO competence gaps and learner profiles and a learning journey design tool to determine the educational goals and strategy for each learner defining what to learn, why and how to do it will be designed and developed (PR1).•Dissemination materials in English, Greek, Portuguese and German languages, the project website, and scientific publications (PR5).•Awareness-raising, promotion, and exploitation events in all participating countries (PR5).The intangible outcomes expected are:A) For the participating organizations (HEIs)•Sharing of knowledge, experiences, and ideas that will add value both to the project products and to the improvement of processes at the partners’ organizations•Creation of links and associations with an extended network of smart cities to gain a wider understanding of their actual needs in expertise and training programs and establish cooperations for running training programs•Improvement in the quality of teaching in a digital era through the design of new learning approaches, practices and solutions •Utilization of the new training content, material and platform for the improvement of online training delivery practicesB) For learners•Broadening of employment and career prospects as SCROs, an emerging job profile that will be part of future cities•Gaining an international perspective of the sector and exchanging experiences with peers•Increased engagement levels through adaptive educational environments that encompass contemporary teaching and learning processes•Keeping up with new and ongoing developments and improving conditions for innovation, growth and creativityC) For other stakeholders (Smart city authorities etc.)•European authorities will gain important information for ESCO, eCF, EQF in a dynamically evolving sector, while national authorities will also gain input for the (re)formulation of policies and practices at a national level•Policymakers, employment, and certification organizations will become timely aware of emerging job role profiles•Smart city authorities will have the opportunity to upskill their personnel, improve their impact at local and national levels and establish international partnerships.

<< Objectives >>Up to now, little emphasis has been given to the way EU smart cities are organized to decide upon their Open Data and their potentials for economic growth, as identified by the SmartDevOps project (601015-EPP-1-2018-1-EL-EPPKA2-SSA) https://smartdevops.As a continuation, this project aims to: a) Develop an occupational profile focusing on smart cities' open data at the European level, andb) Develop a systematic curriculum covering all different aspects of an Open Data City Officer - OpenDCO.<< Implementation >>a) Develop a self-assessment tool to identify learning gaps in OpenDCO competences. b) Implement a tool to design tailored learning journeys. c) Develop a modular OpenDCO curriculum.d) Produce 20 digital OERs for the OpenDCOs’ competences.e) Create different teaching and learning activities to address a range of learning needs and styles. f) Develop a Moodle LMS.g) Pilot the OpenDCO in 4 project countries.h) Evaluate and update OpenDCOs deliverablesi) Dissemination and exploitation<< Results >>• Reports on: the curriculum design; the instructional planning and development methodology; the evaluation results; dissemination and exploitation plans.• Methodologies on: impactful teaching and learning activities tailored to each Opendco; synthesizing a modular high-quality curriculum.• Curriculum: for OpenDCOs.• Digital content: Digital OERs for ~20 competencies.• Online platform and 20+ courses.• Tools (see a & b above).• Dissemination material.• Events.• Knowledge sharing.

The rapid growth of communications technologies, the lowering costs of travel, increasing multilingualism and open borders have enabled greater transnational collaboration. Nobody has supported collaboration more than the European Union through projects and mobility grants. Yet as the scale of the climate crisis becomes evident and EU and national governments adopt more ambitious environmental goals towards a climate neutral EU by 2050, we can no longer ignore the environmental impact of our European project work. Moreover, the recent epidemic of Covid-19 has cancelled hundreds of events and shows that we need to find alternatives for face-to-face meetings. Hence, the objective of the ONE project is to strengthen the ability to engage in productive virtual collaboration within strategic and structured international projects, so as to reduce the travel and related environmental impact, specifically: a) reach 600 European Project Managers and Staff and encourage them to engage in more productive virtual transnational collaboration, through improving their environmental and digital/managerial competences, b) equip 50 HE leaders and project managers with knowledge and motivation to change project policies and significantly reduce travel, c) provide 24 stakeholders proof of concept and scalable approach through our own piloting of this approach: we will show that Erasmus Strategic Alliances can be run with only ONE Transnational Partner Meeting per project by achieving it ourselves and sharing the lessons.Following rigorous review and testing three outputs are produced: IO1 “The Business Case for ONE-meeting projects” – A high profile report with supporting materials that raise awareness about the importance of introducing more virtual/remote meetings, IO2 “ONE Virtual Collaboration Toolkit” – A toolkit with practical guidance on how to integrate meeting, project planning, creativity and collaboration software and tools, IO3 “All-you-need-to-know Guide to Running ONE-meeting projects” – A practical guide presenting a step-by-step strategy for converting projects into “ONE meeting only” format. Outputs are used with the target groups via piloting activities, multiplier activities and dissemination: 600 European Projects Managers & Staff receive the results and are invited to use them, 50 HEIs commit to introducing ONE meeting projects format as their preferred EU project deliver mechanism, 24 Stakeholder organisations commit to support and incentivise organisations who prioritise climate goals in their project delivery. ONE involves direct participation via 1) consultation for IO2 & IO3 by at least 36 representatives from organisations who participate in EU Programmes – especially Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships and Knowledge Alliances, 2) user testing, which involves 24 EU project stakeholders in the research phase and 12 stakeholders in the peer review of IO1 and 24 organisations (HEI, VET Colleges, NGOs) for testing IO2 and IO3, 3) multiplier events with at least 260 representatives of HEIs, VET Colleges, Education Stakeholders, Funders, public authorities and other stakeholders in the six partner countries. On completion, the project will have made it possible for European Project Managers and HE staff to access effective, practical resources on digital communication/collaboration/creativity and project management competences which they can directly apply to their (future) international projects. The long-term result will be improved knowledge of the environmental issues relating to transnational travel; Improved knowledge regarding the advances in digital technology that make substituting face-to-face meetings with virtual communication and collaboration equally productive and more efficient. The project will also generate useful results for partner organisations to develop the digital skills of their own staff in for academic (teaching and research) purposes. As impact, European Project Managers will be able to significantly reduce travel to Project meetings with a corresponding reduction in environmental impact. HE leadership will benefit from practical, easy-to-implement solutions enabling them to emerge as forward thinking, digitally proficient organisations showing climate leadership. HE & EU stakeholders will have their “Proof of Concept” showing that policy change is possible, aided by practical guidance they can share with their grantees/members. The impact at local and regional level is through the ability of Project managers and Staff to engage with the outputs of the project. It also provides a reliable means of advancing systemic changes in approaches to how transnational projects are conceived, planned and delivered at national and international level given the high relevance both of the climate crisis but also of digital skills to the demands of our contemporary European economy, and the involvement of key stakeholders in education in the project.

Context :Open Badges are digital badges designed in a format that make them shareable on different platforms in dedicated spaces (“backpacks”). Open Badge allow individuals to demonstrate the various skills and experience they have acquired. In the context of Open Science, sharing data generated or used by research teams represents a new area that implies new skills. Various training programs actions have been implemented and it becomes now necessary to identify, evidentiate and accredit those new skills towards stakeholders of scientific research, public or private. General objective :Creating a practical guide that will include the technical specificities and issues of OB, roles and skills related to RDM and principles for the application of OB to RDM.Creating a collaborative network, a small ecosystem of Open Badges (OB) in Open Science at European level to acknowledge acquired competences in sharing and managing research data in the framework of the Open Science. The ecosystem will be supported by the network of partners consortium that will issue badges.Unlike a certificate, an Open Badge does not rely on an existing framework but evidentiate skills implied for the achievement of a specific activity. Thus, it is desirable to attribute the Open Badge as close as possible to the targeted activity in order to implement an ecosystem where different roles are identified :Animation of the ecosystem: The ecosystem is animated (awareness, training, intermediation…) by a facilitators within the network of partners; Attribution / Validation: badges are delivered by stakeholders in the management and sharing of Research Data (data repositories, scientific organizations, training organizations, companies Research and Development departments, scientific journals, trainers …), to actors of this process (researchers, research support staff but also advanced students, especially PhD students); among the stakeholders a special part is played by the teachers/trainers in Research Data Management;Designing: badges are designed in collaboration between the facilitators and the stakeholders who deliver the badges;Manufacturing and distribution: the manufacturing and management of badges (“backpacks”) are externalized.Displaying: the badges will be proposed through the partners and participant stakeholders platfoms (website and LMS) and of course, once attributed, will be at the disposal of the badgees for display.Method:After an initial review of the processes of RDM and of the stakeholders of these processes and a first draft of the competences implied, the first phase of the project will concentrate on the training of the facilitators.This training will be achieved through online courses, individual trainings within the partners organisations and working groups. The trainings will focus on the Open Badges stakes and methodology and an initiation on RDM. A guide of the ecosystem will complete those trainings.In a second phase the badges will be build through collaboration between facilitators and stake holders. Practicaly two kinds of badges will be made: the badges linked to training / teaching actions and badges linked to RDM processes, in a more exploratory way. Once made, the badges will be implemented on the partners platforms.Outputs :At the end of the project, a set of Open Badges for RDM competences will be at the disposal of the science communities.An expertise on OB will be implemented in the partners organisations lacking it.A practical guide will be available for all persons interested in open badges and their implementation.The training materials realized for the facilitators will be open to other audiences interested by the OB methodology.The building of the badges with the stakeholders will be the occasion of a better and more precise analysis of the competences mobilized in RDM processes, and the initial framework will be amended and completed for publication and contribution to ESCO.