Digital Education (DE) has the potential to provide better teaching and learning opportunities, especially in regards to the unpredictable circumstances such as COVID-19 which revealed that many HEIs faced problems of technical, socio-psychological and didactic nature. The project Digital Education for Crisis Situations: Times When There is no Alternative (DECriS) aims to produce 6 IOs, organize 4 MEs, 2 Summer Schools in the form of blended learning as an ‘hybrid’ arena for exchange of experience and knowledge transfer, and to design and produce 2 tutorials which will equip teachers with new skills required in the production, reutilization and use of DE. The project’ target groups are students/teachers at partner HEIs and European HEIs that offer programs in (L)IS, which will be approached widely in regards to the use of OERs and ways for promoting, enriching and improving of DE for crisis situations, and beyond. In order to contribute to the building of inclusive HE systems and promoting internationalisation, DECriS project is focused on innovative digital practices experienced during the academic years 2019-20 and 2020-21 during lockdown and other mitigation periods without complete lockdown but without face-to-face classes. Project will focus in particular on digital competencies, new innovative curricula and educational methods; international cooperation; and cooperation with business sector. DECriS project aims to create a framework for proper adoption of OERs in general, and in crisis situations in particular, making sure they will: improve the quality of the DE and expand the possibilities for collaboration and knowledge sharing, which may decrease the feeling of isolation common in situations like lockdowns; support both teachers and students in their development, especially in terms of adaptive, personalized and smart learning; possibly, lead to cost savings and repurposing finances to other educational activities and resources, which, may further reduce the existing gaps and barriers; be used as adaptive, flexible and smart ‘tools’; improve students’ participation in virtual classrooms, i.e. generate appropriate level of interest and engagement which is also one of the common issues in the context of DE. We are implementing: a design for scale that makes our OERs scalable beyond the project and easily upgradeable and expandable, and a design with the user approach which allows us to create OERs that: truly originate from the needs of the specific HEI and teaching/studying community; empower HEI (as users) and teaching staff and students (as end-users) to become (co)producers of educational materials; a so-called LEGO approach (brick by brick or modular approach) in designing the OERs making them modifiable (e.g. creating derivative OERs) and optimized in regards to the different needs and goals (e.g. they can be remixed and improved, integrated into existing OERs, etc.) and adaptable to different socio-cultural contexts and situations, such as pandemic crisis, as well as certain technological requirements or limitations. The project is organised in 2 phases: In phase 1 we intend to produce 2 IOs: state-of-the-play of the use of OERs at European HEIs and the analysis of the perception of DE by students and teachers of the partner HEIs during COVID-19 lockdown with a list of observed problems, as well as perks and examples of good practice. In phase 2 we plan to produce and justify critical factors for evaluation of existing OERs from the point of view of their use during the COVID-19 crisis and special periods without face-to-face teaching; produce one new OER and enrich existing ones by pointing to useful and relevant parts for information extraction from the multimedia collections added to OERs and for automatic scene segmentation for retrieving meaningful fragments which are shareable and reusable; produce an apprenticeship framework in order to create new models for students’ online apprenticeship. We are framing project outputs based on a platform model which serves in a crisis situation and supports the mash up of different services, models, strategies and educational materials so that they respond to these shifted goals and accommodate new set of educational needs.The whole project is data driven thus facilitating efficient DE management, informed decision making in a crisis situation, and a systematic approach based on scientific investigation of strengths and deficiencies. Consortium: U of Osijek, Croatia; U of Barcelona, Spain; U of Hildesheim, Germany; SULSIT, Bulgaria, and U of Zagreb Computer Centre, Croatia and four associate partners. Being able to do the mapping through international cooperation does not only strengthen partners’ relations, but also positions the project’s efforts and results in the context of COVID-19 crisis which threatens our lives, interactive and multi-layered networked culture and economy that itself implies more connectedness and resourcefulness.

The EOSC Data Commons project’s mission is to contribute to tThe EOSC Data Commons project’s mission is to contribute to the establishment of EOSC as the European Research Commons, a global trusted ecosystem that provides seamless access to high-quality interoperable research outputs and services that enable European researchers to collaborate more easily, be more productive and achieve higher levels of excellence. The project achieves this with innovative EOSC Exchange services for improving and accelerating data lifecycle management supporting discovery, analysis, deposition, preservation, sharing, use and reuse of research data in a European data and compute continuum that builds on the capabilities of the EOSC EU Node, national and European infrastructures for data-intensive research and a community of federated repositories from national, institutional and thematic initiatives. The project will deliver: (1) a AI-based Analytics-Oriented Metadata Warehouse and Discovery Service; (2) a federation of data repositories from different providers enriched by scientific applications and data analytics tools; (3) a Catalogue of data analytics tools (4) an Execution Service for tool deployment and execution; (5) metadata specifications for the reproducible and interoperable execution of analytic tools; (6) a FAIRness assessment and reproducibility toolset and related policies. Innovation is led by multidisciplinary and thematic use cases from Social Sciences and Humanities, Physics, Life Sciences, Biology, Heath and Medicine, and Environmental Science. The project’s pan-European consortium involves open source technology providers, major national and thematic data repositories, and user communities contributing to co-design, testing and validation with their use cases. By working with 12 national and institutional data repositories, the project has the ambition of delivering new solutions that will support the integration of Nodes in the future EOSC Federation.

"ReOPEN project addressed the problem of recognition of non-formal learning results in formal education and by employer organizations in the new context - online open learning (OOL). Education institutions and employers are often reluctant to recognise OOL and question its validation, credentialization and proctoring. ReOPEN project directly addressed the recommendations published in the study of the European Commission ""Validation of Non-formal MOOC-based Learning"" (2016) (http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC96968/lfna27660enn.pdf), by the project aim - to create instruments to develop validated OOL for recognition of prior and non-formal learning. ReOPEN project achieved the following objectives: 1. Designed the platform for non-formal OOL curriculum development with learning validation and recognition instruments in place. 2. Trained teachers and trainers (T&T) at C-VET organizations, companies, higher education (HE) institutions and adult learning organizations to design validated non-formal OOL curriculum, to apply digital badges as a new form of digital credentialisation and tracking one’s learning path in non-formal OOL and to recognize non-formal OOL results in formal curricular. 3. Designed 5 non-formal OOL courses for continuous professional staff developing (CPD) applying learning recognition instruments for validated non-formal OOL. 4. Established partnership for future collaboration for non-formal OOL recognition. The project target groups involved C-VET, LLL, HE institutions and companies, establishing their collaboration to enhance access to OOL and qualifications for all through C-VET. The project results reached 123574 people (instead of 3820 planned) through multiplier events (ME), dissemination and thematic events, including 213 participants (instead of 59 planned) (see Annex 4) with fewer opportunities facing economic, social and disability obstacles. They benefited from awareness of what non-formal OOL is, on new learning and teaching possibilities and innovative solutions for teaching and learning. 6 Intellectual outputs (IO) were developed for them: IO1. ICT platform. IO2. Training material (TM) on non-formal OOL curriculum designing.IO3. TM on application of digital badges. IO4. TM on recognition of non-formal OOL results in formal curricular. IO5. 5 non-formal OOL CPD courses.IO6. Case - scenario collection on recognition of validated non-formal OOL course. Continuous feedback was requested from HE, VET, adult learning and school representatives, which proved high interest from project target groups for ReOPEN platform solutions at user institutions, and rated IO with strong positive statements. More than 120 organizations were involved in ME and dissemination events. 6 agreements have been signed with the third - party organizations for product exploitation (see Annex 6). ReOPEN results will have long-term impact to these organizations, as responses from events’ participants proved that organizations need to prepare and create non-formal OOL possibilities and that TM, ICT platform and methodological and technological help is most useful to them. Project partnership consisted of 3 HE institutions (VMU, ESCP Europe and SRCE), 2 companies (ONECO and Q21) providing training services for adults, VET and company employees, as well as 1 European association (EDEN). Consortium directly benefited from the results in adapting ICT portal for their use, using TM for their training programs for all project target groups in their countries, creating open non-formal OOL courses, application of digital badges in their institutional online platforms, tracking learning paths of their learners. ReOPEN project results already increased the sense of initiative, entrepreneurship, and professional collaboration among partner organizations and their collaboration channels with networks of education providers and employers by involvement of all stakeholders (teachers, administration, employer organizations and HE institutions) to work on CPD courses (IO5). The project increased the level of digital and other competences of T&T and better understanding of practices, policies and systems in education and training. ReOPEN contributed to better understanding and recognition of skills and qualifications in European and beyond, as well as interconnections between formal, formal education, vocational training and other forms of learning and labor market respectively by establishing three – party engagement case scenarios (IO6) on recognition of learning results and credits in formal curriculum (IO5), linking non-formal and formal curricular and employer needs. ReOPEN improves the use of EU reference tools for recognition, validation and transparency of competences and qualifications through description of parts of competences, qualifications and curricular, supporting teaching and learning progress and assessment in the new form of digital OOL."

EOSC Beyond overall objective is to advance Open Science and innovation in research in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by providing new EOSC Core capabilities allowing scientific applications to find, compose and access multiple Open Science resources and offer them as integrated capabilities to researchers. To do so, EOSC Beyond supports a new concept of EOSC: a federated and integrated network of Nodes operated at different levels, national, regional, international and thematic, to serve the specific scientific missions of their stakeholders. Further specific objectives of the project are to accelerate ‘time to product’ of new scientific applications with software adapters, enable Open Science with machine composability and dynamic deployment of shared resources, support innovation in EOSC with a testing and integration environment, and align the EOSC Core architecture and specifications to integrate with European dataspaces. The project extends the state of the art of the EOSC Core and adopts a co-design methodology, including requirements elicitation, software development and validation in collaboration with different use cases from EOSC national and regional initiatives (e-Infra CZ, Czechia, NFDI, Germany, and NI4OS, South East Europe region), thematic research infrastructures from Social Sciences and Humanities (CESSDA), Life Sciences (CNB-CSIC and Instruct-ERIC), Environmental Science (ENES and LifeWatch), and Health and Food (METROFood-RI). EOSC Beyond builds on the capacities of prospective EOSC Nodes and partners with multi-annual experience in developing solutions for large-scale federated digital infrastructures and aligns with the technical architecture and requirements of data spaces from different business sectors. Ultimately, EOSC Beyond supports Open Science in modern, data-intensive, and multidisciplinary research, facilitating resource discovery, access, and reuse across scientific communities, organisations, and countries.