Since 2006, members of EURAXESS Bulgaria have organized 13 European Researchers Nights (ERN), and have attracted several new consortium members with different profiles - universities, research institutes, NGOs, entrepreneurs. Based on past experience, the main goal of Researchers in the Knowledge Triangle (K-TRIO 5) project is to bring researchers closer to society, attract young people to STEM and boost Citizens Science. The project will contribute for increasing the number of researchers in Bulgaria by making the society, and young people, aware of excellent European achievements in research and innovation (R&I), and of the Centers of Excellence (CoE) and Centers of Competence and their contribution to green, smart and sustainable regional development. In 2020 the consortium made several steps for changing stereotypes and nurturing a new culture in R&I, and making young people aware of the multiple career paths of researchers (incl. MSC fellows), best-practice examples of researchers achievements, and research infrastructure in Bulgaria. Special emphasis will be made on European policy and on funding for R&I provided by EU RTD programs and Structural Funds. With a large variety of pre-events, online activities and 2-days ERN events in many Bulgarian cities, the project will create greater understanding on how R&I contribute to well-being of people and sustainable development, and highlight the common European efforts for Green and Digital transformation, building Smart Cities, and taking full advantage of BIG Data, Artificial Intelligence and Cloud computing. With the involvement of all CoE UNITe partners, and their large network, in addition to EURAXESS Bulgaria, K-TRIO 5 will cover all Bulgarian regions. Forum Science will guide a professional science communication, and ensure greater visibility of project activities.

<< Background >>The Digital Education Action Plan is also a horizontal priority in the new 2021-2027 budget of the EU. The EU also announced a Transformation Agenda for higher education for the end of 2021, in which DELT is likely to feature prominently. Meanwhile, under the Bologna Process, a new working phase is about to start, which would have to consider the growing role of digital development with regard to several of its working areas. In addition, EUA is taking forward its vision for Universities 2030, with a publication being launched in February 2021. The report focusses on Digitally enhanced learning and teaching(DELT) at European higher education institutions. The DIGI-HE project of the European University Association explores different ways in which higher education institutions can increase their strategic approach to digitally enhanced learning and teaching and increase their capacity. The aim is to encourage and support a reflection on corporate strategy development and improvement and contribute to community building through sharing of good practice and peer learning among university leadership. The coincidence of the Covid-19 crisis has made these activities even more relevant and urgent.During the Covid-19 Pandemic period in 2020, all courses were held remotely in digital environments. This period once again proved that most students in education do not have the ability to access and to compile accurate information sources and that they lack digital information literacy.Education, as in every field, is rapidly becoming digital with each passing day. Students can not access correct and necessary information and can not use the existing possibilities of digital information literacy in their homework and thesis. Most of these students are not aware that they have all the information resources on their mobile phones in their hands. Therefore, most of the students to starting or graduating from university, graduate without learning how to use the internet and information literacy. Students who start using smartphones even in primary schools should be taught the digital information literacy lastly in university. We have to teach learning to students who have digital opportunities by gaining them the talents to use the right resources and the ability to compile and to present information.This project will naturally contribute more to complement the “lifelong learning” aspects of EU Erasmus support, which has already been invested millions of Euros. The epidemic, which we still suffered in 2019 and 2020, proved to us that students who do not know how to use the digital world correctly in distance education receive worse education than face-to-face education. Another goal of this project is to compensate for this loss.For higher education, students need to be able to choose the right information among all kinds of information on the internet, especially access the scientific resources of educational units, and gain the ability to select, use and compile information. Today, it will not be possible for any student who does not know how to use digital resources on the internet correctly to be successful in higher education and in business life.in this project, the key to student success in higher education and post-business life is digital literacy. In university education, it is a necessity to teach digital literacy in the first year and first semester of all faculties and all departments.In the project, it was aimed to develop the international digital education curriculum, digital education modules and distance education portal, and to popularize the digital literacy course as a compulsory course or elective course in higher education. In the second year of the project, the project will be implemented as an elective course in some of the partner universities as a sample application, and it will be made widespread.<< Objectives >>Information literacy, shortly, is the ability to feel the need for information, to define that information, to reach that information and to evaluate, organize and use that information . In today's world, there are all kinds of resources and information in the internet environment and it is obligatory to have the skills of: • Knowing the types of sources, • Evaluating the means of access to information, •Analyzing the need for information, and • Reorganizing the information. Being information literate in the digital world forms the basis of the lifelong learning process. The university youth, who lack information literacy and who use the digital world only for chatting, social communication and listening to music, proved once again that they lack digital information literacy with their performances in homework preparation and exams during the pandemic process in 2019-2021. In recent years, it has been observed that students have not been able to adequately use the digital resources, which universities have subscribed to by spending thousands of euros. In addition, they lack knowledge about the possibility of free access to information, programs and resources known to be accurate. The pandemic process experienced all over the world has once again demonstrated the importance of digital literacy in order to be successful in higher education as well.In this project, it is to create a basic curriculum, digital education portals and materials to teach digital literacy to first-year students in all faculties, colleges and departments in higher education. It is aimed that each department will be able to name this course as DIGI-KEY + DEPARTMENT, use all departments, project infrastructure and outputs of this course and can be developed according to its own department content.Total four Production of Project Results(PPR) will be created in this project. PPR1: AN OPEN ONLINE EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR DIGI- KEY in Higher Education, PPR2: Creating education modules and course CURRICULA of digital literacy in order to Higher Education PPR3; Mobill DIGI- KEY APPLICATION for mobile phones, PPR4: a DIGITAL AND PRINTED DIGI-KEY BOOK for Higher Education.*This project objectives to prepare a course curriculum to implement in all faculties and departments for dijital information literacy courses under the cooperation and the experiences of universities in partner countries. The principal goal is to design an innovative, guiding and competitive curriculum corresponding to present day digital information literacy and to design an e-learning course for university students. The project targets to provide for partners the knowledge, the experience and the applications of the partners related with digital information literacy and this will contribute to the determination of the frames of the curriculum for university students. In summary, in this project, the key to student success in higher education and post-business life is digital literacy. In university education, it is a necessity to teach digital literacy in the first year and first semester of all faculties and all departments.In the project, it was aimed to develop the international digital education curriculum, digital education modules and distance education portal, and to popularize the digital literacy course as a compulsory course or elective course in higher education. In the second year of the project, the project will be implemented as an elective course in some of the partner universities as a sample application, and it will be made widespread.<< Implementation >>*It is aimed to create digital and printed training materials and digital training portals as project outputs=PPR;.1-PPR1: Project Website “AN OPEN ONLINE EDUCATION SYSTEM-DIGI-KEY to create a digital World”. This open / online / digital education - Massive Open On-line Course (MOOC) website will be open to all schools that will teach digital information literacy in internet use course in their schools. All digital education and training materials of the project will be uploaded and upgradeable.2-PPR2: Course / curriculum – Design and development –DIGI-KEY: Creating education modules and course curricula in order to teach students' information literacy in digital environment.3- PPR3: Mobile APPLICATION for mobile phones: DIGI-KEY- APPLICATION will be free to be downloaded on the mobile phones of students and of the other target groups so that they can reach all kinds of teaching and training programs through the web portals and follow the distant education programs for students and for other interested persons.4- PPR4: A general DIGI-KEY-BOOK for distance education will be prepared in print and digitally and this book will contain all the outputs that will be produced during the project lifetime. *Promotional posters, brochures (1000 copies), catalogs and handbooks of the project and its outputs will be prepared and distributed to participants in promotion, dissemination and press broadcasting events.*All outputs will be prepared in English, Bulgarian, Turkish, Italian and French. Thus, the use of the project results in Europe and in the world will be open. Every institution and teacher that is a member of the system will be able to benefit from the project outputs.*Partners will organize training and informative meetings for project promotion. Pilot practices and dissemination activities will be carried out in schools during the project process.*Four transnational meetings are planned for the duration of the project. *Workshops planned within the scope of events will be organized by each partner. Each partner will hold at least one events meeting.*At the beginning and at the end of the project, surveys for need analyses and for project results will be conducted with 100 students and 50 teachers for each partner, 600 students and 300 teachers in total. Since these surveys will be conducted in both periods, totally 1800 people will have been participated in survey events until the end of the project.- The trainings to be carried out in pilot faculty and department will be updated in line with the suggestions of educators and students, and the deficiencies observed in the web portals used will be offered to the service of education.- The deficiencies in the DIGI-KEY training book will be corrected with the contributions of partner countries and partners and will be published after finalization. The aim is to serve education not only at the provincial level but also at the national and international level with project outputs.- Each partner will carry out project dissemination activities in their own country through the use of project meetings, events, digital and printed news sources and social media, and via the e-mail and web pages of the universities.Each partner will use the press, publications and especially the internet social networks on the importance of the issue for in faculties and different departments students in order to promote the project and will make it popular through direct information meetings.At the end of the second year of the project, Trakia University(BG) will ensure that the project digital education portal and digital education materials are applied as an elective course at its own university, and will carry out the necessary studies to implement the same application in other universities. After the course applications, portals will be updated according to the technological developments of the day.<< Results >>• The target groups of the project are university students, academicians and the other related staff and owing to the DIGI-KEY platform developed for general use the practical course program will not only be used by the participating universities. We hope that not only Bulgarian universities but also universities of all European countries will be able to use the project outputs.Educators and students who use the course curriculum and educational materials of the DIGİ-KEY Project will increase their success in preparation for other courses, homework preparation, seminars and exams. The content of the course can be updated by the lecturer who teaches the course, and open-ended sources will be especially useful according to the departments.students and even teachers can use according to the courses will be offered in the digital environment and guiding information for these software links to be used by students in their assignments, seminars and exams in different course branches will be given.•The partners will go on offering developed courses for multipliers and for the project's target groups. The other activities to provide the sustainability of the project outcomes and results can be stated as follows:• All outcomes and products of the project will remain available online after the end of the project's eligibility period.• The partners will also continue to use the project outcomes by means of various dissemination vehicles, such as online publications, conference contributions, networks, the articles in journals, and so on.• The participant organizations will integrate the outcomes and deliverables of the DIGI-KEY project into their interaction with the target groups and into their own national and transnational projects.It is important for the universities to have a training portal which can be used continuously with the link to be given from the library web site.•The project web page and information will be updated by the coordinator three years after the project is completed.* As the coordinator institution, TRAKIA University will provide a certified course to one lecturer from each faculty in the last year of the project. These instructors will add an elective course named DIGI-KEY + DEPARTMENT NAME to the department elective courses. They will use the DIGI-KEY project curriculum and digital training platform and will be able to make the necessary additions for their departments.•At the end of the project partner universities will be added to the education program as an elective course in at least one department and faculty. It will propose it to the university education and training commission to make it compulsory. Four years after the completion of the project, a board of directors, consisting of the trainers who teach this course, will be authorized to update and improve the project outputs. DIGİ-KEY outputs will be updated within the framework of student educator views and changing digital technology and programs over time.The satisfaction of the students taking the course and the increase in student success will be very effective in the sustainability of the project.It is important that universities' digital infrastructures are developed and adapt to the era. However, these infrastructures, for which millions of dollars have been spent, must be used in order to contribute to education. Therefore, students should be taught how to use digital technology for their education and for the future.***It is our responsibility to educate university students who use digital world resources and solve real world problems, not young people who see the digital world as real.

The main goal of the project ‘Researchers in Knowledge Triangle’ (K-TRIO 3) is to bring researchers and their achievements closer to the society, and young people in particular. The project aims to contribute for increasing the number of researchers and innovators in Europe by making the society and especially young people aware of excellent achievements in research and innovation, in particular: FET flagship initiatives , large scale initiatives like "Next Generation Internet" and HPC, Centres of Excellence and projects with Bulgarian participation supported by the H2020. The project is targeted at raising the general public awareness on the achievements of Centres of Excellence in the 2 priority areas of Intelligent Strategy for Smart Specialisation in Bulgaria: ICT and Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) and their contribution to the regional development . Aware of the need of changing stereotypes and nurturing a new culture in research and innovation, the consortium will focus on making young people (youth) aware of the multiple career paths of researchers (incl. MSC fellows), best-practice examples of researchers and innovators achievements, and research infrastructure in Bulgaria. In 2018, the project activities will focus on research and innovation contributions to preserving the cultural heritage and fostering CCI, and the key role of researchers in these processes. In 2019, the emphasis will be on ‘Research in the Networked Society’ – making people aware of recent achievements in HPC, for building Internet of Things, Factories of Future, and Smart Cities, as well as taking full advantage of BIG Data and Cloud computing. The target audience of the project includes three groups, with specific activities designed for each group: - for students and kids: competitions, hands-on experiments, open labs, guided visists - for parents, teachers and general society: knowledge fairs, exhibitions, discussion clubs, etc. - for young researchers: training rally

"<< Background >>Student engagement is not only a challenge in traditional face-to-face (F2F) classrooms but also, and debatably more so, in online courses. Online course delivery faces additional barriers to engaging students not typically present in F2F courses including the fact that course design and development must occur before the actual delivery of the teaching and learning materials. While the importance of active learning methodologies to improve student engagement has been thoroughly examined, the additional challenges faced by online course delivery changes how active learning practices are put into practice. Thereby, because of the unique nature and challenges of online courses, an understanding of the distinctive approaches to active learning is needed. A few aspects that should be considered with regard to online courses is the integration of design elements, accessibility of materials, value of interdisciplinary collaboration, development of community among students and faculty, encouraging valuable discussions and use of effective assessment methods. The integrated course design models consist of the basic components of identification of situation factors, learning goals, teaching and learning activities and feedback and assessment. The proper design of these components is crucial to engaging students in an online environment. Next to that, effective time and resources management is necessary on the part of both the students as well as faculty when online. Further, methods of encouraging student communication and interactions amongst themselves and faculty differ greatly from F2F delivery methods. Consequently, the efficient implementation of teaching tools used to deliver the online course is a challenge for many faculties especially who deal with applied sciences. However, many of these concerns can be addressed through the implementation of active learning strategies that encourage students to actively participate in the online course content. On the basis of current research can be claimed that typically active learning is not associated with online or hybrid learning environment. However, there are several strategies for effectively incorporating and practicing active learning in non-F2F settings including the use of well-conceived discussions, group work and creating a collaborative environment that encourages and fosters a community of learning. It is critical to weave active learning through the major components of an online or hybrid course, including discussions, assignments and assessments to promote a high level of student engagement.The quality of an online course in comparison to its traditional F2F counterpart is the most critical issue that impacts the design and development of an online course. Some of the key components in online courses are the design of instructional material for the content delivery, student assessment of material, discussion management, time management and frustration handling. In the project it will be applied the multidisciplinary approaches of design and development of the key components ALTONE, the best practices of ALT in online course design and delivery and various mechanisms of student engagement they employed in online and hybrid courses. These student engagement mechanisms are founded in classic pedagogies but will be adapted to suit the online and hybrid course environment. In doing so, the idea of applying traditional active learning methodologies to the online and hybrid setting while retaining the function of actively engaging students in their learning will be central throughout the project realization.<< Objectives >>Quality of learning in online circumstances requires students’ higher independence in learning and work, skill of self-regulated learning, and better developed metacognitive abilities to manage one's own learning process. In order to take all this into account when designing the teaching situation, knowledge and skills of creating a quality educational experience for students are needed. Applied disciplines in agricultural sciences have faced challenge in how to develop the necessary practical professional knowledge, skills and values in the online environment. Their curricular content is more practical and requires the acquisition of skills parallel with theoretical knowledge. Two main problems are the problem of creating adequate activities for students in relation to the goals set; and the problem of the poorer quality of teacher-student interaction. Having in mind the above, the goals of the project are:•The general goal is to provide students with quality education. It means using high academic standards based on modern scientific knowledge in order to build dynamic combination of knowledge, skills, and values, and the 21st century competences in study programs of applied agriculture disciplines in undergraduate studies in online and hybrid environment; •Development of the principles of ALTONE in HE so as to make the most of the advantages of ICT in teaching and learning; •Raising the competencies of academics for creating prototypes of teaching situations for effective learning of content of different epistemological nature that are found in applied disciplines;•Curriculum redesign and implementation of curricular alignment between goals, teaching/learning methods, student activities, assessment of students and learning outcomes in pilot courses;•Development of a bank of scenario for teaching in an online environment according to the types of knowledge those students should master (declarative, procedural, practical) •Creating continuous support for improvement of ALT in HE (formation of a center for learning/teaching at the faculty). The partner organizations in the project want to integrate active learning into online and hybrid teaching on professionally applied subjects of applied agricultural sciences. Exchanges of good practices and experiences in ALT in online and hybrid environment among partner institutions at every level (teachers, ICT staff, and students) will contribute to this. All experiences from solving problems caused by the transition to full online education in the pandemic will benefit the future organization of education in ""normal"" circumstances.<< Implementation >>The following activities are planned to implement during the realization of the project:1.The joint analysis of realization of teaching and learning in different HEI contexts and introducing ALTONE methodology;2.Writing the training material: handbook on transforming ALT from a classroom to an online and hybrid education, guideline for teachers redesigning subject curricula, guideline for teachers related to creating scenarios for online and hybrid education and guidance for evaluation of the scenarios and analysis of the results of teacher satisfaction classes) 3.Training on ALT and ALTONE methodology: active Learning Teaching (ALT) joint staff training course (active learning in online and hybrid environment, exchanges of good practices and experiences in ALT in online and hybrid environment among partner institutions and development of the concept of active learning in the online and hybrid environment;4.ALT joint staff training course with focus on building teacher competences on evaluation of quality of teaching/learning process (redesigning existing teaching curricula, creating and evaluation scenarios for online and hybrid active learning and teaching, formative assessment, assessment for learning and assessment as learning) 5.Reviewing the project’s intellectual outputs and designing framework for the project sustainability (development of the concept and formation of a centre for continuous improvement of the quality of teaching/learning in a higher education institution, dissemination of principles ALT in online and hybrid environment with other universities).<< Results >>During the implementation of the project, teachers of pilot subjects are expected to adopt principles of good practice of active learning/teaching (ALT), improve planning of subject objectives for online environment, acquire relevant competencies for applying ALT methodology in online environment, contribute to improving interactivity between them and students also students to each other, fostering creativity in students as well as in themselves, fostering critical thinking in students as well as in themselves, improving students' self-reflection on learning, as well as self-reflection on teaching methods in themselves, improving shared inquiry between learners and teachers to answer questions and solve problems that will facilitate modeling, foster creativity, and enhance active and collaborative learning. In addition, because learners will continue to come from a variety of generations, it is important for teachers to facilitate their learning needs to plan and implement effective programs using ALT. Formative and summative assessment will conduct to measure student abilities and knowledge before, during, and after participation in courses. Finally, the implementation of ALT is expected, the improvement of feedback on student learning success (feedback to learners about the course content and outcomes from technology can be used in such things as interactive exercises with feedback loops in online tests), evaluation of ALT and assessment implications for future use of online and blended active learning strategies.During the implementation of the project, the following results are planned:1.Report on the analysis of needs for improving the quality of ALTONE based on the findings of research in partners country and in the world;2.Desk analysis about reduce quality (decline in the volume and quality of knowledge; learning loss);3.Development of the concept of ALT in the online and hybrid environment;4.Writing a handbook on transforming active learning from a classroom to an online environment;5.Training of teachers for the application of active learning methodology in online environment;6.Training for raising the competencies of teachers for adequate use of ICT for more effective engagement of students and better learning and monitoring of teaching specifically in applied disciplines in higher education;7.Selection of pilot subjects from different agricultural applied disciplines;8.Training report for revision and evaluation of the pilot subjects book in accordance with the analysis of necessary changes;9.Redesigning pilot course books so as to achieve curricular coherence between objectives, active learning/teaching methods, student activities, evaluation of student achievement and learning outcomes;10.Evaluation of revised pilot subject books;11.Teacher-tailored training, personalized, with each teacher working ICT expert and teaching/learning quality expert on improving the competencies of pilot teachers in the preparation of scenarios, how to choose digital tools in relation to the objectives of the subject and solving specific pedagogical problems;12.Creating scenarios for prototype classes in applied disciplines in the online environment;13.Evaluation of completed scenarios for ALTONE;14.Creating a scenario for prototype classes in applied disciplines for hybrid learning, with a clear explanation of the activities that are realized live and those that are realized in the online environment;15.Evaluation of completed scenarios for hybrid active learning/teaching;16.Peer reviews of teacher satisfaction classes;17.Development of the concept and formation of a center for continuous improvement of the quality of teaching/learning in a higher education institution."