<< Objectives >>We are aiming at* increasing European HEIs’ capacity to arm current and future students with mindset and competences needed inmodern online business interaction* creating a European Community of Practice in business education - consisting of experts from companies, education providers, public sector and NGOs - to organize modern business education in cost-effective way* helping companies to recruit future talents * motivate and empower students towards learning.<< Implementation >>Core activities include:* defining competencies needed in online business interaction* formulating recommendations for curricula adjustment in business education* testing of updated business negotiation courses in four countries* organizing local level online business negotiation competitions in four countries* creating and testing of a European concept for online business negotiation competitions* disseminating lessons learned to engage growing number of HEIs to European competitions<< Results >>Core results of the project include: * Framework for online business negotiation competences; * Local courses and business competitions in four European countries for educating higher education students and assessing their learning outcomes regarding business negotiations;* European Online Business Negotiation Competition event, organized annually during and after the project;* Recommendations for HEIs and educational policy makers on using competitions as pedagogical methods

EU-society faces four major challenges: the Anthropocene crisis, digitalisation, the pandemic and the Ukraine war and its consequences. All these challenges put at risk the model of liberal democracy, which, of course, has faced similarly internal threats (e.g. political polarisation, right wing extremism, mistrust in scientific research and conspirational beliefs) and external critique (questioning whether plural democracy is the best model to affront societal challenges). Education, and especially Education for Democracy (EfD), shall contribute to the defence and enhancement of democracy. This includes the values and principles encompassed within the UN’s 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 4.7, in particular, defines that education should promote sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity. To reinforce the resilience and sustainability of democracy, DEMOCRAT aims, through a participatory approach, to elaborate curricula for EfD based on a framework of responsible democratic competences (RDCs), to test them in open, local, innovative learning projects and to develop a toolbox to support the development of transformative EfD practices in the EU and beyond. DEMOCRAT’s ambitious research and innovation programme will provide insights into the points of comparison and contrast in EfD in the EU-member states, and will develop an innovative curriculum framework linking RDCs with digitalisation and sustainability. DEMOCRAT will test and analyse pedagogical practices and material considering its effectiveness for acquiring democratic competences and European identity. It will garner insights into the factors influencing the impact of EfD on public participation through the analysis of European data-sets, with a particular focus on the relation between socio-economic and educational inequalities and political and social participation.

<< Objectives >>The project’s general objective is to raise awareness of energy transition and the SDGs in general and to encourage young people to take action to build a more sustainable future. We want to develop a gamified approach to enhance motivation to learn about a complex topic and make science more attractive and understandable to primary school pupils. Therefore, the final result will be the development of a serious game that can be used in the classroom to support teachers and educators or at home.<< Implementation >>Besides the project management that includes all tasks regarding a structured and expedient project progression, the purpose of the core project activity is to guide the development and implementation of a new SDG path, namely SGD 7 “Affordable and clean energy”, and the further improvement of unfinished parts of the prototype serious game “The Migratory Birds”. Finally, the game will be tested and evaluated in school workshops and thus improved and disseminated, e.g. by training teachers.<< Results >>The concrete result will be the release of a complete version of the Migratory Birds game in English, German, French and Greek. Eventually, the game will be accompanied by a user manual to support the teachers and educators as facilitators to use the game and maximize the pedagogical results through debriefing, debate and action-taking. For further dissemination of the game, training sessions for teachers, school workshops and a dedicated virtual space are also planned beyond the project.

Serious shortages of highly-skilled and qualified professionals for engineering jobs are hampering Europe’s sustainable growth objectives. Europe is mainly confronted with qualitative shortages on the labour markets, linked to specific regions, skills or occupations. To improve the current situation on the European labour market ELIC seeks to make a change on engineering literacy among secondary natural sciences teachers. Therefore, it supports an increases the number of qualified professionals with specific technical job-specific skills in the future due to higher involvement of pupils on engineering topics already from secondary school level on. Further, ELIC supports in the achievement of Europe´s five sustainable growth objectives and the international competitiveness of European engineering companies. This project aims to ensure the availability of the right skills – and supports thereby a major concern of the European Commission and the Parliament (Strategy 2020 – Agenda for new skills and jobs).ELIC is represented by 8 partners from 4 different European countries (AT, CZ, DE, IT) each facing the need to increase highly skilled engineering employees in the future. The consortium is represented by technical universities, training providers, social development agencies and by secondary schools and combined with the associated partners (school authorities, counselling providers) the partnership is very powerful in terms of expertise and international network which supported ELIC in its implementation.The ELIC project identified secondary natural sciences teachers as the primary target group and aimed to educate them on engineering literacy and technical didactics. This leads to the following advantages: secondary natural sciences school teachers can update their skills on these two topics which is an identified need of the target group and second, the primary target group can act as multipliers to pupils to increase their interest on engineering. The main output of the ELIC project is a highly innovative massive open online course (MOOC) for secondary natural sciences teachers in order to increase their competences and skills on technical didactics and engineering literacy (www.elic-mooc.com).The basis for the MOOC was an intensive analysis on training needs and a GAP analysis, followed by the development of a skill card and a detailed training curriculum for the MOOC. The MOOC was implemented in the four participating partner countries to make a difference in teachers´ education and to foster engineering skills in secondary schools. The ELIC MOOC was taking place for six weeks (~30 hours in total) and covers topics such as basics of engineering, current trends in automotive engineering and hot topics in engineering and how to implement technical cases on the basis of practical examples. In total, 120 participants coming from secondary school, university and pupils from 6 countries registered to the MOOC and jointly learned on the platform to increase their engineering literacy skills, which enables the teachers to include more technical aspects in their classes. The ELIC Toolbox further provides examples on how to use MOOC material in classroom.Further, as the knowledge on engineering and technical didactics among secondary school teachers is not only lacking in the project countries, the ELIC consortium developed a Transferability & Evaluation Handbook which on the one hand describes the evaluation process of the MOOC and on the other hand gives advice and instructions on how to multiply and repeat the trainings in other countries and/or by other institutions, taking into consideration the outcomes of the MOOC evaluation on several levels. Therefore, the ELIC project aimed to ensure sustainability of the outputs created which can be reached through the transfer of the ELIC concept to other countries in need.With the dissemination efforts taken by the whole consortium on an international basis, ELIC can definitely make a difference in terms of the engineering literacy of secondary school teachers on a short-term basis. Furthermore, the availability of highly skilled engineering employees, the interest among pupils on engineering topics as well as the number of engineering university graduates will increase like a spiral in the future in the long-run.