The overall goal of this project is to improve higher education provision in Kosovo and Albania, by building institutional capacity for international relations whereby establishing or making fully functional respective offices (including capacity for project cycle management) in all nine Kosovo and five Albanian consortium members. This project will build institutional capacity for the internationalization of HE in Kosovo and Albania, by improving capacity for project development and management through international expertise made available by European HEIs partnering in this project and exchange of good practice between the consortium members. This will make way for local higher education institutions to engage confidently in various academic and research cooperation initiatives in the region, in Europe and wider.The aim of the project is establish and develop fourteen fully functional offices of international cooperation that will also include the function of project cycle management. Currently, none of the new public universities in Kosovo and Albania has the capacity to fully run an International Cooperation Office, at a time when over 50% of students in European Higher Education institutions are studying or participating in one or another form of international studies and when a significant part of university life takes place in the form of various exchanges and mobilities. This makes it of paramount importance to build respective capacity for all members. This will ultimately contribute substantially to the quality of provision and will enrich university life and experiences of the student population in Kosovo and Albania. Therefore, having in mind the possibility of Erasmus + project to support this idea, we initiated the work as a consortium on developing this idea. The project will have very high importance in addressing increasing isolation, lack of quality international cooperation and lack of project initiatives from Kosovo and Albania universities.

Universities in Kosovo face similar challenges in terms of research activity. They all face low capacity to undertake quality scientific research, as well as they lack the institutional structures and certain policies to support research activity on a constant basis. Project expected results:- An assessment report published in outlining research situation in Kosovo.- Seven (7) research offices will be established, one per each university partner (except UP which already established it). - Respective universities will nominate at least one research coordinator per each research office.- Seven (7) strategic plans developed, one per each university (except UP who has already established it).- Establishment of six (6) scientific journals, one per a research priority in Kosovo.- Establishment of six (6) interinstitutional Scientific Committees, one per each scientific journal.- Establishment and update of a register of reviewers (international reviewers, also local reviewers with established international scientific reputation).- Establishing an inter-institutional Organizational Committee for the Annual Scientific Conference;- Organization of at least one conference during project life in six scientific sessions, with participation of around 200 researchers, from which 100 who present research work;- Minimum 60 papers fulfilling standards selected for publication into the scientific journals.- Policy/regulation on research ethics and integrity adapted in each beneficiary university (eight policies/regulations).- At least eight (8) Research Ethics Committees established and made functional, one per each beneficiary institution (respective universities may establish such committees at faculty levels).- An online open access database developed and launched;- Around 100 researchers, minimum 10 researchers per beneficiary partner will be trained on preparation research articles by meeting criteria of internationally indexed journals.

Higher education governance and its autonomy is strongly enhanced by the effective and convincing accountability, transparency and financial sustainability. Discussions on the university governance and autonomy throughout HEIs in Europe are coming as a response to diverse challenges at the different country’s context. As a result, the need for gaining and enhancing public trust in higher education became manifest to develop appropriate forms of transparency and accountability of both public and private institutions. An initiative to form a consortium came as response to address these challenges through the project Strengthening university autonomy and increasing accountability and transparency of Western Balkans Universities /STAND project .The concept entails investing in the strengthening the mechanisms that ensures the long-term sustainability of university autonomy, transparency and accountability. The project foresees cooperation between HEIs in the WB region, their respective ministries and program country partners and contributes to the increasing of professional capacities of HEI staff in partnering HEIs. As structural project it will support reflecting on standards at EU partners and enhancing them at WB institutions through intensified regular academic and management exchange of good practice and sustainable networking between EU-WB partners. A mix of bottom-up and top-down approach that will be used in the project, fosters the dialogue between universities and ministries, and thus enables the consortium to contribute more effectively to the project implementation and sustainability to strengthen the autonomy of Western Balkans higher education institutions. The project aims to reach up to 50,000 persons engaged in higher education and other related activities in Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro and abroad through its dissemination activities.

The disabled, stigmatized, chronically ill and elderly people in Kosovo are being served with allied health services of low quality level, often worsening their already limited capacities to cope with everyday life. The existing educational offers are failing to develop necessary competences needed to deliver better services. The aim of this Project is to enhance the development of research and innovation capacities in the area of allied health through education in line with the Bologna process in collaboration with clients, professionals, business, academic, industry, and governmental authorities. The main pedagogical strategy utilized during the Project is multidisplinary co-configuration. Consortium consists of 3 HEIs, 1 ministry and 2 NGOs from Kosovo and 2 HEIs from Finland and 1HEI from Turkey. The latter are specialized in multidisciplinary collaboration and modern pedagogy, innovation and entrepreneurship in the area of allied health. The project reaches its goals through establishing the SMAHPC, teacher training and development of CPD courses.The outputs and results are: - Clear and practical definitions of the research and innovation competences of allied health professionals - An innovation and research conducive student-run multidisciplinary allied health practice center - Eight continuous professional development (CPD) courses: one top-up course for teachers and seven for students/stakeholders on EQF levels 5, 6 and 7, and a digital platform to support the implementation of the courses.- Teacher and student handbooks, course plans and other relevant teaching and learning material.- Regional, national and international networks for disseminating and sustaining the work for development of research and innovation capacities in allied healthThe main impacts are improvement of the education environment, introduction of new learning methods, development of new and high quality allied health services/products, and new investment opportunities.

European business sector pays an ever more increasing attention to competences such as sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The recommendation 2006/962/EC on key competences for lifelong learning highlights paramount importance of these key competences for employability. These competences related to entrepreneurship play a paramount role in EU neighbouring countries in their development process towards higher performing market economies and convergence with EU economic and social standards, their employers miss these competences in graduates particularly from ICT and engineering. WB countries and Russia in general have a high level of resistance to private initiatives, business and entrepreneurship. Many of the youngsters prefer “safe” employment at public enterprises, awareness and appreciation of own entrepreneurship potentials is low.The project aims at developing, testing, validating and mainstreaming holistic and needs driven open learning modules to promote entrepreneurship competences of ICT and engineering graduates at the interface of academic education and learning in practice business contexts.Competence level of graduates in participating partner countries is researched and regional training needs are identified; modular, practice-oriented entrepreneurship trainings are developed; validation system comprising a suite of entrepreneurship-related competences descriptions, context-related reference systems to assess and evidence these competences, and an online assessment and validation system based on the proven and tested Level 5 approach are created and used; a connection of this assessment and validation system to formal validation and accreditation systems (ECTS) and certification systems (EUROPASS) will be explored to allow for transnational exploitation of acquired competences; entrepreneurship training modules and competence validation system are piloted, evaluated and mainstreamed into existing curricula in ICT and engineering programmes.