The tonal quality of the excellent violins was until recently a mystery. Although many secrets are already known, there are still unanswered questions. Violin makers try to recreate these tonal qualities choosing the materials, creating shapes and taking wood off in order to optimize the sound. The balance between the thicknesses of the soundboard and the back is still an unresolved issue. The technological progress nowadays offer accessible tools that were previously very restricted. In this context we have carried out this project to try to resolve this issue combining research and educational.Our students have taken part in the complexities of a scientific investigation, controlling each and every one of the variables, and seeing the different approach one has to take when making a violin departing from the traditional methods. We have had the opportunity to work with innovative measurement methods applied to violin making. The acquisition of these skills and those that will acquire the future students are a solid base of employability. The teaching staff, witness and participant, also widens their knowledge and experience on the subject, with the consequent effect on the abilities of the students. Another of the achieved objectives is an updated Curriculum in contents and competences, which is already put into practice at school. Although it is very soon some interesting conclusions are being drawn on the question.The overall experience has been very positive for the students and teaching staff of both BELE, the violin making school and the Bilbao Conservatory, which has taken an active part in the Psychoacoustic and Free Categorization tests. This experience also extends to the University of the Sorbonne with the LAM laboratory to which Claudia Fritz belongs, an expert worldwide in perceptual evaluation protocols. She will have the oportunity to use the intellectual products generated on these tests in future projects. In the same way, the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge will make good use of the conclusions that are being obtained, and although Jim Woodhouse has just retired, his experience and knowledge will continue to add academic value to doctoral students related to musical instrument acoustics.In this sense, George Stoppani and Jim Woodhouse complement a good team to carry out an investigation, Stoppani with his experience in innovative methods of measurement and capacity of analysis and synthesis with Woodhouse´s experience in the scientific method related to the acoustics of musical instruments. Finally, we highlight the Bilbao Conservatory of Music, a place where education, research and innovation converge for this project, always seeking to improve the quality of education that increases training and as a result the employability of students.The main activity has been the construction and assembly of 6 violins, combining different soundboards and backs, performing modal analysis in each phase, and controlling each variable. In parallel it has been monitored, the making, by other European luthiers of other seven violins, following the same external shape used for the project. The perceptual evaluation, through Psychoacoustic and Free Categorization tests of these 13 violins was, along with an exhibition, another important activity carried out in Bilbao. The students participated in the creation of everything necessary to carry out these activities.The obvious achievement is the building under controled parameters of 6 violins, which are available to anyone who wants to evaluate them. But the greatest achievement is the experience acquired by the participants in each of the processes: the learning of new methods of measurement, understanding the building of the violin in a novel way, experience of teamwork in usually individual processes, having the experience in the programming and carrying out of an event and an exhibition, etc. Protocols have been created to perform psychoacoustic and Free Categorization tests along with the design of reference data tables. In the need of more perceptual assessments, some basic conclusions have already been obtained on this Psychoacoustic field.Another significant result is the adaptation of our curriculum. The impact is not immediate, even though has changed some of the working ways, but we believe that it will be seen in a few years when the participating students leave for their professional life. The conclusions are helping and in the future will help violin makers to improve their products and will also help to similar violin making schools interested in the scientific method.Widening the skills training is the great benefit of this project. The increase in the quality and control of the sound of the instruments leads to the greater satisfaction of the whole sector. We also value the creation of a culture shared research and science to understand and improve our work.

"""OceanTraining.eu : a toolbox for digital ocean education"" will develop a set of digital resources aimed for international education programmes in the field of Ocean Sciences. International programmes do face several challenges when it comes to switching from non-digital to digital education. The geographical spread and diverse student communities, and the lack of possibilities to train students in practical and field related skills are just some of the elements that illustrate the complex situation when switching to digital education forms.With a consortium of 4 universities we plan to develop existing and new ideas which should support the targetted international education programmes. In addition we foresee that the outcomes of this project will also be usable on a broader scale (for example in the context of Life Long Learning initiatives or global capacity develop in the area of Ocean Science).The OceanTraining.eu toolbox will entail four categories of digital education instruments:1. A fully online set of fundamental Ocean science courses (BASE) valid for 30 ECTS will support graduate programmes seeking for good online alternatives for local programmes. The online setup allows geographically spread students to participate from a distance, but still offers opportunities, thanks to the activating and engaging learning methodologies, to exchange and connect with peers and teachers.2. The format of Short Online Courses (SUPPORT) will be used in second package to provide supporting learning content answering very specific learning needs. A diverse student community with a diversified background does need many additional resources in order to be able to follow regular courses. SOCS will be developed using a wide range of formats in order to provide clear answers to these needs. 3. The Virtual Ocean Lab (EXPLORE) will bring together digital learning techniques and tools which may serve as alternatives for the regular field and practical experiences available in most Ocean Graduate programmes. 4. Lastly a supporting publication tool (UNITE) for teachers investing time and energy in the development of digital learning will be initiated. This tool, in the format of a digital journal, will allow teachers to post their resources in a citable and peer-reviewed format. This tool should increase visibility of digital learning resources and should also make them retrievable.The presented toolbox for Digital Ocean Education will be launched and presented during a closing multiplier event. This event will be organized as a symposium in which Ocean Educators can showcase innovative learning tools and methodologies. This unique event should also create connections between European Universities active in the field of Ocean Science Education and could hopefully lead to increased collaborations.OceanTraining.eu hopes to be a starting point for new developments and joint initiatives in the broad field of Ocean Education."

A video library consisting of 55 instructional videos on various aspects of introductory organic chemistry laboratory courses available at LMU Muenchen will be adapted (written text, spoken information) to teaching in English, French, and Spanish. New videos will be added to include new synthetic or analytical equipment present in organic chemistry laboratory courses in the partner institutions Univ. Cardiff (Cardiff, UK), Sorbonne Université (Paris, France), and Univ. Murcia (Murcia, Spain). Videos in all four languages will be hosted at all four institutions and will thus be made available to students throughout the EU under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC) license. In parallel, a web-based module will be developed for each of the videos eliciting student response and activation. Both components together are expected to significantly facilitate the partial or complete virtualization of laboratory courses, which represent core components of undergraduate chemistry teaching in all EU member states.

4EU+ is an ambitious proposal that intends to move beyond a simple university alliance and create a truly integrated university system, aligned with the European Council priorities by 2025. Our six comprehensive, public European research universities are strongly embedded in their local territories and share European values and a global outlook. They are situated in all four European sub regions and play a key role as regional flagship universities and gateways to Western Europe (Heidelberg, Sorbonne), the Nordic countries (Copenhagen), Central Europe (Charles and Warsaw) and Southern Europe (Milan).Together, we will empower students by giving them full access to courses, research facilities, internships, grants, libraries, student accommodation and infrastructure from all six universities as part of their normal curriculum. They will share a single student experience based on common European values.We will provide academic and administrative staff with incentives to teach, develop courses and research projects as well as work throughout the university system. This will imply defining common core curricula and competencies at the 4EU+ level and building shared platforms and services (such as infrastructure, housing and resource repositories). Finally, for economic partners, NGOs and social partners, a single knowledge and technology transfer hub will facilitate access to both students and expertise across all six universities.4EU+ is fully in line with the objectives, challenges and expected impacts of the call for European University pilot projects. The project includes a detailed implementation plan with 7 work packages and associated KPIs to maximize impact, dissemination and sustainability of the project. During the first 3 years the project will be implemented in four flagship programs in fields linked to Health, Europe, Information Science and Sustainable Development, identified in a bottom-up process and aligned with the UN sustainable development goals.

European trends towards inscreasing academic and professional mobility and expanding markets have led to the need for European citizens and workers with specialised language skills, i.e. languages for academic or occupational purposes, as opposed to general purpose language skills. Concomittantly to the multiplication of language for specific purpose (LSP) courses, both in tertiary and adult education, the increasing need for LSP teachers should have fostered an increased need for LSP teacher education but the lack of specific training offered to both trainee and practising language teachers is consistently pointed out in published research, with LSP teachers having to learn « on the job ». It therefore seems that policymakers’ assumption is that general language teacher education is enough to equip language teachers with the skills necessary to teach LSP classes in spite of researchers noting, amo,g other things, that the approaches and methodologies are quite different. Still, with the notable exception of Howard & Brown’s 1997 collective volume, LSP teacher education has so far received very little attention in published research in Europe and beyond as well as in previous European projects.In addition, as noted by several researchers (Delcloque 1997, Belcher 2017, Sarré 2021), LSP teaching can greatly benefit from the integration of digital technologies, even more so than general language teaching. This obviously supposes that LSP teachers have been trained in integrating these tools and approaches into their own teaching.The CATAPULT project aims to use innovative methods (in the forms of a MOOC and a Community of Practice Platform) to address this dual need, that is to offer training on both the specific approaches to LSP teaching and the integration of digital technologies in the teaching of LSPs to both practising LSP teachers and language teacher educators. The CATAPULT project targets European language teachers involved in LSP teaching. The project’s target groups are therefore primarily (1) LSP adult educators (freelance language teachers offering training to professionals in the industry) (2) LSP teachers in Higher Education Institutions (as this is also a context where LSPs are commonly taught) (3) language teacher trainers. The outcomes of the project also aim to contribute to the modernizing of language teacher education programmes across Europe, which explains why teacher educators involved in initial language teacher education and continuing professional development (CPD) are one of the project’s target groups.The project has enabled more than 600 European language teachers to develop professionally through the MOOC developed by the consortium, and nearly 250 LSP teachers to join the community of practice gathered on a specifically designed platform in order to pursue their professional development throughout their career. Coordinated by Sorbonne University, the CATAPULT project involved the expertise of five partners in Finland, Germany, Poland, Greece and the Netherlands.The partnership started with analysing both (1) the needs of potential employers of LSP teachers and (2) the training needs of European LSP teachers. On the basis of this inventory, a complementary study of the existing training courses in the partner countries as well as of national competence frameworks, and a meta-study of scientific publications on the teaching and learning of LSPs, the consortium then drew up a common competence framework for the European LSP teacher. In order to help teachers develop some of the identified competences, online training modules were then developed and delivered on a dedicated MOOC. By developing an online environment for a community of practice of European LSP teachers, the consortium wanted to give LSP teachers the opportunity to continue their lifelong learning once they had completed the MOOC. Finally, the quality approach was a concern of the consortium throughout the project by the development of evaluation grids and specific procedures, by the implementation of accreditation procedures for the trained teachers and by a quality audit of all the project outputs.Thanks to an impact study of the tools and materials developed, the consortium was able to produce a number of recommendations for political decision-makers for better recognition of the specificities of LSP teaching and the integration of relevant training. Some of these recommendations have already been put into effect locally, in particular through the integration of LSP training modules in initial teacher education based on the content of the CATAPULT MOOC.In the longer term, it will be LSP learners (adults and students in Higher education in particular) who will benefit from the pedagogical expertise of their LSP teachers who will make the most of a number of digital technologies.