To support European companies in successful twin transformation, the overall goal of our project is to design a new and innovative joint Master programme in Agile Transformation Management (4 semesters long, 120 ECTS, joint degree, fully taught in English). Its alumni will become architects of sustainability and digital transformation in organizations. They should possess a holistic perspective about how digitalization and sustainability affect organizations, excel at strategic thinking and change management processes. They should also possess hard technical skills in the areas of digitalization and sustainability, and an agile mindset to embrace change.To achieve this overall goal, universities in three European countries (Austria, Finland and Latvia) and three universities in associated third countries (Israel, Mexico and Hong Kong/China) join forces. Such consortium enables these future change agents to profit from regional expertise (e.g., circular economy and sustainable design, agile innovation management or smart manufacturing systems) and gives students an opportunity to expand their worldview through experiencing different cultures.The project follows the standards for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes in the EHEA. Aspects of learning outcomes & study programmes, clarification of admission and recognition processes, and student support systems, etc. will be analysed and developed with the aim to seek accreditation of the program at AQ Austria following the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes.The project contributes to Europe’s fight against climate change and drives the digital transformation through development of digital readiness, resilience and capacity. It also strengthens and fosters partnerships among the consortium partners, increases their internationalization and competitiveness, and offers students a unique opportunity to start an interesting career path as agile transformation managers.

"<< Background >>Digital and Green topics are currently essential for society, in general, and municipalities and cities in particular. These topics represent an area to be dealt with and a challenge to be faced. Digital and Green topics are interconnected, interlinked and depending on each other. Effectively implemented within the operations of communal public bodies, digital solutions can lead to and be a means for reaching green goals. **Digital and green topics become more and more critical for higher education, even for the non-technical study programmes. Study programmes of public administration, management, policy, and other related study programmes, focused on profiling graduates who may become employees of municipalities and cities, should be improved with an educational concept, a knowledge base and a curriculum able to convey digital and green skills. **Municipalities and cities, as self-government public authorities, apply digital and green concepts based on in-house developed solutions or using external solutions. More experienced municipalities and cities with a better background and potential in digital and green solutions can naturally be an example for other municipalities and cities. The exchange of digital and green communal practice between municipalities and cities, especially at the international level, is vital and needed for the ongoing green digital transformation. **DiGreen aims to support the international exchange of Digital and green good practice between municipalities and cities. **DiGreen aims to tackle digital and green skill gaps in higher education and municipal practice. The incorporation of digital and green learning in higher education, where this is not a primary focus and in municipal practice, where there is the need for practical use of such knowledge, are targeted. **DiGreen gives a strong emphasis on the involvement of practitioners working at the municipality and city public bodies, who may be a left-out group regarding digital and green skills.<< Objectives >>DiGreen aims to provide professionals working in the municipality/city self-government public bodies and young citizens (students) with a framework to exchange knowledge and digital and green good practices. DiGreen will provide a crosscutting teaching and education DiGreen concept together with a multidimensional curriculum. **DiGreen will facilitate the exchange among an international network of municipalities and cities, municipalities’ employees, universities, research institutions and communal practitioners on learning about green digital skills and other environmental and digital issues. **The general objective of the DiGreen project is to establish a transnational collaboration between partners involved and apply innovative approaches for addressing their target groups. **DiGreen has four specific objectives: - Specific objective 1: To establish a network of universities, research institutions, municipalities and cities sharing common values regarding green and digital transformation. - Specific objective 2: To establish a knowledge hub on digital and green agenda by collecting a database of good practice examples and producing easy-to-read handbooks on these topics.- Specific objective 3: To identify digital skills needed in the participating countries and set up an appropriate curriculum.- Specific objective 4: To identify existing knowledge level and awareness on the green European agenda and develop green sectoral skills strategies and methodologies.<< Implementation >>DiGreen activities and leaders aim to address critical elements that the European Commission has formulated: strengthening digitalisation of public administration and transition to the green economy.**A1. Co-designing and developing the handbook of digital good practice (Eurac Research, Italy). Partners will build a knowledge hub for stakeholders’ involvement and awareness-raising on digital good practice. The digitally provided public services identified will include good practice on how to rationalise the provision of competencies that the municipalities and cities own, examples on how to engage citizens in governance, ways to enhance the provision of public services, how to base public policymaking on evidence, how to take transparency and openness into consideration when providing public services.**A2. Co-designing and developing the handbook on green good practice (IWE - Romania). Partners will build a knowledge hub as a support structure for stakeholders’ involvement and awareness rising on green good practice, linking the digitalisation of public services provision and climate-neutral objectives within municipalities and cities. According to the EU’s Green Deal action plan, the partners will showcase the interconnection of tools using ICT and innovative approaches towards the transition to the green economy.**A3. Creating an interdisciplinary educational and life-long learning knowledge base (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria). All partners will work to identify the needs of the target groups to improve their digital and green skills and to determine the ways for the practical application of e-government tools for implementation of green agenda.**A4. Setting up a multidimensional DiGreen Curriculum (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia) Will support both educational institutions and local administration organisations and produce a ready to use “Multidimensional DiGreen Curriculum” for professional development.**A5. Organising Multiplier events in which the results of the previous activities will be disseminated and used. The partners will pay special attention to establishing the means of communication to allow the active involvement of all the stakeholders in the essential activities of the project and to ensure that the decision-making process is as open as possible.**A document repository will be set up for DiGreen to upload and record results, working documents, meetings and scheduled attendance to events. This virtual library will allow each partner to monitor progress regularly. An updated schedule for the work within the planned activities will be regularly posted in the repository. Conference calls, e-mail and web exchange will be the primary tools for internal communications and discussion. ICT will be an essential tool to overcoming spatial barriers for good internal and external communication. Physical meetings will be organised unless the COVID-19 restrictions are still in force at the same time. DiGreen partner organisations will perform various activities for sharing the project results beyond the partnership, such as participation in conferences, workshops and round tables in connected areas to the project’s theme, extensive dissemination through social media account and project website.<< Results >>DiGreen will generate four main RESULTS:R1. Handbook of DIGITAL good practice – cities and municipalities as the source for viable solutions.R2. Handbook of GREEN good practice – cities and municipalities as the source for viable solutions.R3. Crosscutting teaching and education DiGreen concept.R4. Multidimensional DiGreen Curriculum. **The handbooks will provide viable solutions for the green and digital transition. The Handbooks will contain good examples of digital and green public services delivered by municipalities and cities using ""in house resources"" or external resources. They will show how to rationalise the provision of competencies that municipalities and cities should have, engage inhabitants in governance, enhance the quality of public services, base public policymaking on evidence, and take transparency and openness into consideration when providing public services. The Handbooks will be produced in hard copy and electronic format in English and the partners' language. The online version will be available on the project website and supplemented by interactive tools, such as videos, visualisations and valuable links.**The ""Crosscutting teaching and education DiGreen concept"" will be an interdisciplinary educational and life-long learning knowledge base that will develop knowledge and skills on digitalisation and climate neutrality. It will focus on students who aspire to work for a municipality or city and the employees of these entities, especially those disadvantaged. Interconnecting public management, public policy, eGovernment, smart city, transparency, openness, sustainability, and knowledge in digitalisation and climate neutrality will ensure its interdisciplinarity. Professionals already working in a municipality or city will develop their digital and green skills to fulfil their tasks in a changing environment. It will have a printed and a digital version, available on the project website in English and short versions in the partners' languages.**The ""Multidimensional DiGreen Curriculum"" will be developed in a multidimensional way for higher education either as a stand-alone course or incorporated into existing courses. The aim is to provide well-balanced content, which non-technical study programmes across different countries can use. It will focus mainly on understanding the digitalisation of the society, on international comparison and analysis of the digitalisation of the society and climate neutrality in public policy. It will also centre on the skills for the digital present and future of students and employees. It will provide evidence of good practice at cities and municipalities, using digital and green tools. Will promote civic engagement and digitalisation as a means for transparency and openness. The curriculum will encompass the scope, methods, course-load, recommended study level, conditions for course completion, learning outcomes, the course outline and the recommended literature. The curriculum will be produced in electronic format. It will be available online, in English and the national language of each partner. **OUTCOMES:- Strengthening existing cooperation between consortium partners and including new partners;- Providing more attractive educational and training programmes for the target groups;- Increasing the capacity and readiness of public institutions' employees, students and citizens to deal with the digital and green transition by co-creating those programmes;- Increasing knowledge and awareness on crosscutting teaching and education DiGreen concept by establishing a knowledge hub on digital and green for the target groups;- Promoting education and life-long learning at local and European levels;- The network of municipalities and cities directly involved in the project will exchange experiences and good practice and serve as good examples in digitalisation and climate neutrality across Europe."

COVID-19 effects – Why?The sudden transformation of lecturing styles from physical, face-to-face teaching into the online, distance, “COVID19 style” teaching demanded considerable adaptations and changes from all teachers. These circumstances caused for many of them a series of issues and difficulties. This unexpected change affected all educators independent of the level or type of educational institution. Some of them without any or with very basic digital competencies in teaching had to start to teach online, overnight. They had to skip several steps in competency levels and perform online lectures without well-founded skills. Other teachers that have technical affinities, had problems with didactical structuring of the content and providing a meaningful learning sequence. All these experiences gained in the sudden transformation of the educational model caused by the COVID19 lock-down period, confirm the necessity of a common, standardized and structured content plan and references for diverse groups of educators. All educators could use such a plan for their personal orientation regarding online education (“Where do I stand?”) as well as for finding possible information on content (“Where do I find what I need to learn?”), in order to develop their digital competences. Reference point – What?The framework defines educators’ professional and pedagogic competences as well as learners’ competences in six specific areas e.g teaching, assessing, providing resources, in empowering learners and facilitating learners’ digital competencies and in the professional engagement of educators Each area outlines a certain number of competencies, all together 22. These competencies include a list of “activities.” These activities remain rather general and do not provide educators with practical information on how to achieve and implement the outlined goal in practice. All these are further broken down for six accumulative levels of progression A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.Project GoalWhile DigCompEdu provides a general framework, as such it is difficult to use for educators trying to find out where they stand regarding their digital competencies and attempting to find relevant practical materials needed to improve their competencies. The goal of this project is to fill the DigCompEdu framework with concrete examples and content (output 1), to develop an online course on selected levels (output 2) and to establish an e-teaching manual for self-paced learning (output 3).The aim is thus to enhance and augment the framework so it can function as a practical, useful resource for educators willing to increase their digital competencies.Output 1 – a collection of content (curricular plan) Develop and create a curricular plan/collection of content for all six areas and corresponding competencies, structured along the six levels of progression and publish it on a website. Any educator, even those with little or no digital competences, can access and use this collection of content (curricular plan) for all six levels of progression, independently or guided, according to their own needs. In addition, any educator can find out what s/he can learn and which competencies s/he can develop in the structured curriculum plan; the content and competencies of which they were/are unaware. This will be done for all areas, competences and levels.Output 2 – online course with instructor(s) For one or two of the pedagogic competence areas outlined in DigCompEdu the project intends to develop fully online courses. Which of the four areas are chosen will depend on the needs of educators at the participating partner institutions. The course will be held for educators of the partner institutions and will offer flexibility in time with a fixed schedule for synchronous meetings. The project partners will agree upon the level or levels of the course content in these areas.Output 3 - e-teaching handbook for self-paced learning (without instructor)The materials developed for output 2 will then be adapted and made openly available in the form of an e-handbook/manuals for all educators. These e-manuals will be available online and will enable educators the independent (anytime, anywhere, without instructors), self-paced learning and developing of competences. The materials will be open access and available to all educators trying to improve their digital teaching competencies.The long-term benefit is the dissemination of common European curricular plan with concrete topics and content of digital competences for educators (DigCompEdu) and increasing and enhancing the educators’ awareness of the necessity of constant individual development of their digital competencies. It is envisaged that in the future all areas and competence levels listed in DigiCompEdu will be filled/will have corresponding online courses.

<< Objectives >>The aim of sUser is to build an integral methodology for acquiring user-driven sustainable design, system thinking and agile development competences, which are essential in addressing society’s complex challenges, such as climate change. Although most approaches still focus on the technology solutions, studies show that educating students is more efficient making the society more sustainable and combating climate change, since in many cases the usage has the most impact in the life cycle.<< Implementation >>An integrated methodology for teaching the given competences is building on the partners experience and state-of art knowledge. Testing and validation is done addressing a real-life need i.e designing sustainable service housing for elderly. Teaching materials and monitoring and assessment for implementation in this case will be developed collaboratively in sUSer, these including use of innovative (virtual) teaching methods, such as agile and scrum techniques and virtual facility sharing.<< Results >>The main results:Graduates have improved proficiency to meet the future challenges: user-driven design skills, multidisciplinary co-innovation abilities, understanding of agile development and tools to solve wicked-problems arising from complex operating environment.Increased awareness of the importance of user in solving societal problems as climate change. Improved teaching competences using new approach with integral methodology, including agile methods and (virtual) enhanced collaboration.

<< Objectives >>The main aim of the project is to identify factors that support the incorporation of inclusive student participation, enhance student competences to allow them fully participate in the HEI community and create guidelines concerning organisational structures of European HEIs in the context of the uncertain times and rapid changes. Project will enhance the academic community and individuals involved, it will also re-define the meaning of this community in the context of everyday challenges.<< Implementation >>Interdisciplinary and cross-institutional approach involves students, academic and administrative staff. Activities aim at all students alike but especially consider needs of groups that traditionally are less engaged, i.e. working and international students. Project goes beyond mere acquisition of skills, it establishes structures that support implementation of socially relevant initiatives through activities such as survey, workshops, peer-coaching group, summer school and study visit.<< Results >>Results of the project will be presented in the user-friendly and inclusive forms, so it could attract attention of vide audience. The main outputs will be published in the form of a publication, infographics and podcasts on the importance of the skills, and video-tutorials on how to lead own initiatives. The main result for the institutional purposes will be a Handbook introducing stable yet flexible guidelines for institutions and academic communities suitable for unsettled times.