The European Commission’s latest Higher Education Modernisation Agenda highlights the transformative role of universities in the society. Precisely, rather than being actors of only economic impact, HEIs need to strengthen their ‘civic’ responsibilities.Despite the argued relevance for more social engagement, respective societal engagement mechanisms have not been well developed in the HEIs. Indeed, latest numbers show that universities still have relatively more technology transfer offices than civic engagement offices. Consequently, we still witness a focus on universities’ business engagement compared to e.g. community building or collaborations with NGOs, ultimately hampering the social impact of HEIs’ activities.Simultaneously, the ongoing pandemic of Covid-19 amplifies the need for HEI’s societal engagement. The current times of uncertainty and destabilisation form the background against which societal engagement is most needed. Indeed, HEIs can be a fruitful source for supporting societal recovery by transferring leading edge insights to the society. This science-to-society transfer is of severe importance, given the fact that Covid-19 has brought about societal challenges (e.g., how to let elderly citizens participate in a socially distant society) that we need to solve to ensure prosperity of our economies and societies.The unpredictable context of Covid-19 creates new opportunities of digital community engagement, which can be embedded in HEI’s teaching and learning activities. However, these opportunities are not straightforward to implement and thus present substantial challenges for HEIs, ultimately limiting the likelihood of implementation. In particular, creating societal impact through digital teaching formats comes with the following core challenges:•LACK OF ‘EASY TO IMPLEMENT’ DIGITAL TEACHING FORMATS. In the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, activities of HE lecturers had to quickly shift towards ‘mainly digital’ to comply with the emerging social distancing paradigm. While most of the HE lecturers succeeded in quickly (sometimes even rough-and-ready) transforming into digital teaching, the focus was predominately on the ‘core’ content. In other words, pursuing the ‘third mission’ of the HEI (i.e., creating societal impact) is currently lagging behind due to the absence of digital formats, which can be easily implemented by HE lecturers.•ABSENCE OF HE LECTURERS’ SKILLS TO CREATE SOCIETAL IMPACT VIA DIGITAL TEACHING FORMATS. HE lecturers engaged in teaching currently lack an adequate skill set to design and conduct teaching formats, which go beyond the ‘core’ content of the curriculum. Whereas technological tools have grown in numbers, HE lecturers frequently rely on mainstream tools and methods, thereby neglecting hitherto niche (frugal) solutions. This focus on a few mainstream solutions ultimately hampers the social impact of digital teaching formats.•NO ‘ONE SIZE FITS ALL’-TEACHING FORMAT FOR GENERATING SOCIAL IMPACT. Previous research has emphasized the complexity of social challenges. Subsequently, to tackle these challenges, HE lecturers are confronted with the need to design teaching formats, which can be adapted to the specific challenge, ultimately overcoming the “one size fits all”-paradox.The focal project tackles these challenges by integrating (a.) expertise of science-to-society transfer tools (i.e., tools and instruments to overcome transfer barriers in science/society projects and thus to successfully connect science and society) for tailor-fit approaches to create societal impact, and (b.) expertise of how to enable HE lecturers in digital teaching formats. Consequently, this project will develop a Digital Configurator, which allows creating social impact through customized digital teaching formats. In fact, the digital configurator will give birth to customized digital social impact generation (DSIG) courses. Through considering the particularities of the social challenges as well as the current digital skill set of the HE lecturer, the Digital configurator suggests custom-fit digital teaching formats, ultimately equipping HE lecturers to foster their role as being socially engaged. Beyond this, the configured DSIG courses enable students to get involved in an actual societal challenge, which is beyond online lectures, thereby fostering students’ entrepreneurial and social thinking and acting.Moreover, the project applies an iterative development process, thereby continuously incorporating feedback from all target groups to ensure high relevance of the Digital Configurator. Lastly, a ‘training for scaling workshop concept’ will ensure capacity building for HE lecturers from beyond the project partner consortium. Thereby, continuation and application of the developed project resources is ensured ¬ beyond the end of the project and across European HEIs.

UniverCity Action Lab – embedding Europe’s education and knowledge institutions into their urban environment to unlock their innovation potential and address metropolitan challenges.BackgroundToday more than 70% of Europe's citizens live in cities, which makes European Union one of the most urbanised areas in the world. While these areas are considered to be the engines of European economy with extensive job opportunities, and the educated population they attract, they are also places where social and environmental challenges are concentrated, concerning mobility, sustainable land and energy use, inclusion of migrants, digital transformation and poverty. Without doubt, universities hold great potential to act as key actors in fostering dialogue among regional stakeholders to initiate and sustain joint actions towards creation of smart and sustainable cities. However, despite efforts, urban engagement is not an inherent component of HE systems, nor are they a part of ongoing academic programs. HEIs lack relevant strategies, tools, resources, and knowledge to apply to engage in city initiatives. Hence, it is crucial to expand the bottom-up support for the cities to co-develop, test and implement the solutions, and thus consolidate efforts. HEIs can support anchoring innovation by raising interest in the urban areas they are based in, offer resources, and facilitate change. HEIs should also exploit cities as living labs incorporating the open spaces, institutions, and local community in their research and teaching programs. To support this change, UCITYLAB has set the following objectives: 1. increase the knowledge and understanding of HEIs in establishing urban partnerships (IO2) 2. support societal relevance of the HEI curriculum and enhance ties with civic community (IO4) 3. develop relevant skills set among students by exposing them to the real-life societal problems (IO4) 4. strengthen links among the stakeholders of urban community, including HEIs, to facilitate knowledge exchange and better flow of resources for urban development (IO2) 5. widely disseminate results to foster adoption of city engagement practices in European HEIs (IO5)In order to achieve these objectives, the following horizontal activities were undertaken, guiding the whole project:A1. Project Management and CommunicationA2. Dissemination And SustainabilityA3. Further Exploitation – SustainabilityA4. Quality Management and Evaluation.Moreover, specific activities linked to the IOs were performed:IO1: UCITYLAB Status-Quo Report & Collection of Good PracticesIO2: UCITYLAB Network RoadmapIO3: UCITYLAB Challenge Teaching Toolkit IO4: UCITYLAB Challenge Pilot Implementation ReportIO5: UCITYLAB Online PortalRegarding the target reached, UCITYLAB reached Higher Education Institutions, businesses, VET institutions, public institutions, supranational organisations, media and others. In terms of number of participants, we can say that:-5000+ people were reached through email dissemination-600+ people have downloaded project outputs-40+ people engaged in our network-500+ people were achieved on social media (facebook, linkedin, twitter)-200 people have downloaded our newslettersThe project has developed new curriculum in partner HEIs, that can be transferred to other HEIs and countries. City alliances were also established in 4 major cities in Europe (Porto, Ljubljana, Barcelona, and Paris), which might also be replicated in other contexts. UCITYLAB has, therefore, instigated a potential European approach towards fostering solutions towards urban challenges. Particularly, the major results are:-the fostering of social innovation, entrepreneurial and urban development skills development among HEI students, enhancing responsible citizenship-the improvement in entrepreneurship curriculum at HEIs -the development of problem-based programmes in real context, which represent new innovative educational methods-the strength of relationships between HEIs and their urban communities, through meetings, national events, online networks, and e-mail dissemination The impact and long-term benefits are directly linked to the priorities addressed:-Contribution to innovation through the development, implementation and test of the effectiveness of approaches to promote creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and skills -Development of relevant and high-quality skills and competences-Supporting the civic and social responsibility of students and institutionsIn fact, during the project, partners have experienced the establishment of partnerships with the cities they are located through municipalities, public institutions, companies and NGOs, and have reported this in a Network Roadmap to help further institutions in engaging in similar processes. Besides, developing students’ social entrepreneurship skills will result in the economic and social development in the cities where the HEIs are located.

The composite manufacturing industry is characterised by high added value and complexity of manual work processes. The future of the composite market is expected to be highly competitive, and companies with innovative capabilities and skilled labour force can thrive and gain market share. The key aim of the Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership Project “Skilled Hand for High Tech Production” – CompoHUB project was to use the current potentials offered by the labour market (e.g. unemployed joiners, wood cabinet makers, textile workers etc.) as a baseline and furthermore involve additional education and training activities to re-qualify the labour force to be able to work effectively in the high-tech area of composite manufacturing.CompoHUB project has achieved 5 key objectives: 1) Identification and analysis of industry requirements and missing skills gaps in the area of composite manufacturing.2) Structuring the relevant working areas, key tasks and knowledge/skills and development of the occupational standard/national occupational qualification “composite laminator”.3) Development of the training programme in the field of composite manufacturing responsive to industry and labour market needs.4) Integration of the learning material into an on-line open-source learning platform in 3 different European languages (accessible at www.compohub.eu).5) Integration of the developed training programme into institution based Vocational Education and Training in Slovenia and Estonia.To successfully realise the objectives, CompoHUB project connected 6 different European partners, i.e.: 1) organizations that carry out research and development on composites and/or manufacture composite materials (company CompoTech, Czech Republic), 2) organizations that use the composite materials to manufacture composite parts for different industries (companies Aereform, Slovenia and MAC Motoplatika, Croatia) and 3) training organizations and VET providers (Zasavska ljudska univerza, Slovenia and Kuressaare Ametikool, Estonia). In addition, the Institute for Innovation and Development of University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) represented the overall project manager to connect and enhance cooperation between the three groups and also acting as liaison facilitating the codification of tacit knowledge and bridging the gap between vocational education and higher education. The Compo-HUB project produced a special impact on VET trainers and in-company trainers since it contributed towards the development of their training and subject-specific skills in the field of composite manufacturing, involving strong work-based teaching/learning component. It furthermore equipped the target training group with the new knowledge and skills in the respective field, which are required by the labour market. The developed on-line learning platform provides the access to the most recent and up-to-date knowledge and developments that can be effectively customized to specific requirements of individual customer (companies, VET institutions, higher education). The new developed training programme in the field of composite manufacturing presents an important competitive advantage for VET providers, as up to date, no similar training programme was offered neither in Slovenia nor Estonia.The long-term sustainability of project results is based on 4 main exploitation mechanisms: 1. The developed results, namely the training programme and platform are further used by the consortium partners as supplement to their existing education and training activities and in-company specific trainings;2. Commercial exploitation and customization of training programme to specific needs of customer (composite manufacturing industry and VET providers);3. Mainstreaming and accreditation of the occupational standard and catalogue “the composite laminator”. This assures that skills and qualification are more easily recognized, within and across national borders, as well as in the labour market;4. The Composite HUB as the source of new research, development and training initiatives connecting different composite industry segments and education & training organizations, namely VET and higher education. The driving principle is the exchange of technology and good practices, also contributing to the development of innovative practices in the field of education and training.

The enhancement of Gross National Happiness (GNH) has been the most significant national priority for Bhutan since the 1980s, and it has evolved into the guiding purpose of Bhutan’s development. To increase GNH and support sustainable development, knowledge is needed to deepen the understanding of real life at each societal level. Qualitative research data have been recognized as critically important to contribute to evidence-based policies which address social and developmental challenges. There is however a disjuncture between the desire for qualitative research data and the absence of knowledge, skills and technical infrastructure to teach qualitative research methods.The HAPPY Project aims to include innovative Qualitative Research teaching approaches in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities at 4 Colleges in Bhutan. We thus aim to modernize and renew existing curricula by developing innovative modules for existing courses and enhance the competencies of academics in qualitative research methods (QRM). The HAPPY Project uses a people centered approach to co-create innovative teaching methodologies and accentuates “learning by doing”. The implementation of the renewed curricula will contribute to the development of students’ transversal skills which will increase their employability. To accomplish all of the above and increase its societal impact, the HAPPY Project aims to sensitize stakeholders both in HEIs and society regarding the value and the potential of using QR data. This will strengthen the existing relationships between HEIs and societal stakeholders, including Civil Society, government, local communities, industry and enterprises. This in turn will create a space to explore further QR collaboration in the future. By disseminating project milestones to societal stakeholders, the project will initiate the use of QR data in domains beyond HEI. The HAPPY project has the potential to enhance well-being, and thus GNH.