<< Background >>The pandemic has forced various educational institutions to adopt an online teaching format quickly. From a technological point of view, this was not hard. A major challenge is the teaching methodology: learning online makes it more challenging to keep the student at the computer for a long time, as well as to involve the student in the lecture and help him/her avoid ‘distraction syndrome’. Months of lockdown, when teachers and students had to work in the format of distant learning, demonstrated that traditional methods are not optimal, it is necessary to change the approach and help lecturers to overcome the challenges posed by online teaching.Moreover, the pandemic has become a real challenge in organizing Erasmus+ studies. The onset of the pandemic, when the situation changed in a flash, the countries were closing their borders and the transport system completely disrupted, created a great sense of uncertainty for students and their parents; many families feel reluctant to let their children study abroad. A possible response to this situation is to offer students the opportunity of Erasmus+ blended mobility in order to recover trust and create international experiences taking full advantage of virtual mobility. However, the last few months have shown that students do not see the value of starting Erasmus+ studies online – if they refuse physical mobility, they do not choose to study online either and do not participate in the Erasmus+ programme at all. It would be very important to show students that even without physical mobility, studying online in the international environment could create value for them – working in an international online team can help students to develop important professional and transferable competencies, to expand their network and still, can create cultural experiences for them.<< Objectives >>The CityGo project aims to develop methodology and materials that enable higher education institutions (HEIs) to perform quality and engaging problem-based learning in a digital environment.This will be achieved through applying at HEIs a model of collaborative online communities focused around a particular topic. In business this practice already proved to be a successful one: in our info-age people feel overwhelmed with information and they wish to have a ‘guide’ who would orient them, connect with high-quality info-pieces or relevant expertise. The active community also provides peer-to-peer learning, which creates common experiences, gives a sense of belonging, and increases participants’ engagement. So during this project consortium will develop a methodology of efficient teaching/learning in collaborative online communities, where students will solve particular societal challenges on Sustainable City. The community will offer to their members (students and lecturers) a digital content library on relevant topics and a collaborative online platform, where members will meet each other and solve various issues.Project objectives:1) to improve HEIs lecturers competence in creating an engaging and efficient online learning environment;2) to advance competencies of higher education students to learn efficiently in international online communities addressing real-world challenges;3) to create an open-access content library for the modules in the field of Sustainable City that can lay the foundation for effective partnerships between HEIs for Erasmus+ blended mobility;4) to collect findings and best practice and share success factors and challenges of engaging digital problem-based learning in the various cultural and institutional contexts.<< Implementation >>The project will start with students' and teachers' survey in order to develop tools for efficient online communities – in Month 6 the work package will result in Procedures and strategies for setting up effective challenge-oriented online communities (facilitator’s rules and participants’ policies).Along with that, the consortium will start working on a platform with digital learning materials, which will be used by the participants of collaborative online communities. At least 6 modules will be adopted for online learning (3-6 ECTS each). After completion of the digital content library, at least 6 collaborative communities for students and 1 community for facilitators will be created in Moodle, Facebook (or other) environment. 180 students from 6 HEIs will be working on real-world challenges in the online communities. In order to consistently gather information and analyze the resulting experience from the perspective of students, lecturers, and institutions, a participatory-made framework will be developed. Partners will analyze adaptation of participants, interaction rules and work process, facilitation of communication, acting as a team, peer-to-peer learning, reaching the goals, transdisciplinarity, working in international teams. After analyzing and compiling all the experiences PR3 will result in Guidelines for HEIs, which would address the following concerns: choosing a platform that matches institutional/consortium needs, preparing community facilitators, developing guidelines and governance to fit the organization, creating awareness for the community, intercultural aspect (what to take into account running international communities). In order to multiply created knowledge and lessons learned, each partner will organize 3 multiplier events (webinar M9, webinar M15, offline event M24) inviting higher education lecturerers, local authorities, NGOs, business representatives from their region/country.<< Results >>The main results and outcomes reached by the consortium evolve from the project objectives:RESULTS1) Procedures and strategies for setting up effective challenge-oriented online communities (facilitator’s rules and participants’ policies) 2) An open-access digital content library on Sustainable City consisting of at least of 6 modules and laying a solid foundation for quality Erasmus+ blended mobility will be developed;3) Guidelines for HEIs on setting up collaborative online communities will be prepared.4) At least 30 lecturers will increase their competence in the facilitation of challenge-oriented collaborative online communities at 6 HEIs (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL);5) At least 180 students (including both local and international) from 6 HEIs (LT, DE, PL, CZ, PT, GR) will increase their competence of working on interdisciplinary real-world challenges in the virtual environment of collaborative online communities;6) At least 360 persons from outside the partner institutions will take part in the webinars/workshops (through multiplier events) where they will learn about created results and lessons learned.OUTCOMES1) Advanced HE lecturers’ competence for interdisciplinary engaging problem-based teaching in an online environment;2) Improved student competence and engagement for collaborative online learning;3) Created institutional know-how regarding quality challenge-oriented teaching/learning in the digital environment at 6 HEIs (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL);4) Laid a solid foundation for quality Erasmus+ blended mobility in the field of Sustainable City;5) Created new partnerships and strengthened existing cooperation within 6 consortium members (LT, DE, GR, CZ, PT, PL).6) Developed a learning approach in a digital environment easy transferable and applicable in HEIs across Europe.