<< Background >>According to the recently published European Digital Education Action Plan (2021-20217), “digital transformation has transformed society and the economy with an ever-deepening impact on everyday life. However, until the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on education and training was much more limited.” The cooperation partnership that the IGNITION project aspires to initiate, identifies equal urgency and needs as established by the European Digital Education Action Plan: fostering the development of a high-performing digital education ecosystem and enhancing digital skills and competences for the digital transformation (2021-2027). IGNITION partners experience that the accelerated digital transformation has a high impact on their teaching staff, students, and life-long learners, as well as on the external parties from the regional ecosystem of innovation they collaborate with. All these target audiences are challenged to keep up with digitalization and avoid exclusion from digital environments as well as the labor force and society. HEIs play a vital role in the development of people, facilitating their academic, professional, and personal growth with innovative pedagogies that aim to develop professional, future proof and digital skills. HEIs also play a vital role in regional development through joint research and innovation activities with regional companies and other public or social organisations. These external parties concur increasingly to HEIs in search of ways to tackle complex problems and to explore innovative solutions for challenges in domains like health, climate, mobility, energy, or digital transformation itself. The development of regional engaged HEIs nurtures, in turn, educational programs with real life challenges where students have the possibility to learn complex problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, leadership, digital literacy, and other relevant skills in direct interaction with external parties. In this context, collaboration stands out as the crucial human process which occupies, through innovative pedagogies like challenge-based learning (CB), an increasing part of the learning processes. because of the growing intertwining between higher education and practice orientated research following the Quintuple Helix innovation model. The abrupt shift to digital learning environments due to Covid19 contributed to a boost of educational technology with (re)new(ed) tools and platforms, many of them pursuing to enable collaborative learning that facilitates challenge-based innovation with multiple stakeholders. The large-scale delivery of online education made clear that many teachers had difficulties in adapting and felt ill-equipped regarding their digital skills, whilst others with more digital competences emerged as facilitating peers. Students and long-life learners in full and part time educational programs experienced difficulties too, not only regarding digital competences but also on how to engage with multiple stakeholders in collaborative learning settings going online. Collaboration with external stakeholders, particularly micro companies, and self-employed professionals, was also put on hold because of remote work, and barriers to access HEIs infrastructures and programs for them were experienced higher. The accelerated digital shift has shown the urge to enhance digital literacy and inclusion of HEIs and the innovation ecosystem they engage with for collaboration and innovation. The needs that IGNITION plan to address include the development of a shared vision and agenda for digital literacy and inclusion; the increase in awareness and competence development in digital literacy and innovative pedagogies, methods, and digital tools; the inclusion of digital less skilled people of target audiences; and the need to learn with and from each other and share experiences.<< Objectives >>The needs that IGNITION plan to address align with the priorities of earlier mentioned European Digital Education Action Plan and in the context of digital transformation taking place at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the innovation ecosystem they engage in. Therefore, IGNITION main goal is to strengthen project partners in their efforts to enhance the digital literacy of teaching staff, students, and the external parties they collaborate and engage with through innovative pedagogies like challenge-based learning (CBL). Partners aim to create an European Digital Literacy Coalition for Inclusion, Collaboration and Innovation enabling involved HEIs to focus on their challenges of digital transformation at the pace of the parallel processes of developing and offering innovative future proof education, with collaboration being a core process as a result of their regional engagement. Partners aim to do that by developing a shared vision and agenda for digital literacy and inclusion; increasing awareness of and competence development in digital literacy of the target audience - teachers and educators, students and life-long learners, and external micro companies and self-employed professionals -; co-create innovative pedagogies and develop and test methods, tools and platforms for digital collaborative learning; and learn from and with each other through a European Teachers’ Community of Practice, whilst strengthening their interconnected higher education systems and ignite change and digital transformation in their organisations and those of the regional ecosystem of innovation they are engaged with. Partners theory of change is that through IGNITION, partners can improve the abilities of the target audience to understand, deal with and deploy digital technologies; critically assess the digital environments, information, and media they use and create; continue to develop and engage with innovative teaching and collaborative learning practices; and become responsible, confident digital and global citizens.<< Implementation >>Partners will start IGNITION by gathering experiences and information that will help to establish a shared vision on digital literacy and inclusion at HEIs. The resulting Digital Literacy Framework and Agenda will support them in developing and prioritizing the activities for the Teachers Community of Practice and the Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab. Furthermore, partners will co-design an Online Self-assessment Tool that will rely heavily on the European Framework for the Digital Competences of Educators, DigCompEdu, aimed at raising awareness and knowledge about the digital literacy needs of people in all target audiences and will be employed in the two learning, teaching and training activities (C1 and C2) that IGNITION plans to implement at IGNITION Teachers Community of Practice (IO3) and the Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab (IO4). The activities of the Teachers Community of Practice include the co-design of teaching and learning activities to train teachers in providing their lessons with digital environments and tools, as well as teaching activities for educators who teach their students and life-long learners in digital literacy for inclusion. Teachers of participating HEIs will meet virtually throughout the project duration on a regular and flexible basis for training sessions in digital literacy; showcasing best practices and sharing innovative teaching and learning experiences; Q&S sessions on specific topics or tools that are demanded by teachers; communication of activities and results of IGNITION and the Teachers Community of Practice to mobilize and engage other teachers and educators. Next to that, partners will design and implement a Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab (IO4) where international and multidisciplinary student teams will work on external stakeholders’ challenges, using and experimenting with collaborative digital tools, innovative methods, and virtual platforms. Here partners will co-design and implement a CBL program and test tools and methods for collaboration and innovation, including digital literacy development based on the self-assessment tool (OI2) and trainings in digital tools. This will be done in collaboration with external micro companies and self-employed professionals who are included in the training sessions (C2). The Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab will be supported by the project’s website and a virtual campus that offers virtual space for disseminating and communicating calls for action and project results; space to host virtual multidisciplinary and international work sessions and events; and stimulate open innovation. The Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab will, in this way, enhance virtual mobility to involved persons from all target audiences in its activities. During the activities of the Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab, partners will furthermore explore and develop a toolkit with strategies, digital media and new methods that facilitate the inclusion of micro companies and self-employed professionals in HEIs infrastructures and programs (IO5), since they experience barriers to access HEIs infrastructures and programs, and having them participating as external stakeholders of the challenges, will facilitate a joint development of mentioned toolkit (IO5). Finally, partners will conduct several evaluations through surveys and focus group sessions with all target audiences to learn from all activities and share the outcomes of the activities and learned lessons with a broader public.<< Results >>As a result of above-mentioned activities, the cooperation partnership will produce the following expected outcomes: •IGNITION Digital Literacy Framework and Agenda (IO1) •Website of the project with access to all the developed tools and resources (IO1) •IGNITION Online Self-assessment tool for digital literacy, based on DigCompEdu methodology (IO2) •Teacher Community of Practice in Digital Literacy for Inclusion, Collaboration, and Innovation (IO3) •IGNITION Digital Challenge and Innovation Learning Lab concept, structure and processes for international student teams working on innovation challenges with external stakeholders through digital tools and platforms for innovation (IO4). This includes new methods and tools for collaboration and innovation, a toolbar for digital challenge-based learning, and a virtual campus for collaborative learning and events •IGNITION Toolkit with new methods, digital media, and strategies for engaging external stakeholders, with a special focus on self-employed professionals, active workers, and micro companies (IO5) •Evaluation Activities and Final Report (IO6)