The eight partners of the EDUC European Digital UniverCity Alliance create a truly integrated European University with students, researchers, and administrative staff who learn, impart, and work at universities differing in size, age, native languages and focus. Using modern digital tools and face-to-face collaboration, we cultivate a vast network of shared knowledge and academic values between Western, Central, Northern, and Southern Europe, developing strong ties between local environments to tackle the global challenges of the 21st century.
MoreEDUC offers a wide range of opportunities to everyone from the universities involved, corporate, business and research partners, local communities, alumni, lifelong learners and many more. Find out what EDUC’s key action areas are!
MoreEDUC-SHARE (European Digital UniverCity - Research and Innovation with and for Society) project - the research and innovation part of EDUC funded by the Horizon 2020 program - aims at introducing pilot tools to enhance multidisciplinary collaborative research, working on a long-term roadmap addressing key global challenges. Thanks to EDUC-SHARE, citizens, and youth specifically, have the chance to be engaged in science exploring ways to speed up technology transfer in diverse areas, spanning from ICT to social sciences and humanities, and nurture entrepreneurial mindsets among students and researchers.
Common R&I agenda developed within EDUC-SHARE facilitates joint research projects based on shared infrastructures, co-designed with the socio-economic stakeholders and citizens. Thus, the EDUC alliance will turn into a fully integrated university meeting all its missions (education, research and innovation at the European scale).
More- The development of a common research and innovation agenda has been discussed also with the Vice Rectors/Presidents of the 6 partner universities, to identify other possible cooperation topics (besides the 7 already identified within the EDUC Alliance), also promoting a bottom-up approach from the researchers. As to the networking platform for EDUC research teams OpenUp has been identified as a good option to create connections among the researchers and with the local ecosystems, and some research groups for the discussion have been created.
- Finally, in order to guarantee to all researchers a high quality support to their activities, it also aims to reinforce research support services within the EDUC Alliance through dialogue and best practices exchange with the objective to favour joint applications of EDUC members to European calls in synergies with national and local fundings.
- The WP aims at reinforcing the development and implementation of the EDUC research agenda by stocktaking of available research infrastructures within the EDUC consortium and by facilitation their mutual opening.
- A catalogue of research infrastructures (RIs) is available to all EDUC researchers, and external parties, to increase awareness about opportunities offered by EDUC. This catalogue will enable, promote, and pilot open access to research infrastructures within the EDUC alliance. Also training sessions will be set up to empower the researchers to make use of the available facilities.
- A pilot call for access to research launched on 1st March 2023, offering the possibility to EDUC researchers and PhD students to use the participating research infrastructures and core facilities for free.
- As our main goal is to mobilize the research infrastructures to tackle the prioritized research challenges of EDUC, the piloting of open access and user training will be particularly focused on the long-term research agenda and research topics.
- Finally, we aim to create tools and conditions to maximize the openness of science in EDUC.
- The WP aims at strengthening the relations of the member HEIs with the socio-economic stakeholders (in particular for topics related to the RIS3) within the regions of the EDUC-SHARE members.
- It fosters the interconnectivity of all relevant university stakeholders to inspire and catalyze innovative and entrepreneurial collaborations, building on the ‘university-centered entrepreneurial ecosystem model’ and the state-of-the-art IoT platform solution (https://educ.openup.education/welcome).
- EDUC-SHARE will deploy two pilots regarding the cooperation on innovation and technology transfer ecosystems: one in the ”Cybersecurity and AI” area and one on “Culture and Heritage”.
- This WP will also develop resources to increase the entrepreneurial spirit and competencies of researchers by guiding and supporting entrepreneurial venture creation. It strives for a complex platform solution catering to the needs of modern higher education institutions with special attention to innovation and entrepreneurship.
- The aim is for all the EDUC institutions to receive the “HR Excellence in Research'' label by the end of the project. It also aims at strengthening the action plans of EDUC members already labeled or involved in the labeling process and favoring their success in the assessment phases.
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Three universities of the Alliance are awarded:
- Finally, it aims at defining common principles on Ethics, Equality and parity and improving young researchers’ environments (training offers, supervision, working conditions, professional integration). In particular, on gender equality in research and academia, it will share the best practices inside and outside the partnership taking advantage of the results of several projects funded in this field by EU.
- The digital transition, automation, and artificial intelligence are all increasing the need for upskilling in the 21st century, notably in 'soft skills'.
- In 2021, EDUC universities carried out a survey among research and administrative staff to identify key interpersonal and transversal skills they would like to develop. Following on from this, in 2022-2023 EDUC universities will experiment in bringing together expertise from across the alliance to offer a training program in 21st-century skills.
- It aims to ensure (i) efficient and flexible technical and administrative management of the project - in line with the EDUC (Erasmus+) management structure; (ii) project reporting and interface with the European Commission and (iii) appropriate management of open research data.
- The aim is to organize in a coherent way the activities leading to maximize impact and visibility of the EDUC-SHARE project. We will make use of communication channels established by the Erasmus+ EDUC project to fortify the alliance’s efforts and complement with research activities and collaboration and mutual awareness of strengths and opportunities in the consortium, in its international networks, and among its local, regional, and national communities.
- Additionally, the EDUC Alliance is being supplemented by the OpenUp network, brought into use via EDUC-SHARE WP4.
- The quality of our communication will be reinforced by involving journalism students in the delivery and production of our promotional activities and materials.
The list of documents connected with the project activities can be found below. It will be updated during the project lifecycle. It is also possible to download it here.
D1.1 EDUC long-term research Agenda (M36)
D1.3 Report on networking activities (M36)
D2.1 Common Open Science Strategy of EDUC (M18)
D 2.2 Report on EDUC activities to unlock mutual access to research infrastructures (M36)
D3.1 Action plan for EDUC events to raise awareness for science among the citizens (M18)
D3.2 Report on citizen science strategic concept (M36)
D4.1 Inventory of TT ecosystems (M18)
D4.2 Report on the outcomes of the entrepreneurship courses and related workshops (M36)
D5.1 Report on the methodologies implemented for the labeling process (M18)
D5.2 Common recommendations of EDUC members on ethics and parity/equality principles (M36)
D5.3 Roadmap for the creation of a network of doctoral schools at the EDUC scale (M36)
D6.2: Roadmap: creating soft skills training programmes that are valorizable for both employees (researchers and staff) and for HR services (M36)
D8.2 PR Materials on 7 EDUC Research Topics (M36)
Policy feedback (M36)
Held at the PTE University Library and Knowledge Centre, the event aimed to empower academics and research professionals to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of open science.
In our pursuit of enhancing research quality and impact, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment plays a vital role
We explore the strides being made in research, innovation, and collaboration across our partner universities