Three Higher Education Institutions (HEI) involved in TRASMARES (UC-IHC, UNIBO, UCoimbra) are willing to consolidate a more modern, transnational, attractive, accessible and dynamic technical training in a constant changing world. A digital transformation of the education is needed in order to optimize the learning process within a new teaching framework. On the other hand, the fourth partner, TED (Telefónica Educación Digital) demands high-quality, novel and cutting-edge research for a standardized and certified model of modular digital education. This is how industry, companies and employees will recognize this model to acquire alternative skills, promote well-qualified professionals, and incorporate recent higher education students into the labour market. This innovative, open and online model on specific training attempts to improve the internationalisation, attractiveness and competences of the partnership. TRASMARES aims to consolidate a new innovative, open, online and officially certified education, promoting the digital transformation of institutions and increasing the opportunities through lifelong learning flexible pathways addressing professionals, graduates, post-graduates and VET students, by means of a micro-credential on “Sustainable Marine Ecosystems” in the context of climate change integrated by different thematic Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). In this context, four groups of activities have been programmed: i) coordination and management; ii) elaboration and validation of MOOCs (intellectual outputs); iii) official certification of the micro-credential on “Sustainable Marine Ecosystems”; and, iv) dissemination and exploitation of TRASMARES’ results. Four well-known experienced institutions, three HEIs and one digital education company will integrate the strategic partnership created for TRASMARES. This consortium, with high specialization level in different and complementary areas of digital education, climate change, nature conservation, nature-based solutions, ecosystems’ vulnerability and land-sea-ocean interactions will work jointly for a better digital transfer of the knowledge and tools developed. The contribution of TRASMARES is focused on the development of higher technical training addressing professionals, graduates, post-graduates and VET students on new methods, procedures and tools for the sustainability of marine ecosystems, in the context of the climate change scenario. With this purpose, the main output of TRASMARES will be an open online micro-credential of 4 MOOCs integrated in the MiriadaX platform, which will run beyond the project lifetime as committed by TED in the partner’s collaboration agreement. TRASMARES expects to attract around 1,500-2,000 students enrolled in each MOOC (intellectual output). Students of MOOCs will be trainers of colleagues and; therefore, the targeted community would be eventually be much wider. Moreover, the dissemination activities will additionally outreach an extensive audience at national and international level through the project website and MiriadaX platform. Regarding the impact on the participants, novel training, in this subject, will certainly increase their potential for employability in the labour market. Partners will improve their attractiveness, internationalisation and competence as modern institutions adapted to the new education paradigm. HEIs will acquire new-trained professionals in digital skills and competences, towards a digital transformation. For targeted groups and relevant stakeholders, this project will allow to have technical staff with new capacities to resolve all the questions and challenges related with the day-to-day at the enterprise level. At local, regional, national, European and international level, the public administration, being one of the main receivers, will benefit from the added value of including this knowledge in their scope of work since they will then contribute to deliver effective, updated and influential related policies. Internationally, the scope of the subject of the project will promote the interactions amongst foreign students all over Europe attracting external professionals. Finally, concerning sustainability, consolidation of this model is the main objective of this project. Activities will be preserved in the future with the aim of creating similar initiatives or projects arising from the results of TRASMARES. The consortium expects to promote an innovative, modern and dynamic concept reflecting a new scope and focus in the use of updated digital technologies as a new learning method support the developing of sustainable resources.
TRASMARES aimed to consolidate a new innovative, open, online and officially certified education, promoting the digital transformation of institutions and increasing the opportunities of lifelong learning by flexible pathways for professionals, graduates, post-graduates and VET students, by means of a micro-credential on “Sustainable Marine Ecosystems” integrated by different thematic MOOCs. Attending to the overall context previously formulated, the specific objectives of the project were: • To develop a more flexible, digital, dynamic and agile specific capacity building based on a multidisciplinary, practical and integrated approach on sustainable marine ecosystems. • To increase the number of empowered students by developing an open, online, flexible and lifelong learning adapted to the labour market, by promoting the transfer of knowledge and latest research and scientific outputs back into education, based on a European established standard officially certified. • To improve the digital skills and competences of teachers, by promoting the digital transformation increasing in the use of technology in the education space. • To reinforce the attractiveness, internationalisation and competence of participating organizations.
As stated in 2019, the team drafting the proposal detected the need to address multidisciplinary experiences of what we know today as "continuing education", using new academic tools. The aim was to expand and update the training and skills of students at different levels in practical and specialized aspects related to their professional performance and better working opportunities. To meet this need, we assumed that the approach and format of existing MOOCs, already offered in the market by different platforms (e.g. MiriadaX), provided a suitable framework for integrating such specialized knowledge within a curricular concept that was emerging at that time: the “micro-credentials”. So, this was the key concept that linked the four participating entities in the formulation of the TRASMARES project, an acronym that refers to the “practical training” on “specialized tools” applicable to an important thematic area, the “Sustainability of Marine Ecosystems”, in which the three academic entities are well recognized for their contributions to the scientific knowledge and the fourth partner, TED, specialized in offering comprehensive online learning solutions for educational and training needs.