The current project "Optimal use of ICT opportunities for educational and scientific conferences in global crises" is aimed at improving the quality of higher education in conditions caused by crises similar to COVID-19. One of the specific characteristics of higher education as a high value of the knowledge created and transferred in education is the activity for organizing and conducting educational-scientific conferences. The sharp need for education and science to move entirely to distance form due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 has placed a number of universities that have reached a high level of scientific and educational credibility in a state of lack of preparedness and ability to maintain the level of conference events. To help universities maintain the quality they have achieved in the traditional academic standard, the partnership on this project will focus its efforts on illuminating the specifics of distance learning when organizing conference events in all components of organization and conduct, technical dimensions and recommendations. , as well as the qualification of the academic staff in the universities. This structures the project into three main activities - development of an intellectual product "Guidelines for organizing and conducting conferences in remote form" (the basis of project implementation), conducting training for teachers in order to gain sufficient understanding of the specific approach and new dimensions of quality and lastly, holding real conference events by the three university institutions. The partnership covers university institutions from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia (sports sciences), and an organization specializing in distance education from Malta. The project emphasizes the aspiration of the partners to achieve a significant regional impact along with the European challenges for general digital education. The target group of the project presents in the first place the teachers in the institutions of higher education. Upon completion of the project, the results of the implementation will be expressed in the following: - a tool will be created to actively confront obstacles in the educational process in emergencies such as the COVID-19 crisis and the need to move remotely to university activities; - conditions will be created for increasing the number of participants (including foreign ones) in educational and scientific conferences with a significant reduction of the spent resources; - a prerequisite will be created for increasing the use of distance conferences in the learning process through the developed skills of teachers to include them as a teaching method; - a document will be available - Guidelines for organizing and conducting remote conferences; - the widest possible access to the document at European and international level will be ensured by presenting it in English; - regional use will be achieved through translations into Bulgarian, Romanian and Serbian; - will create a basis for objectively establishing the quality of digital conferences as a means of developing education and science; - the qualification of lecturers, who are an active part of the participants in conferences organized in digital form, will be increased. The achieved results of the project will have an impact mainly on the quality of higher education and communication of scientific knowledge. In the emergency of pandemics such as those caused by COVID-19 or other global crises, academics will have a much calmer acceptance of the need to transfer academic life to a remote environment. The achieved goal - created conditions for organizing and conducting quality educational and scientific conferences will affect different levels of functioning of higher education systems, and in the first place the impact will affect the project participants, institutions, higher education systems and maintenance of the quality of HE.
With the implementation of this project, we wanted to achieve results on several levels. The main objective of the project is directed at creating new competencies and knowledge for organizing academic distance conferences. The main objective included the development of an innovative training book with concepts, approaches, and practical advice for conference meetings in an online environment as well as learning for qualification rising in the partner institutions. The new skills and competencies are targeted to different users in order to improve: 1. Institutional capacity in the partner organizations. During the time that the project was implemented, we expected the partner institutions themselves to acquire competence based on studies, and literature research and attract competent specialists in organizing and conducting remote academic conferences. The intellectual product that was a major component of the project could only be developed by professionals directly involved in academic conferences. The specificity of these events requires the experience of researchers and academics combined with excellent technical knowledge related to the realization of virtual communication with a wide audience. Various categories of specialists with diverse duties in organizing virtual conferences were involved in the implementation of the project. The partner from Malta Acrolimits was also associated with expectations to upgrade in a specific direction the competencies it possesses – complementing the experience in digital education with new knowledge of applying digital means in an academic environment. 2. National academic systems – through publishing translations into the national languages and the discussions within the national university systems (mainly during the Multiplier events) 3. Higher education institutions in Europe. As the preliminary research we did found, there were too few universities in Europe with sufficient experience and confidence to apply specific means and achieve quality in distance conferencing. In most cases, theses related to business events are repeated without taking into account the specific requirements of scientists. In this sense, the project was also intended for all universities that feel the need to step on a partner experience and apply, develop and enrich it with their own knowledge. 4. Professional teams dealing with the organization and equipment of academic scientific conferences. 5. Potential participants in virtual scientific conferences to gain criteria for quality of announced events
The project proposal was prepared and submitted for funding in relation to the specific situation of a communication crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The call for applications was aimed directly at the problems of educational processes in higher education in a virtual environment (Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness). The National Sports Academy (BG), like most institutions of higher education, in the period of eight months since the announcement of the pandemic, had already identified the main difficulties related to education and science in a virtual environment. Although some experience was available in offering virtual teaching and learning, a number of approaches and requirements for the quality of virtual academic communication remained without available skills and unanimous acceptance by the entire academic staff. One of these activities, which was in a particularly sensitive position, was organizing and conducting scientific conferences in remote form. Already in the months of May - July, we witnessed the cancellation of major scientific events that were scheduled to be held in person, and their replacement with holding in a virtual environment became formal and did not correspond to the scientific standards of higher education. In our search for support and information, we've found that almost all of the published tips and guidelines for conducting virtual conferences relate to business and communication with potential clients. Despite common points of strategic thinking, academic conferences have quite different definitions of the end goal and expected results. The lack of information and training support for organizing and conducting scientific and educational conferences led us to the idea of collecting opinions, experience, and data from partner institutions and developing a project to contribute to laying the foundation for quality virtual conferences in a virtual environment. The exchange of opinions with the partners before the development of the topic suggested to us that a shortage of competencies is found massively in the scientific circles and the benefit of such a guide would be of European added value.