Based on their shared background of being placed in regions with an urgent need for an economic transition and situated near state, language and cultural borders in different parts of Europe, project partners: University of Maribor (UM), Poznan University of Technology (PUT), Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus (BUT) and Université Polytechnique Haut-de-France (UPHF) have joined for the project departing from their mutual partnerships on the level of Erasmus+ agreements or also the level of traditional bilateral partnership agreements. On a multilateral level, all partners cooperate within a university network named Alliance and with other partner institutions that are not active partners to the project. In their preparatory meetings and exchange on distance, as well, they established a need for a higher level of internationalisation of research and studies, focused on project level on the field of digitalisation. A lack of technical or also legal skills among staff and students was established already in the past. Still, especially in the actual time of the COVID 19 measures of containment, when distant education is tried to be used for bridging the closing of all higher education institutions in Europe, it becomes evident and alarming that additional support is needed for face-to-face learning. Partners plan to internationalise their study programme in two significant fields of digitalisation: cybersecurity and internet of things. Another objective is to put more effort into the awareness of the benefits of e-learning and especially, to teach the preparation of e-learning materials and the use of the most common and most established tools for that among a wider population. The project is mainly focused on students enrolled at partner institutions, and secondly also designed for students from other international partners and their regions. All partners represent approximately 60.000 students, and within the partnership with separate potential roots of participants, there are several 100 partner institutions, where most of the partner institutions vary between 8.000 and 20.000 students, like a pool of dissemination and promotion of the project. An active role in the performance of the project will be dealt with 8-10 staff members of each partner institution for the production of intellectual outputs, as well as contributions by 20-30 students from each partner institution, who shall take part in the various project activities called learning, teaching or training activities. The main activity of the project is the development of a Massive Open Online Course in the field of cybersecurity in connection with the internet of things. This course shall be developed and accredited in the project lifetime in a way that all relevant stakeholders shall be involved in the creation, evaluation, and approval of the generated contents. Staff and students shall give their inputs to the materials. A peer group shall develop a quality assurance tool to set up draft action plans for the realisation of project goals. Each partner shall host a learning, teaching, or training event (summer school, workshop, teacher training), as well as a transnational project meeting. While learning, teaching and training events are meant for skill development, project meetings are intended to exchange between the partners and their invited stakeholders on the progress and results of the project in relevant phases of the project. For the information of the wider public and the dissemination of project results, the partner shall work out a project publication explaining the project, its activities and achievements. Additionally, for information, a project flyer shall be made containing relevant information and especially links to the project partner information and project website. The project website, as such, shall be an open information source and access point to the contents of the project, as well as a working platform (this part closed for the project partners). Based on the mentioned tools for information, dissemination activities shall be carried out in the project lifetime and beyond. Particular emphasis shall be put on the spreading of the ethical practice of the project to motivate others to follow. The project shall result in an increase of enrolment to selected study fields, as well as the higher involvement of international students and staff in the conduction of the study contents at home. Besides, home staff shall obtain additional skills for the creation and use of online teaching tools. By this, a positive impact on the view on internationalisation and the willingness to broader internationalise the existing and “traditional” academic process is expected in the long-term. Multiplication shall be reached on the level of partners’ bilateral and multilateral partnerships (international conferences, rectors’ conferences, joint research or learning projects), as well.
The partners aim for a safe and reliable use of online learning environments. Based on the Moodle system that is mostly used among hte parnters, but also within their networks, students should be made aware of dangers at the use of the system and threats to their cyber security when handling their data in the system. On the other hand, teachers shall be trained to create good learning materials on the Moddle and lear how to create a safe course or other academic content in Moodle. The open access to the manual enables the use of this knowlede in an unlimited range. The online course will be offered within two European university alliances: EUNICE and ATHENA.
The partners applied for the project based on the increasing appearance of online and virtual teaching and learning activities and the consequent need to ensure a proper and safe use of the learning environments. More and more universities are targeted by sammers and other internet fraud and abuse of data, also personal data. The partners decided to deveop a manual for the mostly used learning environment Moodle and to also develop an online course for all students and staff to train the safe use of the learning environment. The manual was published at the University Press of University of Maribor and is therefore publicly available to anybody. The online course is hosted in the Moodle system by the project partner PUT and is also available within the online courses offered by the European University Initiatives EUNICE and ATHENA. In this way, potentially all students can take the course as optional course and access the manual for free at University Press. Additionally, three student training activities were conducted and two teacher trainings to verify the use of the manual and course in the time of the project.