The project created a transnational partnership involving students from higher education institutions, researchers, teaching and administrative staff and member of the local communities to share, compare, collect, and refine different experiences and practices that empowered pathways to become deliberative practitioners within the framework of the Academic Third Mission. The project aimed to develop tools and strategies to promote skills and competencies fostering deliberative processes through a structured and inclusive reasoned-giving approach. The organisations involved in the Participatory action research, pilot actions and short training activities sought to enhance and broaden the effectiveness of the Academic Third Mission, particularly in promoting the democratisation of science through intensive collaboration between academic and local communities. The skills developed by professors, researchers, and administrative staff would directly influence the training methodologies to be implemented to provide long lasting effect and to change policy and interaction among actors, improving motivation and social awareness and ultimately the sustainability of the project results, such as the TENACITY platform and its training Tips.
The project proposal started from several simple questions that the project implementation tried to address. The questions encompassed a broad spectrum of needs that academic activities should answer involving the generation, application, and exploitation of knowledge, along with other university capabilities beyond the academic realm, and it figured out how the key academic actors should be educated and motivated to engage with society at large. The project highlights the growing necessity to co-create, share, and leverage viable cooperation, not just between universities and economic sectors but among universities and society. This led universities involved to reconsider and adapt their roles within their local and regional contexts. In response to the evolving need for a knowledge-based economy and society, universities, as primary knowledge providers, endeavoured to: - Be adapted and responsive to societal pressures, - Develop a thoughtful plan for the academic third mission - Expand the universities’ social engagement dimension, - Transfer knowledge and technological innovation, and finally, offering new strategies for civic commitment and public engagement.