The central aim of “FINancial management, Accounting and Controlling for capacity building of public administration” (FINAC) project application is contribute to the higher quality of budgeting, money management, finance management, accounting and control, in Albanian and Serbian public administration. This aim will be achieved throughout meeting specific objectives:- Designing and developing three new master degree programmes in Serbia and two new master degree programmes in Albania in the field of financial management, accounting and controlling for capacity building of public administration in Albania and Serbia,- Provision of trainings at university centers/institutes for public administration employees in Serbia,- Modernization of one master degree programee in the field of public financial management in Serbia.The project team will undertake a range of activities that will contribute to meeting these specific objectives. Thus FINAC project will contribute to the better quality of financial management, accounting and controlling in the public administration. That will be possible to measure through: knowledge/competencies of public administrators at positions of financial, accounting, auditing and control managers; precise and visible budget formulated in line with national legal framework; level of cash liquidity in public administration; financial management that defines responsibilities and power in public administration; accounting statements reflecting internal and external standards that are in line with policy documents in public administration and throughout financial control procedures that are in line with controlling policy for documentation in public administration. The project will contribute to the better controlling procedure and higher level of transparency of finance and accounting in public administration according to national priorities, as well principles of the EU accession of the regional countries.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

Higher education sector is an area with high potential and relevance for the overall development of Albanian society and economy. For a pro-European development of the country, young academics, researchers, project managers, innovators and students are of crucial importance. Thus, it is a main motivation for this consortium to enhance an enabling higher education environment that supports university to society collaborations in order to co-produce knowledge and research with impact that is not only academically insightful, but also applicable to the development of Albania in light of European integration. The project strengthens institutional and human resources capacities in HEIs in Albania through the establishment of Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Brokerage unit (USIA) that link in an institutionalised and sustainable way university to business, government, civil society and media. The capacity building programme, models, guidelines, best practices, strategies and pilot programmes of cooperation (Second a Researcher, Policy Lab, Policy Challenge Fund) contribute to modernisation of HEIs governance and their integration in European Higher Education area. USIA will set up partnerships and launch collaborative projects between university and business sector, SMEs, start-ups, NGOs, CSOs, think tanks, public bodies and media with the aim to co-produce knowledge and research that are applicable to local priorities. The project will establish and expand a Quadruple Helix network and online platform which will offer networking, matchmaking, brokerage, dissemination, competences development, support and valorisation for academic and non-academic actors. The project widens participation in Erasmus+ CBHE by bringing together different typology of HEIs in Albania and actors from civil society, public and private sector. The project prioritises women in academia, research and innovation.

EU HEIs have to cope with the Digital transformation and the challenges created by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many universities have suddenly moved their lessons online leaving aside other activities usually performed in presence, such as laboratories. Practical experiences are crucial for STEM and engineering subjects for the students further employability and to acquire pivotal technical and social skills, and experimental skills (set up an experiment, use real equipment, elaborate acquired data). Virtual labs and simulations allow to mimic the lab setting but, for how realistic they are, they cannot include every real situation. Remote labs could be a solution allowing students to access remotely to the physical labs to perform practical experiences.Several EU universities have already developed their own remote labs, but by developing its own solution, so it is very difficult to reuse programming code and share the experiment results. The project objective is to design, test and validate an innovative standard educational model and ICT solution for the Augmented Reality-AR remote labs setting up on renewable energies topics in EU universities.Project target groups and participants are university professors, technical staff and students of STEM and engineering subjects, actors of the renewable energy sector. Especially, during the project at least 15 professors, 25 students, 5 technical staff for each partner university will be interviewed for the mapping phase and 10 students each partner university for the testing and validation phase.The main project activities are: mapping of the hands-on/remote labs in EU universities, designing of the standard ICT-based learning solution and pedagogical model of AR remote laboratories, remote lab ICT system and learning management system (LMS) setting up, developing of experimental modules/projects on renewable energy, testing and validation in each partner university.In order to map the currents labs at EU university a bottom up approach will be applied integrating a literature review with a field work research. The AR remote lab model developing and testing follows the Project Based Learning-PBL method based on the constructivism approach. It engages students in complex tasks by developing the ability to use facts (knowledge) to solve problems. This is particularly important for practical learning contents where the theoretical knowledge is based on the practical experience. The Virtual PBL allows to promote the students practical/active learning into an online environment in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback and continually refine their knowledge.The project main results to be achieved will impact on target groups as follow:- empowerment of universities capacities to develop innovative educational learning paths with the support of ICT-based and automatic control systems to allow students a flexible access to integrated theoretical and practical learning contents. - enrichment of the university staff and professors opportunity of learning and teaching with creative and more innovative training methods based on ICT solutions; - improvement of students experimental skills, working groups and critical-thinking, ICT skills in using remote control and IT tools;- promotion of the access to practical activities to the students with disabilities. The project main tangible results are:1.Report on best practices and standard model for remote labs setting up in EU universities (IO1) designed based on the mapping of both remote and physical labs on renewable energy at EU partners universities;2.ICT system for the connection at distance of the physical laboratories (IO2) with the support of the Augmented Reality (AR) technique. The system includes a LMS platform (SCORM) (IO4) as users interface to host the experimentation projects, collect and analyse the experiment data and students’ reporting/self-assessment results;3.remote experimentation modules/projects on renewable energy topic for the performing of remote practical activities (IO3);4.testing and validation report on remote Laboratories setting up in EU partners universities (IO5).Potential longer term benefits of the project will be the adoption by the universities of the ICT-based solution for AR remote labs setting up to be applied/transferred to other preexisting laboratories and subjects of study. Universities and students can benefit for an easy and creative distance access to the learning contents both theoretical and practical. Besides, the solution will be designed for the developing of complex experiments applicable to research activities creating synergies between learning and research, thus promoting access to scientific research. The experimental modules could be further adapted to overcome obstacles of making hands-on laboratories usable for learning disabled students, who experience difficulties in following the instructions to perform remote experiments

In respect to last academic year, during which the Erasmus project had been planned for the II semester, in the academic year 2015 – 2016 our students’ mobilities covered the whole academic year. Being an online, open university we’ve been having a larger number of students workers, but in the course of the last three years students’ average age decreased leading to a higher number of applications and mobilities effectively carried out. In respect to the previous years, students and staff mobilities have been carried out in a larger and more various framework. According to our internationalization strategy, illustrated in the Erasmus Policy Statement 2014 – 2020, our main purposes are: the increase of high quality international master students, the setting of international and English taught programmes, the support to promoters of international, cooperation agreements, for the implementation of both student and staff mobility. In this academic year we had 29 mobilities: 23 students and 6 staff mobilities for training. 9 SMS: in the first semester 5 students in Spain (Oviedo and Madrid), 1 student in Paris (France) and in the second semester 3 students in Spain (Oviedo and Madrid).14 SMP: in the first semester 3 students in Spain, 2 in Greece, 1 in Sweden and in the second semester 6 students in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid), 1 in Sweden, 1 in Greece.6 STA, staff mobility for training.INCOMING: 2 students from Oviedo (Spain) and 3 staff from UDIMA – Universidad a distancia de Madrid (Spain).Our activities are structured in different phases (preparation, implementation and follow up) for supporting students before, during and after their mobilities, starting from the Erasmus call for students applications that is published in our university website and the newsletter that is sent to students. We periodically arrange Open Days aimed to the Erasmus project promotion. Students applications are considered and evaluated, then selected according to suitability, credit and merit standards. At the same time the Erasmus office guarantees its support to students by providing them with all the necessary information about the hosting institutions, such as activities and exams calendar, academic offer, language courses, useful documents to be prepared before, during and after the mobility and deadlines for applying in the foreign institution. Students are also materially provided with all the useful papers such as LA and Erasmus Charter for Higher Education and they are helped in the choice of the exams to be indicated in their Learning Agreement for study, in order to be guaranteed about the future recognition of credits awarded abroad and illustrated in the Transcript of Records. Support to students is carried out by the Erasmus students coordinator through email exchanges, phone calls, face to face and in collaboration with the office in charge of approving and recognizing the awarded credits. Before the mobility, students are sent the OLS assessment and according to the students requests they receive the access to the online language course. The final grant percentage is payed to students since they do the final OLS language test and bring to the Erasmus office all the necessary final documentation (Transcript of Records and student mobility certificate) on their return to Italy. Regarding the incoming mobilities, we receive the applications from students making sure they are sent respecting our predicted deadlines. We provide any further information on our university academic offer and about the calendar of our activities, in addition to any explanation provided in our institutional website. Even if our institution is an open, online university we arrange face to face meeting between students and professors and classes. At the end of the path, we release the required documents, such as the final mobility certificate and the Transcript of Records. Regarding the staff mobility we plan an agenda for meeting, for carrying out workshop and visits to our university buildings: exam offices, multimedia and didactic production laboratories. Our project has globally improved from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view, because of the increase of European universities with whom we signed new bilateral agreements for students and staff mobilities. At the same time the number of enterprises hosting our students for traineeship increased too, contributing to enlarge more and more the global framework of partner institutions as well as the opportunities for our students to make such an important experience. We had many requests of mobility extending period, globally corresponding to the 40% on the total amount of mobilities and often requested by the hosting enterprises themselves.