Jordanian medical schools graduate close to 2000 students annually. This number far exceeds the approximately 400 available residency training positions. On average, medical students have two weeks of training in outpatient primary healthcare settings during their entire medical school. The majority of their training takes place in an inpatient setting or in specialty clinics. Due to the lack of residency positions, the vast majority of the graduates directly begin working as General Practitioners (GPs) in an outpatient setting. A large portion of these GPs find jobs within the ministry of health (MOH) and often work in rural areas without nearby mentors available. The resulting impact is a drastic discrepancy of care between those clinics with residency-trained physicians and those staffed by GPs. The main goal of our Family Medicine Diploma Program is to increase overall health in Jordan by providing an increased of well-trained physicians while also decreasing healthcare costs by decreasing costly referrals and unneeded tests. GPs will be given valuable on-the-job experience in an outpatient setting under the supervision of a board-certified Family Medicine physician. GPs will receive enough training to confidently and accurately develop a broad differential diagnosis, decide upon a specific diagnosis, and properly treat the disease. Heavy emphasis will be on critical thinking and communication skills. This will increase the quality of care the patients receive leading to better health in the entire community. Furthermore, since the physicians will be more confident in their clinical judgment, they will refer less patients to specialists. They will refer less patients to specialists. They will also order less unnecessary tests and procedures. All of these outcomes will decrease overall health costs and decrease disease burden.

The project is aiming the development of an adaptive curriculum in engineering education that is based on digital learning resources for mobile devices, responds to the requirements for modernization and accessibility of the Jordanian high education system to improve the educational integration of disadvantaged learners in the educational system - groups in risk whose special needs or socioeconomic status significantly restrict their ability for adequate education. Results 1.Analysis of user needs in different contexts and existing curriculum at three Partners universities. Study, oriented toward assessing the extent of use of m-technologies by the specified groups of learners and opening opportunities for their inclusion in the learning process. 2. Mobile Digital Resources (MDR) Model - supports the didactic features of mobile technologies in order to adapt them to the training conditions of disadvantaged groups of people3. Designed educational scenarios: 1)Use of mobile technologies to expand training opportunities for students with special needs;3)Use of mobile devices for distant training of socio-economic disabled people.4.Developed and adapted mobile applications and digital educational resources, implemented across a range of disciplines in the field of engineering education and across institutions, for the needs of disadvantaged groups education and training.Impact1.Strengthening the institutional capacities of the 3 Jordanian universities.2. Increasing the quality of the Jordanian higher education system by promoting the adoption of the MDR Model as a model for a wider reform of the education in the domain of engineering education for people with special needs.3. Conclusions about the effectiveness of using mobile technologies for disadvantaged groups.

The aim of this project is to establish an interdisciplinary master program in rehabilitation sciences at Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). Higher education in rehabilitation sciences is almost lacking in the region. Additionally, the entry level (bachelor degree) in this field in Jordan focuses heavily on the theory basis with no equivalent clinical reasoning and sound practical education. There is, therefore, a widening gap between the products of higher education institutions in this field and the skills sets and competencies demanded by the job market. The field is also fragmented between different disciplines that are not used to cooperate in teams (i.e. there is a lack of multidisciplinary team concept). All of this has an impact on the service provided in Jordan at the time that there is an increasing need for the rehabilitative services in Jordan because of the increased numbers of the traumatized refugees. Recognizing this need to offer a program addressing the described challenges, the department of rehabilitation sciences within JUST is planning to develop a master program in rehabilitation sciences. Our goal is to prepare students to be caring and reflective ‘paracademic’ practitioners who are clinical scholars with the ability to provide client-centered, efficient health care service, to critically evaluate the scientific basis of practice, to adapt to and initiate change, and to become life- long learners. A further aim of this project is to implement a modern innovative international program. Therefore, on-line rehabilitation education, a new trend pedagogy, will be adopted and utilized by instructors, students and clinicians from all consortium partners. The target is to provide a real-world learning environment that will facilitate students' acquisition of strong skills set, allowing them to enter the job market ready and equipped to serve.

Water scarcity has various negative side-effects on river ecosystem and riverine biodiversity with the deteriorated water quality and quantity. Due to global climate change, a continuous increase in the proportion of intermittent rivers and aquifers is envisaged that will make them the dominant water bodies in the Mediterranean basin. To our best knowledge, hydrological, physico-chemical and ecological processes in intermittent rivers are scarce and not sufficiently supporting specific management options under the characteristic flush and drought conditions of intermittent rivers. The INWAT project aims at estimating intermittent river and groundwater quality and evaluating environmental problems associated to water scarcity in the seven Mediterranean catchments (Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria) representing a wide range of management scenarios to ensure the transferability and further impact of the developed decision-support system from EU members to EU associated and MENA countries. Specific objectives are: (i) To develop innovative methods for hydrological monitoring and innovative hydrological modelling tools tailor-made to intermittent rivers representing the widest possible diversity of management scenarios under water scarcity conditions, such as sea intrusion and groundwater recharge, groundwater water quality issues. (ii) To improve the knowledge and capacity on pollution sources and processes naturally attenuating contamination by chemicals in intermittent rivers and aquifers. (iii) To develop methodologies for monitoring and assessing the ecological status of intermittent rivers with a particular focus on the development and refinement of novel biological indicators including metagenomic approaches. (iv) To develop a decision-support system with stakeholders involved in water management for the design of management actions to help minimizing and mitigating the effects of global change in water-scarce regions.