Digital transformation (DX) is a technology-driven continuous change process of companies and the entire society, it is about adopting disruptive technologies to increase productivity, value creation, and social welfare (Ebert 2018): it entails transformation of business, organisational activities, processes, required competences, and it impacts across society at several levels, from the individual to the collective perspective. Clearly, DX has huge effects on the labour market, which have been largely debated in the past few years. The OECD (2016) has documented that technological change has been a key driver behind the de-industrialisation in OECD’s countries, having resulted in slower job creation. Frey and Osborne (2013) argued that particularly automation had and has greatly impacted on the labour market in terms of labour savings: although this phenomenon has so far affected in particular low skilled workers, new business processes also necessarily affect middle management, management and highly skilled professionals/consultants, which are typical graduate jobs. Being an entrepreneur in the technological era requires a greater level of digital skills and a sound understanding of the digital transformation trends over time, in business and society. The DiTEMP project therefore proposes an action aimed at embedding Digital Transformation elements, with reference to its impact on field-specific labour markets, in curricular education by providing:-A methodological reference framework listing learning outcomes for the purpose, and pedagogical approaches suitable to reach educational goals;-A step-by-step guide on how to integrate in practice the framework in university settings;-A training course, and related learning materials, for teachers and career counsellors; -Four modules related to field-specific disciplines (Psychology, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Business and Economics; and Education) related to the impact of digital transformation in reference labour markets, and how to equip students in positively dealing with that;-Guidelines, both online and offline, to easily take advantage of the project results, and transfer them to other disciplinary fields.Two levels of intervention will be pursued:- Towards teachers and career counsellors, to make them aware of the impact of digital transformation in their own reference field markets;- Towards students, in order to increase their capability to act and manage the complexity and the rapid changes of the market as a result of digital transformation. The action would contribute at the same time to the evolution of internal processes at higher education institutions to support graduates’ employability, as: increased integration among academic body and support services; improved interdisciplinarity; enhanced capacity to embed the world of work into academic curricula.

DocEnhance aims to enhance transferable skills intelligence and integration into existing PhD programmes by i) involving the non-academic sector in developing a more employment and innovation-oriented curriculum for PhD programmes, ii) facilitating work-based learning and business-education partnerships through developing PhD courses, and iii) tracking of PhD graduate career paths. The major outputs of the project are a recommended transferable skills curriculum for PhD programmes, a novel course concept and material, and an open access career-tracking survey. The project will focus on transferable skills, as these skills facilitate the transition into employment and are widely applicable, regardless of scientific field and chosen career path. All project outputs will be provided as freely available Open Educational Resources through an online platform, the DocEnhance Platform. This platform will function as a comprehensive, user-friendly and equal access point for transferable skills intelligence and training in research education for researchers in all career stages, as well as a community and networking site, designed to live beyond the project lifetime. DocEnhance builds on a large, diverse and experienced consortium, several existing EU-projects and other initiatives to achieve these ambitious goals. The External Advisory Board and the Industry Reference Group represent the major stakeholders and end users of the project outputs, and their involvement is ensured through a co-creation approach that includes project evaluation and validation events. All project outputs will be piloted among several European partner universities during the project for proof-of-concept, and a project partner from Africa and member university of the the World University Network represents the interests of non-European countries.

At present, most European universities offer their students vocational guidance and placement services, albeit with different provisions: the European scenario is indeed quite diverse in this regard, also depending on the degree of integration of entrepreneurship training. Therefore, if some universities offer career development programs beginning in the first year of university career, others offer only basic information and advice to enter the world of work at the end of their university career. In summary, significant problems remain for students, who:• They are not sufficiently prepared to understand the skills necessary to perform professional roles: they often have information on the specific skills required, but they are not aware of how the role of the professional (ie transversal skills) is carried out;• They are not familiar with the world of work, so they do not have clear in mind what the settings and work environments actually mean;• Often they lack self-awareness of their abilities, particularly in relation to the professional career they wish to undertake.The need for dialogue between education and businesses is therefore not only linked to placement: placement is a consequence of suitable candidates for job vacancies, rather than a simple combination of degrees and jobs. Career services have workedfor years in promoting mobility through internships and traineeships, in order to improve the dialogue between universities and companies on the one hand and promote self-awareness and the development of transversal skills and transversal competences in the students on the other side.Sustainability should also be taken into account in this process: students should be equipped with self-reflection tools and self-assessment skills, should therefore acquire skills for professional development; however, they should also be offered opportunities to understand the professions and what skills the professional roles imply in real contexts. This means that students should have the opportunity to speak with companies before interviews for the internship or work.The project consortium consists of 4 Universities: University of Padua (IT, project leader), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (ES), Bachelor of Applied Sciences (FI), Ss. Cyril University and Methodius of Skopje (MK), as well as three partners specialized in the transition to the world of work: Fundación Universidad-Empresa (ES), Cramars (IT), and Anthea Consulting (IT).The V-TOURS project has increased and improved opportunities for dialogue between university students and businesses, creating a virtual place to access:• Online course focused on corporate culture and work ethics, addressing Research and innovation, Integrated quality (Quality - Environment - Safety), Corporate social responsibility, Corporate organization, Roles, tasks and competences within the company, Strategic transversal skills, etc.• Opportunities to participate in virtual tours in companies, such as online events in which company managers presented their business and organizational processes, and answered questions in real time;• Self-reflection exercises and self-assessment for students, in relation to the professional profiles faced by the interviews conducted during the virtual tours, the corporate culture and the work ethic.Based on the experience of 204 beta-testers and students involved in piloting, the entire course requires 125 to 135 hours of study.The V-TOURS platform provides a significant range of learning opportunities that promote the understanding of the workplace; promote the acquisition of professional development skills; improve student employability; facilitate mobility.The partner universities of the consortium will adopt the online course and related methods in their own learning offer already during the academic year 2018-2019, both as part of a degree course both as a complementary autonomous program offered, for example, by their career service. The course will be offered, at least, in English and in the partner's local language. It is also possible to update the platform with new content (video interviews, other educational resources, registration of virtual visits, etc.). The V-Tours platform is open and is available to other universities and companies that want to take advantage of this innovative tool.

"Given the unprecedented unemployment challenge in the EU and multiple commitments to get back European youth into work, it is of utmost importance of closing the skills gap between learning provisions and the universe of work. This would assist both, enterprises to employ new hires having relevant knowledge/skills and students in making their bumpy road from education to employment less challenging. In this light, a better cooperation between universities and businesses through provision of innovative education, international mobility, knowledge transfer, entrepreneurial education and secured placements is considered a cornerstone for the modernisation of higher education in Europe.The objective of the Project was to maximise intermediary organisations (IOs) impact in terms of speed, quality and innovative services provided to universities and business for improving employment readiness (students and graduates internships schemes and other measures). The Strategic Partnership brought together partners from EU-15 having solid experience in promoting university and business cooperation/entrepreneurial education and EU-25 that were ""breaking ice"" in the same areas only for a couple of years and ensures well calibrated geographic balance (Spain, UK (Scotland) and Lithuania) to employ in-house knowledge and skills for achieving the articulated objective. The partners engaged were previously cooperating in bilateral formats.The Strategic Partnership was established between:1) 3 intermediary organisations (Fundación Universidad-Empresa-FUE (Madrid), Saltire Foundation (Glsgow) and LPK/Partners 4 Value (Vilnius) being prominent actors in promoting business and universities cooperation, early investment in human capital for business leadership in their respective countries, 2) Universities (UCJC - the Spanish university that has a solid experience in developing academic modules for graduate internship programme jointly delivered with FUE and 5 lead Lithuanian universities that were willing to learn from good practices on how to prepare Curriculum for graduate programmes to be delivered jointly with ""Partners 4 Value"" under the financing instruments programmed at national level);3) Global Lithuanian Leaders - the NGO that was willing to learn and share on how to best engage professionals from diaspora to investing in young talents (placements/mentoring services). The joint work was organised for:a) creating a learning/experience/expertise exchange network to interact, codify and exchange information on good practices; b) producing tangible outputs to address common challenges/promote expansion of effective practices v) building closer working relationships that will go beyond the Project. The Guidelines on Establishing and Effectively Running Student/Graduate Internship Programmes are being used for knowledge transfer and fueling national/EU level debates and facilitating evidence based policy making. Main planned activities were:1) Preparation of peer learning methods on graduate internship framework and IOs roles;2) Delivery of the Joint Staff Training Event and the Intensive training Programme for participating Lithuanian universities' teaching staff;3) Development of Guidelines on Establishing and Effectively Running Students/Graduates Internship Programmes;4) Identification of Lithuanian Business needs for graduates skills;5) Preparation of Curriculum as an integral part of graduate internship programme to be launched in Lithuania.Triangular cooperation modality resulted in: A. The established and operationalised learning/knowledge exchange and management platform for promoting greater students/graduates employment readiness through intensified university-business cooperation.B. Codified practices on students/graduates internship schemes. Intellectual outputs developed that will be used for knowledge transfer purposes. C. Strenghtened capacity of participating organisations to provide quality and innovative services that would increase graduates employment readiness.The Project highly impacted on advanced professional development of the staff of participating organisations, modernised organisations to effectively address the challenge of skills gap by developing Curriculum that is responsive to current and emerging labour market needs nationally and across Europe. In the long run, the project will impact on improved students employment prospects and job satisfaction contributing to more competitive Europe."

By developing this project, the consortium aims to contribute for the resolution of several challenges, such as unemployment among young graduates; difficulties to attract private funds to research; the academics' needs for constant pedagogical skills update; difficulties to promote the transference of knowledge; the difficulty to attract students from social disadvantaged classes and mantain them; the need to promote entrepreneur minds to contribute to decrease economic and social crisis; the use of crowdsourcing as a tool to create a network; the difficulty of attracting users from different regions and finally, the need to improve students' career guidance.In order to achieve the purposed goals, were defined three core activities: the platform development, where different stakeholders will be connected; the platform room to promote its use; and the entrepreneurship, crowdsourcing and employability stakeholders' training to help them to improve these skills and create opportunities through the use of the platform.