Engineering has a pivotal role to play in solving humanitarian challenges, enabling communities to progress towards sustainable development. Because the issues of humanitarianism are not just engineering problems, there is need to introduce new designs of engineering education to embrace and exploit combinational expertise in community-based engineering. ENHANCE aims at nurturing humanitarian attributes through engineering education for serving unsupported communities effectively and responsibly, in identifying problems and defining sustainable solutions. The novelty of ENHANCE lies in integrating highly diverse, yet complementary, expertise in engineering Higher Education (HE). The objectives of the project involve: (a) mapping professional attributes for mitigating humanitarian challenges over the next 15 years; (b) assessing and evaluating current graduate engineering programmes in Partner Institutions under the enablers needed to ensure humanitarian attributes to graduates; (c) setting up tools for evaluating graduate engineering programmes; (c) building capacity in the field of community-based engineering with interventions in curriculum content, assessment and feedback, methods of delivery; (d) tasting, adopting and implementing in current curricula innovative (i.e. inclusive, interdisciplinary, problem-based) teaching and learning methodologies; (e) developing and testing the ENHANCE Training Kit for staff development/training. Outputs of the project will be disseminated to audiences from HE educators and students in the partner countries; modern media (podcasts, video’s, etc.) will be utilised to share insights with a wide audience. ENHANCE will allow us to ensure advancement of community-based engineering directly to a range of Official Development Assistance (ODA) recipients and to instigate longer-term developments with beneficiaries and end users. Nevertheless, outputs of this project will be applicable to many other countries facing global challenges.

The role of a modern University in the society is dramatically changed due to economic, social and, as a matter of fact, technological revolutions we are living in. In contrast to a traditional Humbolt University model, Universities across the globe become knowledge service providers to the economy and society at large. In this context, the latest explosion of Massive Open Online educational services/Courses (MOOCs, 2012 was declared as a Year of MOOCs, NYT) is confirming the general trend and opens new avenues for linking Universities and their external customers via powerful ICT means. When Europe is one of the global leaders in MOOC technologies, this innovation is still to come to Southeast Asia and the mission of the COMPETEN-SEA project is to enable the transfer of European experiences to the local partner Universities. The overall project aim is to make a significant contribution towards strengthening relations between higher education systems in Southeast Asia and wider economic and social environment by building organizational, pedagogical and technical capacities in local Universities to design, develop, market and deliver MOOCs for various economic and social problems. The project will implement the following activities:- Regional MOOC SWOT analysis and feasibility study to identify best strategies for educational outreach using MOOCs- Intensive MOOC Capacity Building programme aimed at building local capacities to develop MOOCs addressing local educational needs and deliver them to target users- Development and evaluation of the system of MOOCs addressing urgent socio-economic development needs - Dissemination and awareness raising campaign addressing academic communities in the region, as well as other key stakeholders: policy makers, potential users of MOOCs (e.g. public bodies, NGOs, businesses, etc.), general public. Importantly, the project will undertake efforts to integrate the regional MOOC specialists with the European MOOC movement.

MICROCASA is the first international project aimed at sharing the European experiences and building institutional capacities in Southeast Asia to co-create, promote and deliver short competence-oriented educational units leading to micro-credentials with the goal of solving various economic and social problems. Focusing on different aspects of micro-credentialing, for instance course content co-creation, educational technology, transparent quality assurance, technologies for issuance and verification of digital micro-credentials, the project builds a comprehensive set of competences and technical capacities in Southeast Asian Universities. Leveraging on the partner networks, as well as on the links to the national educational authorities and regional initiatives, MICROCASA has an ambition to have a systemic impact on the ASEAN region as a whole. The project plan builds around the following groups of activities:•Regional Micro-credentials Study and Roundtables, which will allow gathering factual data and experts opinions about the barriers and enablers for introducing micro-credentials into the regional HEIs, as well as to benchmark the regional approaches to the ones in the EU;•Micro-credentials capacity building Programme covering all abovementioned aspects of micro-credentialing;•Pilot development, delivery and evaluation of the set of Digital Competences courses granting micro-credentials;•Targeted awareness raising and dissemination activities spreading the excellence beyond the project consortium.On the European side, the project consortium includes 3 European Universities with complementary competences, Italian NARIC Agency and the quality assurance expert company. The representative group of 6 Southeast Asian University includes central agenda-setting national Universities, as well as Universities with regional development missions.

The Indonesian Higher Education sector is facing significant change as it moves from a phase of expansion with increased access to higher education, to one where the focus is on enhancing the quality of that education. The reform and restructuring of the higher education (HE) system in Indonesia needed to deliver on these objectives is being slowed by a lack of leadership and management capacity in the HE sector. Universities in Indonesia need to build the capacity of their leaders for governance, strategic planning and management in order to deliver these reforms. The project addresses the need for development for university leaders and managers in Indonesia through the creation and implementation of a structured leadership and management development network (LMDN) and an associated programme (LMDP). When creating the network and programme for higher education institutions in Indonesia, it will create the constitution and operating procedures for the network; structures and materials to support the programme; and identify and equip dedicated facilitates where the development activities will take place. Learning will take place through networking meetings, lectures from visiting speakers, action learning sets, national management research projects, and exercises to strengthen professional networks. The project will ensure staff training workshops are developed and executed for the Indonesian university staff responsible for implementing the new network and programme. During the life of the project, 500 Indonesian leaders and managers will engage with the LMDN, and 208 will be developed through the LMDP with a demonstrable impact on their capacity to operate the governance, strategic plans and management of HEIs. In the year following the project, it is expected that a minimum of 192 additional leaders will benefit from taking the LMDP and that at least 14 additional Indonesian universities will have adopted it, enhancing the capacity for reform nationally.