CHECK IT HE aims to enhance HE response to hate and extremism on HEI campuses, by building capacity, knowledge and skills, bringing together innovative projects and practices in the field. CHECKIT HE, will help HE educators, wider HE staff, policy makers and students unions, as our key target groups, to enhance inclusion, challenge hate and extremism and make campuses safer and better places for all. Tertiary education has a vital role to play in supporting tolerant, civically engaged societies. The CHECKIT HE consortium is made up of teams from: Birmingham City University, UK; Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi, Turkey; the Western Balkans Institute, Serbia; Minho University, Portugal: the Centre for Advancement of Research and Development in Educational Technology, Cyprus and Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland. These partners represent a strong geographical reach and engagement in networks across Europe and also are from countries that experience diverse HE student demographics and campus based hate and extremism. We are a dedicated team who want CHECKIT HE to positively support change in relation to identify, preventing and acting against hate and extremism in all its forms. Studenthood should be a time of academic, personal/skills growth, development and positive change, but, sadly, Student Union Reports across Europe, show that students face increasing hate-based abuse, hate speech, risks from radicalisation and extremism on campuses. Some students are more likely to be targets of hate and extremism than others, such as those from BAME groups (including refugees and migrants), women, LGBT communities, people of various religions and disabled people. Examples of hate on campus, can include hate speech, cyber abuse, physical abuse and violence, gendered abuse, bullying and active exclusion. Extremism can be seen in patterns of formal, organised extremist organisation activity on campuses, radicalisation and violence, especially around right wing hate hate, Islamaphobia and antisemitism. These are challenging issues for higher education and societies. CHECKIT HE responds and innovates by addressing the issues of hate practices/behaviour and extremism within HEI communities and providing tools for HEI staff to identify, challenge and counter these when exhibited on campus. HEIs should be leading the way in addressing these important issues, which impact upon wider societies too. Indeed, some are, but practices and innovations are not being shared effectively. Collated and broadly disseminated innovative mechanisms by which HEIs can counter hate and exclusion, and provision of pan-European easy access training resources, are not currently available. CHECKIT directly addresses this contemporary issue, which is vital for the development, diversity, skills capacity building of all HEIs. HE staff need to be able to understand, identify, check, challenge and take action against hate and exclusions and this is what the outputs, outcomes and impact of the CHECKIT HE project are designed to support. The project outputs build to help HE and other stakeholders to challenge hate and extremism and these include: a report, six up-to-the-minute training toolkits on addressing diverse forms of hate and extremism and an app that can be used to identify and then select strategies and activities to counter these. The outputs are free and open access, enabling a wide variety of groups and individuals outside HEIs, Students organisations and policy makers, to use them to enhance their own work countering hate and extremism (this might include a wide range of NGOs, criminal justice practitioners, public authorities, schools, colleges, other non-degree level educational institutions and the broad-ranging EU youth workforce). CHECKIT HE aims to directly engage 135,000 people, as target groups and stakeholders, across the three years of the project, making a high impact contribution to helping to challenge hate and extremism in HE and beyond.The tolerance of hate and extremism on campus for HEIs can lead to social exclusion, distress and mental health issues, lower attainment in targeted groups, drop out of education and inequality in life chances post-graduation, which is bad for students and for HEIs. However, these negative impacts are also a problem for the health and sustainability of wider society, in preventing the spread of hate and extremism and ensuring public safety. CHECKIT HE will deliver longer term benefits for all, in relation to helping prevent hate, radicalisation and terrorism and by HEIs leading in the positive promotion of societal inclusion and tolerance.

Recent developments with COVID-19 and pandemics that threaten our way of life and work are forcing organizations and governments to rethink the way we meet, work, teach, learn and collaborate. A big push towards online education, distance learning and virtual teams is evident across the globe. According to UNESCO (2020), as of late March 2020, over 850 million students and youth – roughly half of the world’s student population – had to stay away from schools and universities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Education is asked to respond to this challenge by offering courses at a distance. So far, the large majority of content was offered by video conferences and Learning Management Systems. There is a strong need to develop more immersive experiences for learners.Although the need of online courses has increased, a few universities have been experimenting with eLearning as a teaching method or making online lectures a part of the curriculum (Bezegová, 2017). Same situation in partner countries, Romania, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Spain, and Serbia, where eLearning is not widely used in HE. So far, there is not any common strategy on how universities can build a strategy on how to adopt eLearning in their teaching and learning.With more than 90% of the student population going fully online during the last few months, there is a stronger need than ever to reform higher education (UNESCO, 2020). The Bologna Process Implementation Report cited earlier, confirmed that blended learning is the most common across European Universities. The trend in higher education towards e-learning, and in particular blended learning, was already visible in 2014 when an EUA survey found that 91% of institutions offered blended learning (i.e. integrating eLearning into conventional teaching) and 82% offered online courses (Gaebel 2014; EUA 2019). It is generally accepted that these trends will change dramatically in the coming months, since COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of eLearning across the globe. In a systematic review of research in the use of e-learning, several gaps are identified among university staff, which include lack of strategic understanding of the need for e-learning, the lack of skills to design and deliver online learning, and the need to improve assessment of education offered online.A total of 7 Partners from 6 EU countries come together to address the following objectives:OBJECTIVES1. To build the capacity of HE teaching staff, academics, learning designers, and teaching staff in integrating eLearning in the design and delivery of courses. (IO1, IO2, IO3)2. Develop innovative quality resources for HE faculty members to support the adoption of eLearning in higher education (IO1, IO2, IO3)3. To raise awareness on the need and value to integrate eLearning in HE in close cooperation with all stakeholders involved, including policy makers. (IO1-4)4. Improve the supply of quality higher education opportunities for all. (IO1-4)TARGET GROUPSThe project builds on the existing knowledge developed by partners and aims at supporting higher education institutions develop innovative policies and practices for integrating eLearningin designing and teaching courses. The primary target groups for this project include:- Higher education faculty and instructors- Policymakers and university leadership teams- Learning designers, educational technologists, and support staff- Higher education students (indirect target group)INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTSThe project Intellectual Outputs are:-IO1. Toolkit on how to adopt a strategy for eLearning in HE-IO2. Training course-IO3. eLearning platform and MOOC-IO4 - Policy and practice guidelines for integrating eLearning in Higher education.The expected results of the project are:-Improved capacity of universities to shift from traditional learning to e-learning, modernize their teaching and learning, their curricula, and practices-Improved competencies for faculty, learning designers, and university support staff to empower them to integrate eLearning in university curricula and courses.-Improve the quality and relevance of teaching and learning online in Higher Education.-Greater understanding of the uses of advanced online tools.-Increase the competitiveness of the European Higher Education sector.

There are strong signs that local, regional, national and international youth engagement is shaping many aspects of life through creative digital means, Greta Thumberg, the internationally renowned youth activist, utilises the creative digital sphere for her activism ,and to reach out to other young people and the powerful alike; but there are many other young people doing so, and there are also yet many others who wish to get involved but need help, support and skills. Youth workers with creative digital skills are vital to encouraging, skilling and motivating young people in this field. The context of DigiSMARTS is the need for young people to, not only have good digital skills, but to be able to apply these to engage with citizenship, democracy and social change, to become influencers and activists, skilled-up and ready to shape the future. DigiSMARTS, addresses the priority of supporting youth workers in the broad European youth workforce, through providing online open access, free, educational resources, taking them through the steps required to run a successful online activism project, working with youth in co-producing change in an area such as environmental concerns, employment and skills, crime levels or social inclusion/equality issues. The objectives of the DigiSMARTS project are to:-Provide an excellent quality, free to access, open educational platform, delivering knowledge & skills on how to use and implement innovative creative digital arts projects & activities for youth workers across Europe.-Create a free to access set of open educational resources, which provide a firm foundation of creative digital skills, whilst also provide built in reflective opportunities for youth workers to audit their own skills levels in creative digital practices & plan how to inject these into their own practice & activities with youth,-Create excellent quality educational resources on this area, with youth workers and groups of youth themselves, ensuring that the project outputs and resources meet a broad range of stakeholder and beneficiary needs,-Disseminate the education resources broadly, ensuring that a range of youth and youth-related workers know about and access these, thus having extensive impact on youth work across Europe, upskilling youth work and positively changing the experience of young people.-Influence local, regional, national and EU policy on creative digital activism, building youth employability skills and digital inclusion to support innovative digital arts and literacy, supporting greater youth civic engagement and enabling youth to be activists around vital issues in societies.The DigiSMARTS consortium is a mixed-sector team of six HEIs and NGOs, who all either work in the field of youth services, who train youth workers or research youth work issues: Birmingham City University (UK); the Western Balkans Institute (Serbia); CARDET (Cyprus); Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi (Turkey); TURUN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY (Finland) & Polygonal (Italy). They will work together to create Open Access Educational Resources for youth worker across Europe, using work package model, where one organisation leads in creating the resource, supported by the others. The participants and main target group in the project, will be youth workers and also youth policy makers at various levels. Young people themselves will also be involved in DigiSMARTS on advisory and qualify committees. The activities of DigiSMARTS will create open educational resources, which, it is aimed will downloaded at least 100,000 times across the project lifetime, influencing the skills and work of 25,000 youth workers across Europe, which will mean impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people. The results will include a report from dialogue on needs and digital skills for activism with youth workers and youth, an educational platform, four open access educational resources and one open access resource illustrating examples of youth work digital activism projects. There will also be 12 free webinar training opportunities, for youth workers and policy makers. The impact envisaged is that the project influences youth workers across Europe, with 12,000 new digital activism projects starting as a result of the project by 2023. The longer term benefits will be felt by youth, as the beneficiaries of the youth worker skills created by DigiSMARTS, it is expected that youth will gain digital activism skills for activism, increasing their general digital employability, leading to greater opportunities in the workforce and, more generally, supporting creative digital industries due to a greater skilled employment pool of young people.

Effective provision of preschool education sets the foundation for children’s lifelong learning, social integration, personal development and employability. It directly correlates with quality preschool teachers education and training and their Continuous Professional Development (CPD) practices.Within the KEY project ECEC practitioners, educators and regulators in Serbia and Montenegro join efforts with EU partners to design modern pathways to efficient CPD system for preschool teachers based on the introduction of professional learning communities (PLC) approach, going beyond the training courses required for teachers certification encouraging them to review the learning needs, acquire new knowledge/competences through formal, informal and non-formal learning throughout their careers while enabling HEIs to provide students with competences they need to adapt to globalised settings, where creativity, innovation, initiative, and commitment to continuous learning are as important as knowledge.Establishing 6 ECEC learning hubs at participating HEIs as operational facilities supporting teachers and practitioners training specialized in 5 different areas (inclusive education – work with socially deprived children and their families, Roma and migrant children; education for sustainable development across the curriculum; ICT in preschool education, work with gifted children and their families, teaching English to preschool children) is the project main output. Other products include CPD courses and materials, Guidelines on M&E and QA in CPD, CPD model of standards, introduction of Moodle platform in CPD. In sustained efforts to address equality and inclusion, project outputs will be prepared in Serbian, English, Romani and Hungarian.KEY project will impact ECEC learning communities in Serbia and Montenegro, bringing about greater value of teachers profession and students and young professionals learning competences and skills mandatory for their careers in 21 century.

EMBRACE HE, is a project specially designed to help address problems of mental health and lack of wellbeing in students in higher education. The mental health and wellbeing of youth in Europe is a high concern and this group includes students, who similar to other young people, often suffer anxiety, depression, attempted suicide and serious mental health problems. If not addressed, many of these problems can continue onto later life, in employment, family life and society and can also negatively effect day to day activities of study, progression and achievement in study, participation in social life and activities, networking and developing interpersonal skills. EMBRACE HE mobilises partners from across Europe to focus upon this ongoing problem for all HE settings, to create tools to help staff better address mental health and wellbeing issues in student populations. The EMBRACE HE consortium team is comprise of: Birmingham City University, UK; Universidad de Navarra, Spain; Panepistimio Kristi, Greece; Vilinius University, Lithuania and educational NGO, the Western Balkans Institute from Serbia. These partners represent a strong geographical reach and engagement in networks across Europe and also are from countries that experience different types of mental health and wellbeing issues with HE student populations.EMBRACE HE brings together models of innovative best practice and embedded curricular, extra-curricular, pedagogical, pastoral and collaborative activities (with Students’ Unions, external stakeholder etc.), to address student mental illness and wellbeing, with a unique open access toolkit training model. The aim for EMBRACE HE is to enhance innovation in HE response to student mental wellbeing by enabling learning, implementation of projects and practice to address mental wellbeing issues in HE and with this, to increase the evidence base with the highest quality information and materials to allow HEIs to make informed choices about methods to respond to student wellbeing issues. Finally EMBRACE HE aims to help educators and associated professionals in HEs, as our key target group, to enhance student wellbeing, to tackle lower grades, drop out and poor life chances post-graduation, higher rates of suicide and para-suicide, substance misuse, self-harm, use of health services for mental health issues or hospitalisation and social exclusion/lack of participation in HE and society. The target groups of EMBRACE HE, are all teaching, learning, support, administrative, managerial/executive and information staff working in HEI's, HE policy makers & student representative organisations. The beneficiary group will be students across Europe, in every type of HEI context, studying from foundation level to doctoral studies.EMBRACE HE will: - design and create a programme of activities that will bring together best practices in an easily implemented format to support HEI's in supporting student mental wellbeing. - provide training, tools and resources for academics and academic-related staff in HE, who support students, - create policy resources for HE wide implementation and action planning, structured activities at the institutional, systems and class room levels, to support good student wellbeing, - share and disseminate the above and have impact in Europe and beyond, in enhancing the capacity of HE to support student wellbeing needs.EMBRACE HE has been developed to bring together, through an innovative open learning toolkit approach, the good, exciting and effective practice that is already visible but poorly consolidated across Europe. It then provides the knowledge & skills for HEIs to implement innovations in their organisations.The partners will each lead a work package or programme of activities to develop toolkits on specific issues of contemporary importance for student mental health and wellbeing. This methodology will also allow each partner to input information into each work package too, to bring together innovation and best practice from a wide range of sources. The results of the project will be a positive enhancement of practice in working with student mental health and wellbeing in 25% of higher education providers in Europe, with 30,000 downloads of the toolkits and other resources from the website, multiplication events & webinars will lead to over 50,000 participants using EMBRACE HE resources over the project lifetime. The project will have high impact because it's free and open resources and networking opportunities on the EMBRACE HE website will facilitate and encourage more innovative responses to mental health and wellbeing across the HE sector and support further future positive change. The longer term benefits will be that HE will become more responsive with increased student mental health and wellbeing initiatives and that other projects can build on this foundation, leading to high standards of mental health and support for students across the EU and beyond.