The global objective of RaRe2 project is to create a flexible and resilient Holistic Ecosystem Platform, enabled by the interaction among many European organizations cooperating in the fast reconfiguration of process chains, through collaborative systems and adaptable workforce upskilling. RaRe2 will help make the European manufacturing landscape sustainably robust to unexpected market change, sudden disruption, legal change, or every kind of crisis and changing scenario including climate and weather related. RaRe2 has set strategic and operational objectives, which include innovative digital solutions and knowledge about standards and methodologies, which can support the quickness in reconfiguration and certifications at early stages. RaRe2 will enable the generation of a green wave that will early detect an upcoming issue, alert the decision maker, quickly propose simulations about potential new destinations (adjacent reasonable sectors and products), new routes (how to produce it, with internal reconfiguration and supply chain involvement), the plan to put the change in place, the expected speed of each connected node of the new route, robustness. Key pillars: i) AI-based early detection of reconfiguration needs, from internal and external sources; ii) rapid adaptation of products, processes and supply chain to the changed situations; iii) empowering and upskilling humans, supporting decision makers to make fast and concrete decisions and quickly ramp up of the workforce. RaRe2 will be exploited to create a strong and reliable network of organizations interested in cooperating in rapid reconfiguration events, able to take into account social, market, legal, sustainability and economical factors. The consortium is based on 22 European partners, which will develop and validate the solution in four industrial pilots plus one value chain oriented demonstrator. The International Cooperation is guaranteed by a pilot which has the main headquarter in Japan.

"Soft skills, according to ESCO’s (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) definition, are the cornerstone for the personal development of a person; the building blocks for the development of the ""hard"" skills and competences required to succeed in the labour market. Success in the labour market is seen to be more and more dependent upon possessing the hybrid skills – technical and soft skills – that employers increasingly value.Soft skills can be distinguished into personal and interpersonal skills or interpersonal qualities and personal attributes that one possesses. This conceptualises soft skills in somewhat abstract terms and characterises them as innate. The idea on which this project is based sees soft skills as having “hard” component, which makes it possible to develop them by learning using appropriate tools, procedures and methods.The human resource functions within companies often use soft-skills as a catch-all term without ever really defining them. But when placed in context – e.g. problem solving in relation to a systems failure on a production line – this might be regarded as a “not-so-soft-skill” (NSSS). This because there are tools, procedures and methods for learning how to solve problems. Of course, this needs to take into consideration the attitude of the person (their fortitude, determination, etc.), but there are other elements to problem solving too that can be learnt.This lack of clarity has many consequences, not least that it is likely to lead to a poor match between applicants for a job and the content of that job, thereby wasting the time of the applicants and the recruiters. ULISSE project aimed to unveil the true meaning of soft skills by developing the concept of “NSSS” and creating a common language with respect to soft skills among the key actors involved (intermediaries, job seekers and employers). Based on this, the project partners designed specific training paths for addressing the company’s NSSS needs, to increase the students employability and the job match-making. The training courses were focused on tools, procedures and methods, specifically designed to address this goal, ensuring effective and Pareto efficient results. or designing the course, the partners first created a common lexicon of soft skills, through a data mining process: different databases, scientific papers and job vacancies provided by all the partners will be processed in a semi-automatic way using the Technimeter®. Soft skills have then be unveiled, i.e. broken down (or “decomposed”) into more detailed and specific skills - representing their “hard side” - to be addressed efficaciously with tools, procedures and methodologies. The result was synthesized in a mind-map, expressing the “unveiled” soft skills and their relations. To select the topics to address in the training course, the partnership conducted a gap analysis overlapping the skills in students’ CVs and the already existing University training with the results achieved in IO2. The workshops designed and then piloted in all the project countries involved 63 students and blended theory, methods and tools, exercises, practical work. The partnership has given open-access to all the learning materials, ppts, exercises and methodologies adopted during the course, now available on the project website ""www.ulisseproject.eu"". Partners also elaborated an innovative evaluation methodology, keeping into account two elements learned by their experience: i) the bias due to the common misunderstanding on the true meaning of them and ii) that the real outcome is the actual implementation of the tools, procedures and methodologies in every-day working-life. This methodology was based on a three-step procedure, assessing the students before the training course, at the end of it and one month later.Finally, the partners developed an IT tool called Soft Skills Detector (http://ulisseapp.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/home) aimed at helping companies to describe their job vacancies in a more effective way, thus facilitating the matching of job supply and demand. The toolkit has been designed and then piloted with a limited number of companies, before releasing the final version in English and all partner languages.The key target groups for the project were employers, employment intermediaries (headhunters, recruiters, other Career Services (CS), etc) and job seekers, in our case University students/graduates. Employers benefited from the Soft Skills detector developed by the partners for supporting them write job vacancies in a more effective way. Universities benefitted from all the research activities carried out on soft skills and the training materials and assessment methodologies. CS increased their effectiveness in their intermediary role to help students design their career path; while students benefitted from the courses and materials delivered in increasing their employability."

<< Background >>The project underlines the need to improve university education in the agricultural sector to train students on the relevant skills for becoming agripreneurs 4.0 (which is currently barely absent. It becomes fundamental for academics to develop new collaborations with other Universities, but also companies working in the sector (providers of Precision Agriculture services) and PA farmers, in order to have an overall vision on the field and being able to foresight technologic and market changes<< Objectives >>One of the aims of SPARKLE was to bring together research, Sustainable Precision Agriculture (SPA) farmers, and students to develop and fill the gap in the educational offer to prepare farmers and agriculture's business managers of the future. The project aimed to develop and release an e-learning educational offer keeping together entrepreneurial competencies and SPA knowledge, thanks to the practical experience of SPA farmers, providers of SPA services and according to students’ needs.<< Implementation >>The pilot test phase let 206 students become “agripreuners 4.0” across Partner countries. Pilot actions executed in different Countries tested the flexibility, adaptability and transferability of the developed educational outputs enabling multiplication in various cultural environments, both in the Partnership and outside. Moreover, the quality of educational outputs was cross-validated among participants of various backgrounds and geographic settings and collectively improved when necessary.<< Results >>The main result of the project was the creation of a new training program for university students, agri-entrepreneurs, academics, service providers, school students in the form of an e-Learning course, in order­­ to enhance their technical, business-oriented skills and entrepreneurial activity in a smart environment. The course was composed of 12 modules on SPA-related topics, 8 hours of entrepreneurial education, 4 hours of on-field activities. Additional training resources were also provided.

DENiM develops an interoperable digital intelligence platform enabling a collaborative approach to industrial energy management. DENiM provides an integrated toolchain to provision advanced digital services including secure edge connectivity leveraging IoT, data analytics, digital twin, energy modelling and automation culminating in the delivery of continuous energy impact assessment, together with energy control and optimisation across existing production facilities, processes and machines. DENiM identifies skills gaps and develops training to build competences to support energy sustainability in smart manufacturing processes through the seamless integration of digital technologies, education and training activities. In view of considering the human factor, DENiM will consider existing and future regulations from a data protection, legal, ethical and energy policy perspectives, which informs the DENiM technological developments and pilot site interventions. In essence, DENiM accelerates energy efficiency transformation in manufacturing systems by enabling the right information and right technology to be available at the right time and in the right form, made accessible to the right people, empowering smart energy efficient decision-making within factories and across entire value chains. DENiM leverages the concept of process integration, taking a holistic approach to energy efficient manufacturing systems management and considers the interactions between the business, technology, infrastructure, and the workforce through the use of engineered systems that integrate both operational technologies and information technologies to accurately identify and map energy flows across the complete manufacturing value chain facilitating the integration of energy efficiency into existing business processes through digitalisation. This will result in a significant reduction of energy across diverse industrial sectors with substantial cost savings derived from optimised operation

In the last years, different pedagogical approaches have been developed by pedagogists and experts in distance learning. The most advanced approach is called “action-based learning” and refers to “all learning that is orchestrated by some activity on the part of learners” (Naidu & Bedgood, 2012). These actions may vary from real participation by learners (in building or creating something), to learners watching a video clip that is later examined, reflected on and then subject to a decision-making process. This approach can be divided into different streams and it is generally based on reversing the traditional learning process. In fact, it proposes to “start from the end”, by starting from questions, case studies, real problems, datasets and then returning to the theory behind. The four approaches referring to action-based learning that will be addressed in the project are the following: 1) inquiry-based learning, 2) problem-based learning,3) scenario-based learning, 4) dataset-based learning. The objectives of the project are: (i) enhancing the pedagogical digital skills of the educators, offering them a set of toolboxes for easily putting these methodologies into practice; (ii) developing innovative online tools (SuperFastLearning Machines) that through data-mining extract relevant information from which developing digital contents (one for each methodology); iii) enabling lecturers and trainers to better understand the pedagogical methodologies that are behind training approaches.The project will be carried out by four Universities (University of Pisa, that will coordinate the project, Bordeaux University, University of Zaragoza, University of Bremen and Koszalin University of Technology) and one technology provider for data mining and Natural Language Processing (Erre Quadro).In order to reach the above-mentioned objectives, a structured methodology has been developed. The project members, organized in 4 groups composed of one Leader, one Fellow and three peer-reviewers will develop several tools that will be included in 4 Toolboxes, one for each action-based methodology addressed. Working in such groups should ensure the full involvement of all the partners in the preparation of the contents and allow an internal/external cross-fertilization process, considering also the opinion of less expert organizations. The partners will then make available the following tools: (i) SFL Machine: an IT tool adopting NLP methodologies and data-mining techniques hosted on the project website allowing to gather data and extract information using different document sources selected by the educators; (ii) theoretical background of the methodology in two versions: a) methodology in a nut-shell, for information/dissemination purposes and b) full scientific description, further researches); (iii) practical pedagogical guidelines: how to make an action-based learning lesson complying with pedagogical requirements, (iv) 9 presentations/good practices (1 prepared by IO Leader, 4 prepared by the other partners and 4 prepared by educators from other HEIs) and (v) an e-learning course to explain the use of the mentioned tools. During the project implementation the first version of the Toolboxes will be tested by the partners and also by at least 20 external testers, thus ensuring an external validation of their contents. After the release of the final version of the toolboxes on the project website, the partners will organize in presence and online training events (webinars) in order to train as many educators from STEM faculties as possible. When the Toolboxes will be available and an intense dissemination and exploitation phase will take place, the partners will develop an interactive tool to help researchers, lecturers and trainers to understand which is the best pedagogical strategy, among the four addressed in the project, that fits better with the features of the subject and topic they want to teach through e-learning courses. The tool consists in a number of questions on the kind of topic and subject the lecturers want to teach and his/her scopes and aims for the lecture. The impacts on the main target group (STEM Professors, Researchers, Lecturers of STEM faculties) are: In the short-term: - increasing digital and pedagogical skills - increasing knowledge on the 4 action-based methodologies - Practicing increased digital and pedagogical skills for developing contents that will be used as a reference by other educators - being able to select the most appropriate methodology according to the topic and subject In the long-term: - providing practical and handy tools to teachers more reluctant to online training - increasing the number of students enrolling to STEM faculties, thanks to the renewal of training content- Including the new skills for producing contents also for other purposes (frontal lessons, blended learning, ..) - adopting NPL and data-mining techniques for solving other education problem