Project title: Digital University – Open Ukrainian Initiative
Project number: 101129236
Project acronym: DigiUni
Call: ERASMUS-EDU-2023-CBHE
Topic: ERASMUS-EDU-2023-CBHE-STRAND-3
Type of action: ERASMUS Lump Sum Grants
Granting authority: European Education and Culture Executive Agency
Project duration: 01.12.2023 – 30.11.2027
Erasmus+ (CBHE) grant amount: 4 981 425.00 EUR
Target groups:
- students of HEIs;
- teachers of higher education institutions of Ukraine, who should learn to work in the latest digital environment, create new digital content, and use an existing one, including that provided by other higher education institutions from Ukraine and partners from the EU;
- veterans, temporarily displaced persons, persons who suffered from military operations in Ukraine and need retraining for employment;
- persons with limited educational opportunities who wish to obtain higher education or improve their qualifications;
- persons interested in professional and personal development, getting micro-credentials on a flexible learning trajectory;
- entrants of professional pre-higher education institutions interested in continuing their studies at the level of higher education;
- students of general secondary and professional (vocational and technical) education.
Grant holder:
TARAS SHEVCHENKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF KYIV (TSNUK),
60 Volodymyrska Street, City of Kyiv, 01033, Ukraine
https://knu.ua/
Project leader - Kseniia Smyrnova, D.Sc., Prof., Vice-Rector for Education
[email protected]
Institutional Coordinator - Sergiy Bronin, PhD, Assoc.Prof.
[email protected]
Partnership:
- National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (NaUKMA), Ukraine
- Sumy State University (SumDU), Ukraine
- Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics (KhNUE), Ukraine
- Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (CHNU), Ukraine
- Higher Educational Establishment Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), Ukraine
- National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute” (KhPI), Ukraine
- Kherson State University (KSU), Ukraine
- Mariupol State University (MSU), Ukraine
- Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (IFNUL), Ukraine
- Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MESU), Ukraine
- Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine (MDTU), Ukraine
- Ukrainian Association of Information Technology Professionals (UAITP), Ukraine
- National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance (NAQA), Ukraine
- University of Erlangen-Nuernberg (FAU), Germany
- Masaryk University (MUNI), Czechia
- University of Cologne (UoC), Germany
- Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan (AMU), Poland
- University of Strasbourg (UNISTRA), France
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hannover (LUH), Germany
- University of Alicante (UoA), Spain
- International Technology Exchange and Consulting Association (ECTI), France
- Ukrainian Association of Students (UASS)
- Public Organization "Ukrainian Scientific and Educational IT Society" (POUSEIT)
- Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)
- European University Association (EUA)
Project goals and objectives:
- To develop a high-performing digital educational ecosystem in Ukraine to ensure continuous, high-quality, inclusive, and transparent education, regardless of the student's and teacher’s location, using the existing digital innovations in the field of education and the understandable paradigm of involving future innovations, develop holistic and sustainable higher education system to meet socio-economic needs and broad ambitions for a knowledge-based economy;
- The digitalisation of teaching and learning methods and providing the infrastructure necessary for online and inclusive education.
Wider objective: - To influence the chaotic processes of digital transformations in education;
- To create a unified digital educational ecosystem in Ukraine that will prowide continious, high-quality, inclusive, and transparent education, regardless of the location of lerners, using existing digital innovations in education and a clear paradigm for involving future innovations.
Specific project objectives:
- To develop the concept, strategy, and action plan for creating an integrated, inclusive and high-performing digital education ecosystem in Ukraine to be submitted for state adoption. It includes the development of proposals for modifications in the national legislation in the context of digital education, micro-credentials, copyright and other IP-rights, open innovation, recognition of the learning outcomes and ECTS credit received by digital courses, etc.;
- To develop and launch the all-Ukrainian open digital education environment – DigiPlatform –under the management of the modern, powerful, and flexible Learning Management System with built-in artificial intelligence and opportunities for peer review of the study outcomes, options for placing various digital education content i.e., virtual and augmented reality, interactive content, video, educational games, virtual labs, and accesses to remote labs. These two objectives will become working components of the Ukraine’s recovery plans in the sphere of education, mentioned above, which will create the context of launching the DigUni and DigiPlatform;
- To develop Digital University (DigiUni) as a pilot organisational mechanism for uniting, transforming and integrating higher education institutions (similar to the Alliances of Universities (Erasmus+)) and other interested institutions for achieving the common objective. It includes the creation of the Open DigiUni-Ukraine Charter regulating the rules and requirements, inter-institutional agreements, mechanisms and arrangements, mutual recognition of the results of digital training and virtual mobility. This objective will target the need of launching the networking mechanism for the UA HEIs so that they can provide mutual systematic support in the time of crisis and further, assisted by working mechanisms, known and recognised nationally and by individual HEIs;
- To develop the rules for ensuring and improving the quality of the digital content at the higher education institutions of Ukraine, methods of the digital content quality assessment, developing methodology and guidelines for creating digital content and digital courses. This objective will meet the need for the joint QA mechanisms for digital education (e.g. courses, programmes) at the UA HEIs, and therefore shared quality standards for the DigiPlatform content;
- To build up the project infrastructure and tools: to create DigiCentres at each Ukrainian higher education partner institution with the necessary software and equipment. The DigiCentres perform the functions of the centres for the development of digital content and learning innovations ensuring quality and advanced learning opportunities. This objective will meet the need of developing the frame of the basic digital competences the teachers and learners at all the UA HEIs, based on their access to the comparable standardised equipment, which will allow to develop digital products of the equal quality;
- To develop the primary DigiPlatform content, in particular, the complete list of the available digital courses and other digital materials of the Ukrainian higher education partner institutions with direct links to their university's digital resources; to place and/or create on the platform direct links to the digital courses/resources of the European partners which they are ready to provide the Ukrainian audience with granted access;
- To develop 100+ new courses in different fields of knowledge, with 20 of them incorporating the use of virtual or/and augmented reality and/or virtual/remote laboratories; to build in and/or create virtual and remote laboratories; to localise 20+ EU-partners’ courses and to publish them on DigiPlatform; to create 20 separate educational modules and 30 microlearning modules for the non-university audience (in particular, for improving the image of Ukraine in the world arena by promoting Ukrainian language, history, culture, and art); to develop a specialised course on creating digital content for DigiPlatform. These 2 objectives will meet the need of launching of working “virtual mobility” of students inside Ukraine, which will guarantee a) access to education, b) flexibility and complementarity for the development of individual study of each student, not limited to the resources of one UA HEI. Additionally, DigiPlatform will be a tool for returning international audience to the Ukrainian educational institutions;
- To train 600 educators as digital content facilitators, 30 – as administrators of the content, and 40 –as specialists in quality assessment of the content. To provide 5,000+ students of the Ukrainian higher education partner institutions with courses and 1,000+ representatives of other target groups with educational modules using DigiPlatform within the pilot DigiUni project. This objective will meet the need of training the trainers of digital skills to the university staff on the minimum predefined level; specially developed open courses, placed at DigiPlatform, will meet the urgent need of the post-war retraining and social integration of different vulnerable categories of society (internally displaced people, veterans, people who lost their jobs, people with fewer learning opportunities etc.) and will recognised by the diverse stakeholders in the country.
Activities:
- Creating DigiCentres at each Ukrainian higher education partner institution as sustainable, inclusive, enriching environment for synergetic interaction of education, industry, society ecosystems aimed at developing solutions for challenging issues, product and process innovation on local and national levels.
- Developing the concept, strategy, and action plan for creating an integrated, sustainable, enriching and inclusive digital educational ecosystem in Ukraine with proposals for modifications in the national legislation in the context of digital education, copyright and other IP rights, recognition of the results of the study of digital courses at universities for students and a non-university audience, micro-credentials, etc. to be submitted for state approval.
- Developing and launching the all-Ukrainian inclusive digital learning environment - DigiPlatform – a modern, powerful, and flexible Learning Management System with opportunities for peer review of the study outcomes and options for placing various digital educational content, using attracted and placed content from European partners.
- Training of at least 70 trainers (teachers and administrative staff of Ukrainian universities and content quality assurance staff).
- Conducting internal trainings replications in each Ukrainian HEI-partner for 600 academic staff, 30 administrative staff, 40 technical staff.
- Creating a DigiPlatform with an open-innovation-friendly IP Policy.
- Developing 100+ new courses in different fields of knowledge, with 20 of them incorporating the use of virtual or/and augmented reality and/or virtual/remote labs.
- Creating 20 separate educational modules and 30 microlearning modules for the non-university audience (in particular, for improving the image of Ukraine in the world arena by promoting Ukrainian language, history, culture, and art).
- Teaching up to 5000+ students of Ukrainian HEI-partners and up to 1000+ representatives of other target groups using DigiPlatform.
- Carrying out at least 20 cases of DigiPlatform-enabled academic mobility (virtual mobility) between Ukrainian higher education institutions partners.
- Purchasing and installing of equipment and software.
- Project results disseminated. Transfer of best practices and results via conferences, social media channels.
Partners from Ukraine:
National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”
https://dfc.ukma.edu.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Larysa Chovnyuk, [email protected]
Sumy State University
https://int.sumdu.edu.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Kostyantyn Kyrychenko, [email protected]
Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics
https://www.hneu.edu.ua/en/
Institutional Coordinator - Iryna Zolotaryova, [email protected]
Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University
http://www.chnu.edu.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Heorhij Vorobets, [email protected]
Ukrainian Catholic University
https://ucu.edu.ua/en/
Institutional Coordinator - Alina Synytska, [email protected]
National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute”
https://www.kpi.kharkov.ua/eng/
Institutional Coordinator - Irina Porunkova, [email protected]
Kherson State University
https://www.kspu.edu/
Institutional Coordinator - Alla Tsapiv, [email protected]
Mariupol State University
https://mdu.in.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Andriy Stoyka, [email protected]
Ivan Franko National University of Lviv
https://lnu.edu.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Serhiy Riznyk, [email protected]
Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine
https://mon.gov.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Serhiy Shkabko, [email protected]
Ukrainian Association of IT Professionals
http://www.uaitp.org/
Institutional Coordinator - Rustam Gamzayev, [email protected]
National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance
https://naqa.gov.ua/
Institutional Coordinator - Mariia Piddobrivna, [email protected]
This project has received funding from the European Union (ERASMUS-EDU-2023-CBHE) under grant agreement No 101129236.