MOOCAP was a European project whose name stands for “MOOCs for Accessibility Partnership”. The goal of the project was to provide education on accessible design in ICT. We created 11 free online courses, four of which were MOOCs. The goal of these courses was to teach you how to create accessible media and content, such as websites, mobile apps, and office documents. In addition, you could learn about how to design products and systems for daily living in order to make them accessible to, understandable by, and usable for a wide range of people. We provided both an introductory course and a few specialized courses.

GlobalWorkIT prepares European and Korean students for employment in the international information and communications technology (ICT) industry by enhancing their understanding of global issues in the ICT sector and of the languages and cultures of the participant countries. It connects three European and three Korean Higher Education Institutions located in world-leading ICT sectors (Korea, Ireland, Germany, and Finland) and leverages their relationships with ICT companies that are innovation-focused and internationally-oriented. In this paper, we present GlobalWorkIT and discuss how it will build an EU-Korea network of ICT professionals to underpin trade between the two regions, secure industry sponsorship for future mobilities, and enhance co-operation between the education partners and ICT companies. 

GlobalWorkIT developed 

• EU-Korea student mobility programme in Semester 2 of Year 3. For DIT students this means spending a semester abroad in Korea taking accredited modules in specialist computer science topics,  cultural and linguistic training in the Korean language, and cultural studies. 

• An online module – the ’Global Classroom’. Key to the module is the semester-long Global Classroom module, delivered online across timezones, countries, and cultures is a unique and innovative team project module. The student’s international experiences are captured by using work practices in the global ICT industry (e.g. teleconferencing, time differences, project management in a geographically distributed context, etc). Students reflect on their own international experiences, share and learn from each other while working on a technical team-based IT project.  

Quality Blended Learning Quality Blended Learning promotes the development of a comprehensive training material delivered through an interactive cross-platform online resource that promotes the knowledge required for the design and the implementation of blended-learning courses. This material includes a blend-it-well handbook and a training activity especially designed for educators involved in adult education aiming at identifying the gaps in their knowledge, providing them with the skills required for developing high-quality blended learning activities. 

SMEs, Education, Training Courses, Open Educational Resources

The FOSS4SMEs project intent was to equip European SMEs with the skills and competencies to properly use Free and Open Source Software, so to improve SMEs' digital performances and competitiveness.  

To reach its objective, the project developed a free online educational training for managers and staff of existing SMEs or start-ups, allowing them to profit from the opportunities offered by the digital era. The course is freely available to individual learners and can be used by public and private bodies when providing support, consultancy, and training to businesses, which can organize training courses using the results of the project. The project also aims to facilitate recognition and transferability of competencies, thus mobility, by applying the ECVET system to the professional profile of the FOSS Business User (FOSS-BU).

FOSS4SMEs was funded by the EACEA as part of the Erasmus+ programme and it's a partnership between TU Dublin, DLEARN, Free Software Foundation Europe, Atlantis Engineering, Open Forum Europe, and University of Skövde.

Several staff members for the School of Computer Science Grangegorman contributed to the project: Dr. Brian Keegan, Dr. Paul Doyle, Peter Manifold, Anna Becevel.

If you have any questions about the project you can email brian.x.keegan@tudublin.ie.

Visit the FOSS4SMEs website

Twitter

University-Industry Collaboration, Higher Education, International Partnership

By creating a sustainable strategic network of major European ICT hubs, the goal of HubLinked was to strengthen Europe’s software innovation capacity by learning from regions of proven ICT strength and sharing that knowledge will all regions. HubLinked has improved the effectiveness University-Industry (U-I) linkages between computer science faculty and different types of companies; developed global software innovator graduates that can work in any sector; and upskilled academic and industry staff to engage in U-I linkages for software innovation. 

Although the ICT sector is a major economic sector in Europe, HubLinked also included SMEs in the non-software sector to provide a ‘low-cost low-commitment’ mechanism to prototype software innovations. An established partnership of large, industry-focused computer science faculties have come together with a representative mix of industry partners (large multinationals, SMEs in both the software and other sectors and start-up companies).  

HubLinked partnership can directly reach over 3,000 companies, 12,000 students and 400 staff.  HubLinked has created a network of European ICT professionals that increasde the innovation capacity and competitiveness of European software hubs and helped underpin education, research, innovation, trade and economic development for years to come. 

HubLinked delivered 

• The report “A Guide to a Successful Industry-Academia Collaboration”. The report aims at understanding the state of art of U-I collaborations between CS faculties and industry in Europe and South Korea at the time and share that knowledge in order to improve the effectiveness, quality and quantity of the collaborations. 
• A curriculum framework for industry-oriented, internationalised, innovation-focused and interdisciplinary computer science degrees. 
• Four Global Labs modules. The Global Labs model allows students to turn real-world problems from any sector into “experience-appropriate” prototypes. 
• Work placement and study exchange mobilities. 
• An online professional development for academic and industry staff.

The HubLinked Knowledge Alliance was funded by EACEA - Erasmus+ scheme and its a partnership of 11 partners across Europe and South Korea led by TU Dublin. The partnership included Télécom SudParis, Mälardalen University, ISME, EBN, University of Ljubljana, SAP Ireland, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Kyungpook National University, Eurocrea Merchant, and Oulu University of Applied Sciences.

Several staff members for the School of Computer Science Grangegorman contributed to the project: Dr. Paul Doyle, Anna Becevel, Peter Manifold, Deirdre Lillis (P.I.), Dr. Brian Keegan, Dr. Michael Collins, Yannis Stavrakakis, Dr. John Gilligan, Cathy Ennis, William O'Mahony, Iseult Kelly, Damian Gordon, Ciaran Kelly.

If you have any questions about the project you can email anna.becevel@tudublin.ie. 

Visit the HubLinked website

Twitter  |  LinkedIn  |  Instagram  |  Facebook