Intercultural Communication and Linguistic Upgrade in a Digital Environment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Intercultural Communication and Linguistic Upgrade in a Digital Environment

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; Cooperation between educational institutions and business; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The INCLUDE project is set in the context of the global onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that has brought immense changes to the manner people communicate and engage in professional activities. Language and intercultural communication (LIC) teachers at higher education institutions teach courses that heavily depend on communication and they have had to invest more time and effort into transforming their teaching methods and materials into ones that are applicable in online teaching. At the same time, LIC teachers are the ones who have to prepare their students for real-life communication in a virtual setting as well as to enable them to acquire the Global Competence.

The main objective of the INCLUDE project is to boost students’ employability on a global scale by ensuring an inclusive, progressive, high-quality language and communication course in a range of languages (English, Croatian, Portuguese, Greek) at higher education institutions across Europe. The project involves three intellectual outputs oriented towards developing a high-quality course in Intersectoral communication skills in a digital, intercultural environment.

The project is operated by an international project team from three partner institutions and it involves 30 students from all partner universities, as well as a solid base of industrial partners as associated partners. The project especially aims at involving students with fewer opportunities and on boosting students’ opportunities for participating in high-quality virtual exchange. As all the teaching and training activities will be organised online using videoconferencing applications, no additional Erasmus+ budget regarding Learning-Teaching-Training is required, as the project team has sufficient human and infrastructural resources to organise these events without additional funding.

The project will result in a research paper based on which open source teaching materials will be developed and made available on an OER platform accompanied by a detailed course curriculum that may easily be implemented, fully or partially, at any higher education institution. The impact of the project may be observed on the institutional, local, national and especially international levels, as the project results will be made available to all LIC teachers in need of support in their teaching activities.

Dissemination of the projects results includes a transnational meeting, local project presentations, project presentation at the online dissemination event and in professional and scientific conferences, as well as via a dedicated project website and the OER platform. Based on the objectives of the project and the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, all dissemination activities are planned as online events. Thus, no additional Erasmus+ budget regarding Multiplier Events is required, as the project team has sufficient human and infrastructural resources to organise these events without additional funding.

The sustainability of the project even after its formal completion will be achieved in the form of setting up an informal network of partners that will continue working on the project activities with the future generations of students and update the OER platform content.

Project Website

https://include.vub.hr/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 77080 Eur

Project Coordinator

Veleuciliste u Bjelovaru & Country: HR

Project Partners

• ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
• CENIL CENTRO DE LÍNGUAS LDA / ISAL