Specific objectives:
To work towards the achievement of the project’s main goal, i.e. building WB 3rd country not associated
to the programme HEIs’ capacities for academic recognition via LOs as an innovative pedagogical approach, both necessary and pertinent, for linking work with education, by ensuring curriculum transparency, comparability, flexibility for improving recognition and study transfer procedures, revising course contents, methodologies and assessment to provide for student-centred and skills-oriented learning that adds an international, global dimension to the curriculum, thus, enhancing collaboration among WB6 HEIs for student exchange and intra-regional employability and connectivity, the project is designed in coherence with the specific objectives which second the project’s main objective:
1. To introduce and implement learner-centred and skills-oriented recognition of mobility as an innovative pedagogical approach that relies on LOs as the most important factor for prioritising skills and valuing diversity to enable comparability of study programmes for improved automatic recognition of study periods abroad and access to intra-regional connectivity.
2. To harmonise and systematise recognition practices institution-wide for prompt and transparent full recognition and increased student mobility flows in the region.
3. To develop a self-assessment methodology for external recognition of mobility and its impact on the student’s life and career, quality of study programmes, regional cooperation and integration and international outreach on the whole.
Target group:
The target groups whose needs the project addresses through activities structured and integrated into four work packages (WPs), are:
1. WB HEI students, who will be actively involved in the process of improving recognition practices at WB HEIs by forming part of the work groups. This will add their perspective and provide useful feedback for the self-assessment tool, for the rewriting of LOs and for the recognition regulation, thus answering the need to prioritize skills, student-centred learning to increase the level of automatic recognition of study periods abroad and to establish institution-wide procedures and transparent measures for the recognition of credit mobility.
2. WB HEI academic staff, who will be introduced to the recognition approach as more flexible to the equivalence approach, as it is based on skills-oriented learning, that is, student-centred and outcomes- based. They will be engaged in a number of activities (visits to EU partners, training workshops, grey literature review, development of a self-assessment tool, mapping survey(s) for the HEI and the region, developing guidelines for LOs, rewriting LOs, writing a recognition regulation, carrying out a real recognition practice, creating a mobility repository), which will answer their need for information and training to carry out academic recognition in compliance with the Lisbon Recognition Convention, for a LOs model, learner-centred and skills-oriented for recognition that provides transparent quality assurance, improves teaching and learning.
3. WB HEIs will be introduced to new approaches to academic recognition that will help improve existing practices. The project results, being usable, adoptable and open access, will be introduced to policy makers and other stakeholders of the higher education sector in the region, thus not only helping them to facilitate the formal recognition and credit (ECTS) validation of the knowledge gained on study period abroad, but, most importantly, creating a wider impact of the importance of recognition via learning outcomes on the quality of learning and employability as pertinent to career prospects, thus answering the need to enhance mobility and credential completion through transfer credit in the region and to assess the impact of student mobility on the skills gained for their future career and employability.