Coordinator: Burgas Free University
The project consortium chose to address as a main priority Environment and fight against climate change as the project envisages elaboration of training materials for higher education courses related to standards in the areas of management systems and environmental standards and support for the university lecturers for producing innovative micro-credentials.The International standards organizations ISO and IEC and the European standards organization CEN and CENELEC demonstrated their support for green and digital transition by endorsing the London Declaration on the commitment of the
standardization to climate action. The project will contribute to for achieving EU’s resilient, green and digital goals.
The importance of standards for businesses has increased dramatically over the last decade. It is widely recognized that standards provide a range of benefits, including enhancing the competitiveness of European economy, facilitating trade,
fostering innovations and being a policy tool for a resilient EU single market. At the same time, a number of analyses and papers explain the lack of proper university education on standards at European level, which leads to a reduction in the competitive abilities of European businesses compared to other regions. The “EU Strategy on Standardisation Setting global standards in support of a resilient, green and digital EU single market” (COM(2022) 31 final) also calls for “stronger standardization skills across industry and academia” and emphasizes on the need for education and skills. The project
implementation could be a step forwards European universities to invest in standards training programmes which will prepare their students for real-life business by providing them with relevant knowledge and skills.
The project contributes also to two additional priorities in the area of HE – Stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices and Supporting digital and green capabilities of the higher education sector. The project objectives correspond to
the first one as the project implementation will lead tofostering the take-up, validation and recognition of short learning courses leading to micro-credentials. Micro-credentials are being considered more and more important part of education at European level. Currently there are several proposals for Council Recommendations that point out their significance for the twin green and digital transition, employability, professional competences, etc.
The project is fully relevant to the second additional priority as all the activities in the frame of the project will be performed in a digital learning environment. The project will encourage an innovative method of teaching at universities by using digital technologies. The training materials and the trainings will be performed online, some of the digital materials will become open educational resources, which could be further used by other universities or interested educational institutions.