Contact persons at the KU:

Prof. Dr. Klaudia Schultheis, Prof. Dr. Heiner Böttger und Prof. Dr. Barbara Lenzgeiger 

Cooperation partners:

Karlstad University (KAU) – Karlstad, Sweden
University of the National Education Commission (UKEN) – Kraków, Poland
WSB University (WSB) – Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland
Adam Mickiewicz University (UAM) – Poznań, Poland
University of Porto (UP) – Porto, Portugal
University Rovira i Virgili (URV) – Tarragona, Spain
Fundación SIGLO22 (SIG) – Spain (Educational Institution for Teacher Training)
University of Trnava (TU) – Trnava, Slovakia
NLA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE (NLA) - Bergen, Norway
INDICIA (IN) – Bratislava, Slovakia (Teacher Training Institution)
Hochschule Mittweida (HSM) - Mittweida, Germany
International School of the Stockholm Region (ISSR) – Stockholm, Sweden (Project Partner School)
Associação Nacional de Professores (ANP) – Portugal (Teachers' Association)

Project description:
The SmartStart Teacher Academy aims to establish an international teacher training program that empowers teachers and teacher students to integrate AI-based digital media into everyday classroom practice, supporting individualised learning and enhancing pedagogical methods. To address language barriers, an AI-based trans-lation tool will be developed to facilitate professional exchange and support multilingual classrooms. The curric-ulum will be based on a comprehensive discussion and analysis of the needs, challenges, opportunities, and issues related to AI-based applications and digital media in primary schools, conducted by an expert panel rep-resenting all relevant perspectives and supported by a thorough scientific literature review. SmartStart Teacher Training includes both teachers and teacher students, fostering learning and collaboration among novice and experienced educators through mentoring and peer-to-peer learning. The program comprises two integrated phases. The first phase is an online course that provides international participants with foundational knowledge on the technological, pedagogical, and didactic aspects of AI and digital media in primary schools. The second phase is practical and takes place in cooperating project schools using ERASMUS+ mobility programs. This training concept applies theoretical knowledge to the classroom in a co-creative and reflective manner, utilising the Deeper Learning approach. Scientific studies will evaluate the professional development of the trained teachers, informing the continuous improvement of the training program, which will be integrated into the curric-ula of participating universities and teacher training institutions. The online course will be accessible through eTwinning, supporting primary school teachers across Europe in addressing the challenges of AI and digital media in their daily work.

A preliminary website is available here.

Responsible persons at the KU:

Dr. Petra Hiebl and Dr. Maximilian Schumm

Cooperation partners:

Istituto Ottavio Jacquemet (Italy), G-LAB SRL Impresa sociale (Italy), Przedszkole nr 32 (Poland), IES Los Cerros (Spain), MDOE (Hungary)

Description:

The Erasmus+ SKYSS project entitled “Schools between sky and stars: new learning environments & metaverse” aims to create new teaching and learning pathways that combine biophilia and digital technologies to promote inclusion and sustainability in the teaching of civic education and STEM subjects. Through outdoor educational experiences and the use of virtual environments such as the Metaverse, teachers - and through them, students - can explore new educational methods that promote civic engagement and ecological change. The project includes teacher training activities, both online and face-to-face, and involves partners from different European countries who contribute to the creation of a collaborative network for experimenting with new teaching methods.

Funding:

Erasmus+ Collaborative Partnerships in School Education

Duration:

2024-2027

Click here for the preliminary website.

Responsible persons at the KU:

Olha Mykhailyshyn

Cooperation partners:

Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and the beneficiaries of the consortium are Sumy State University (SumDU), Dnipro University of Technology (Dniprotech), Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and Maria Heilig Free University (LUMSA).

Description:

Data confirms that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused 7.8 billion in damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure, with 4.8 million people officially registered as internally displaced persons in Ukraine. When such significant infrastructure and human losses occur, there is a need to reorient education to the real-world context through the application of pedagogical approaches and the implementation of study courses focused on addressing local needs on-site.

The ServU project aims to enhance synergy between Ukrainian higher education institutions (HEIs) and local territorial communities to jointly contribute to the recovery of Ukraine through the implementation of service-learning (SL) education.

The project proposes an innovative approach to stimulate the acquisition and development of citizenship competencies among students, taking into consideration the needs of three types of local territorial communities, that have been affected
by the war:

•  territories with a large number of internally displaced people,
• territories in close proximity to the front lines, whose infrastructure has been significantly damaged,
• liberated territories that have experienced Russian occupation.

Click here for the website.

Responsible Persons at the KU:

Thomas Sporer

Cooperation partner:
Matej Bel University, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia
Universitatea Babes Bolyai, Romania
Univerzita Palackeho, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Sveuciliste u Rijeci, Filozofsky Fakultet u Rijeci, Croatia
University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria

Description of the project:

The SLIHE project envisions strategy for service-learning, thanks to which universities fulfil their third mission and prepare a new generation of experts.

The project builds partnerships between the sectors and develops cooperation between the universities and public and non-governmental organizations in the region.

The project builds on the needs of an international dimension - to motivate students to civic engagement and enable teachers to support the social role of higher education institutions (HEIs).

Main objectives:

•     to strengthen the capacities of HEIs related to the fulfilment of their third mission
•    to enhance civic engagement of students through implementation of service-learning
•    to improve the quality and relevance of study offered in the field of implementation of service-learning strategy in higher education

Outputs:

•     Teacher training about service-learning and handbook for trainers
•    Handbook for teachers
•    Recommendations for the implementation of service-learning in higher education and examples of good practices
•    International conference Spring 2020

Duration:

2017-2020

Click here for website.

Responsible Persons at the KU:

Tanja Rinker Professor of German as a Foreign Language / Didactics of German as a Second Language

Cooperation partners:

Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA), Paris Lodron University Salzburg (PLUS), University of Prishtina (UP)

Description:

Three schools and three universities in three countries (Austria, France, Germany), as well as the University of Pristina (Kosovo) as an associated partner, are jointly developing a transnational, multilingual and intercultural school development concept for grades 3-6 (from childhood to adolescence). They regard Europe's cultural and linguistic diversity as a constitutive feature of our continent, which they see as an opportunity and resource for schools in particular. Due to the large influx of people into our countries, many different languages are present in our classrooms. We need to make targeted use of this “treasure”.

The aim is to systematically use and optimize transferable language acquisition skills and to develop targeted teaching and learning strategies within the framework of modern multilingual didactics. The project is based on an existing multilingual curriculum and multilingual competence model that is to be updated.

With the help of specially developed questionnaires for pupils, parents, teachers and school administrators, it will be determined how the status quo is to be assessed and in which areas fields of action are emerging.

Duration:

2022-2025

Click here for website.