More than ever, Europe needs cybersecurity. With the constant development of new malicious software, cyberattacks have been on the rise. Due to new attack vectors and encryption, novel attacks are undetectable to humans and simple rules and signatures. Without holistic and interdisciplinary cybersecurity solutions, the citizens’ lives, well-being, money and other assets are at risk. The PERUN project will strengthen the European cybersecurity by providing novel solutions powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, to analyse and counter emerging cyberthreats to software, firmware and hardware in an efficient and cost-effective way. The PERUN project aims to enhance the security and resilience of digital infrastructures - national-level cybersecurity infrastructures, education and research networks, critical energy infrastructures, digital infrastructures of NGOs providing critical services and security operations centers (SOCs) across various sectors - by developing advanced cybersecurity solutions that leverage AI/ML technologies. To this end, PERUN will produce a set of innovative methods and algorithms to analyse data and detect new types of malware, as well as a collection of high TRL tools and products using new scientific approaches, all validated by representatives of the critical sectors. The results will be communicated and disseminated, not only to reach a broad range of stakeholders, but also to raise public awareness of cyberthreats. The tangible results of PERUN will be applied in five real-life scenarios pertaining to critical sectors such as nonprofits, energy, telecommunications, private SOCs and CERTs/CSIRTs. Owing to their high TRL and versatility, they will be an instant boost to Europe’s cybersecurity, whilst increasing its strategic autonomy and technological advantage.

This project is on the modularization of continuing education and professional development by microcredentials in higher education (MCE), in particular in the context of the European Commission's Recommendation to the Council of Ministers on microcredentials and the planned steps in 2021-2025 for the recognition of microcredentials in Member States. As a contribution to this process, MCE contributes to the further conceptualization of microcredentials as cornerstones for the expansion of continuous education and professional development (CEPD) and to transformative institutional developments in interaction with national and EU frameworks. Partners will build on results of their existing collaborations on short learning programs and on the Common Microcredential Framework developed with the European MOOC Consortium. Both collaborations have proven their relevance at the micro-level of concept and design, the meso-level of institutional strategies and conditions, and the macro-level of national and EU policies and strategies. In the further conceptualization of microcredentials, MCE adds the learner perspective as a core dimension. The project is thereafter focusing on institutional development in alignment with European and the national frameworks for microcredentials. The objectives of MCE respond to this by:- further developing and operationalizing the concept of microcredentials in European universities, taking into account the learners' perspective;- supporting institutional development for organizing and creating the conditions for developing transformative modular education and microcredentials;- Delivering an evidence-base for the dialogue with policy makers at national and EU level developing policies for CEPD and frameworks for microcredentials.Within the project, bottom-up and top-down processes will therefore continuously meet. The MCE approach is multi-level and multi-stakeholder oriented, looking for impact on stakeholders to realize transformation.

Context :Open Badges are digital badges designed in a format that make them shareable on different platforms in dedicated spaces (“backpacks”). Open Badge allow individuals to demonstrate the various skills and experience they have acquired. In the context of Open Science, sharing data generated or used by research teams represents a new area that implies new skills. Various training programs actions have been implemented and it becomes now necessary to identify, evidentiate and accredit those new skills towards stakeholders of scientific research, public or private. General objective :Creating a practical guide that will include the technical specificities and issues of OB, roles and skills related to RDM and principles for the application of OB to RDM.Creating a collaborative network, a small ecosystem of Open Badges (OB) in Open Science at European level to acknowledge acquired competences in sharing and managing research data in the framework of the Open Science. The ecosystem will be supported by the network of partners consortium that will issue badges.Unlike a certificate, an Open Badge does not rely on an existing framework but evidentiate skills implied for the achievement of a specific activity. Thus, it is desirable to attribute the Open Badge as close as possible to the targeted activity in order to implement an ecosystem where different roles are identified :Animation of the ecosystem: The ecosystem is animated (awareness, training, intermediation…) by a facilitators within the network of partners; Attribution / Validation: badges are delivered by stakeholders in the management and sharing of Research Data (data repositories, scientific organizations, training organizations, companies Research and Development departments, scientific journals, trainers …), to actors of this process (researchers, research support staff but also advanced students, especially PhD students); among the stakeholders a special part is played by the teachers/trainers in Research Data Management;Designing: badges are designed in collaboration between the facilitators and the stakeholders who deliver the badges;Manufacturing and distribution: the manufacturing and management of badges (“backpacks”) are externalized.Displaying: the badges will be proposed through the partners and participant stakeholders platfoms (website and LMS) and of course, once attributed, will be at the disposal of the badgees for display.Method:After an initial review of the processes of RDM and of the stakeholders of these processes and a first draft of the competences implied, the first phase of the project will concentrate on the training of the facilitators.This training will be achieved through online courses, individual trainings within the partners organisations and working groups. The trainings will focus on the Open Badges stakes and methodology and an initiation on RDM. A guide of the ecosystem will complete those trainings.In a second phase the badges will be build through collaboration between facilitators and stake holders. Practicaly two kinds of badges will be made: the badges linked to training / teaching actions and badges linked to RDM processes, in a more exploratory way. Once made, the badges will be implemented on the partners platforms.Outputs :At the end of the project, a set of Open Badges for RDM competences will be at the disposal of the science communities.An expertise on OB will be implemented in the partners organisations lacking it.A practical guide will be available for all persons interested in open badges and their implementation.The training materials realized for the facilitators will be open to other audiences interested by the OB methodology.The building of the badges with the stakeholders will be the occasion of a better and more precise analysis of the competences mobilized in RDM processes, and the initial framework will be amended and completed for publication and contribution to ESCO.

The FernUniversität in Hagen, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNl) are three leading European distance learning universities firmly devoted to further the principle of equal opportunity by safeguarding equal access to top quality higher education to everyone, using a methodology based on the principles of modern distance learning focused on the needs of the student. In 2014, after eight years of successful cooperation in the organization of international common teaching activities on the bachelor level, these universities established a Strategic Partnership to further cultural exchange and best practices in the internationalisation of high quality education in law for all three Bologna cycles. Developed within this framework, the EDELNet (European Distance Education in Law Network) project is the first building block in the implementation of an ambitious scientific and pedagogic concept of Blended Active Learning and student oriented teaching facilitating a personal learning path with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and intercultural communication skills as a basis for a better understanding of each other’s legal cultures and practices throughout Europe and beyond.The goals of this project address the current need in the European society for widening the access to top quality higher education through international academic cooperation, as identified in the 2011 EU Modenisation Agenda (COM (2011) 567 final). For this purpose, EDELNet is geared toward the modernization of teaching methods in law with an innovative combination of student-centered blended learning tools and activities. This innovative combination also draws on intercultural communication and interdisciplinary processes for the production, learning and application of relevant inter-subjective knowledge in addition to the traditional contents of legal education. This will be implemented through an international and cross-cultural cooperation that is devised to broaden access to and participation in international and European education, especially for disadvantaged groups such as students with disabilities, economic, social or geographical obstacles, health problems or cultural differences.In order to achieve these goals the EDELNet project aims to develop and implement virtual and face-to-face teaching and training activities and courseware in key methodological and substantive areas of the law, including language competences, intercultural communication skills and interdisciplinary methods of knowledge production applied to legal practice and scholarship.The EDELNet project is based on the full commitment and support of the key academic and administrative units of the three partner universities, especially those working in the fields of quality management, IT and media, dissemination and knowledge transfer, and the central management units (Deans’ and Rectors’ offices).On completion of the project more than 200 persons have participated in our learning activities. 153 students participated in our LLB, LLM and PhD intensive study programs and more than 180 in the different virtual mobility courses hosted in the EDELNet Vortal. Also more than 50 teachers and managerial staff have partaken in our staff trainings. Moreover, the produced courseware, the results of the learning activities, and the institutional know-how acquired is available as open source on the EDELNet Vertical Portal. The availability as open source of these project results is coupled with active dissemination activities, like the organisation and participation in international and national workshops, newsletters and the active engagement in cooperative dialogues with a wide range of relevant stakeholders. In the timespan of the project (2015-2018) our students and staff had a high quality international experience that has enriched their learning and professional paths; overcame language inhibitions by taking English as a common language; and cultivated their intercultural competences while operating in a cross-cultural environment. The project did also grant students easy access to an international network of professionals of the law, including both academic and practitioners. All this has decisively improved our students’ chances to get access to the international and European labour market and has brought forward our plans to merger different European teaching cultures, traditions and didactic formats to improve teaching practice in the entire European community of law teaching. In the long run, we expect students from associated universities and other potential public and private institutions from all over Europe and beyond to participate in our program and benefit from the EDELNet project results. Through affordable, relevant, high quality and internationalized higher blended-learning education in the field of law, we expect our project to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive growth in the European Union.