<< Background >>Student dropout & lack of timely completion caused by difficulties experienced in their transition to higher education (HE) in is a well-known problem, but higher education institutions (HEIs) have not been able to resolve it so far. Students (SS) who gain access to HE but are not prepared enough & do not receive the necessary support from Academics (AA) who teach first-year courses are, so to speak, let down by the system. Unsupported SS (a) accumulate courses they will need to retake, which results in 3-year degrees completed in 4 or more years & in lower quality educational experience; (b) have to transfer to a different HE (after losing a year in time & much more in self-esteem) or (c) withdraw from HE completely. _This has serious societal & financial costs. In monetary terms, the costs are so high that governments in many countries decide that taxpayers can no longer bear such losses & introduce performance based funding – HEIs are only funded for SS who graduate & on time. Societal costs are those of exclusion. SS are excluded because the system does not support them in their transition to HE & lets them down, or SS are excluded because HEIs decide to accept only those SS who have proven to be able to succeed without any support (& who do not dropout & do not cause financial losses to HEIs). Diverse SS – first-generation, international or older SS, as well as any SS coming from underrepresented socio-economic groups or accessing HE through non-traditional paths – are the first to suffer such exclusion. _In numerical terms, OECD Education at a glance 2019 report included HE completion rates-related indicators for the first time, followed by many other national institutions. As a result, we can see that: - in the Netherlands 12% dropout within Year 1 and only 28% complete on time; - in Spain approx. one out of 5 students dropout, with highest dropout rates in public HEIs for engineering & science, & the cost of 1st-year drop-outs come to 395 million euros; - in Slovenia 20% of students are not enrolled in tertiary education by the beginning of the Year 2; in France 59% fails to complete Bachelors programme, with the highest dropout rates in Year 1; & in Ireland, 63% complete degrees within their theoretical duration, but in computing and engineering courses dropout is between 60 & 80%. _Research shows that what HEIs can do to reverse situation is to make inclusive excellence their goal – aiming not only to admit diverse SS, but to equip those who teach first-year SS with competences required from AA to promote student retention & to set ALL SS for success, especially less prepared SS who need support to succeed in their transition to HE [Crosling et al, 2008; Dynarski et al, 2008; Vogel et al, 2018; Alhadabi & Karpinski, 2020; Islam & Stamp, 2020; Murugan & Badawi, 2020; Olaya et al, 2020]. _START addresses several interconnected needs:- we need inclusive HE – HE that will no longer let diverse SS down & thus effectively excluding them through lack of support; - ALL SS need those who teach first-year courses to be aware of how & why transition to HE is different & to learn how to promote student retention & set ALL SS for success; - all those working at HEIs need to be equipped with competences to be able to support diverse SS through transition to HE; AA who teach 1st-year courses have the biggest (positive or negative) impact on SS’ chances to succeed or dropout, & AA need to accept supporting SS through transition to HE as part of their role; - AA need support – professional development – to learn how to support SS in their transition to HE – how to promote student retention & set ALL SS for success; - AA need HEIs to support them in their efforts; - HEIs need to put together their know-how & make the necessary professional development tools & materials available as OER; - actors of pre-university HE need to be informed of how to best prepare SS who want to access HE for this next life & learning phase<< Objectives >>START will work to promote inclusive excellence in HE teaching. Inclusive excellence can only be achieved if Academics who work with 1st-year students are capable and willing to support ALL students through their transition to HE. Especially 'non-traditional students': first-generation, international or older students, as well as students coming from less represented socio-economic backgrounds and reaching HE through non-traditional routes. START wants to produce Professional Development tools, resources & activities that can support Academics in this task of promoting student retention and setting all students for success. Especially Academics who work with students in Engineering & Sciences, but also more broadly - Students in programmes with highest dropout rates in partner HEIs. Academics who have been able to promote retention will engage in peer learning with those who are still struggling with making inclusive excellence reality. __ START wants to achieve the situation where supporting students through their transition to HE is no longer 'outsourced' to special services, while Academics focus on 'their subjects/courses'. START wants every Academic to see supporting Students in transition to HE as part of what working with 1st-year students and teaching 1st-year courses is about. __ START also wants to promote recognition of inclusive excellence in HE teaching & contribute to bridging communication gap between HE and pre-university education - all with the aim of making a decisive contribution to tackling the long-known & well-documented but till now unresolved issue of excessive drop-out, huge delays in completion or damaging transfers in the first year of undergraduate programmes. ____ START 4 objectives are as follows: ___ Objective 1: Make those teaching 1st-year courses aware of the difficulties students face when entering HE, on the one hand, & of the special role those teaching 1st-year students have in making HE inclusive, accessible & engaging, on the other.___ Objective 2: Introduce HE academics to tools & activities they can use in order to set ALL students for success through (1) helping students learn how to learn in HE & (2) revising assessment, learning & teaching activities to help students successfully adapt to learning in this new environment. Key here is to find the most effective combination of diagnostic, formative & summative assessments.___ Objective 3: Agree on indicators of excellence and create tools that can guide professional development efforts & recognition for those who teach 1st-year students and are keen to promote inclusive excellence (student retention & success) through core curriculum activities.___ Objective 4: Facilitate dialogue with key actors of pre-university education sector, so as to increase the number of diverse students who access HE better PREPARED to learn & succeed in HE environment.<< Implementation >>START will have 3 key types of activities: __ (1) work on the 4 Results the project will produce; __ (2) international learning & teaching activities – 5 in total; __ (3) Multiplier Events – 19 in total.(1) Each Partner will lead/co-lead the work on one of the Results (UPM leading work on Result 1, UP & UL – on Result 2, RUG & UCD – on Result 3, & EDIW – on Result 4). All HEIs – RUG, UPM, UP, UL & UCD – will equally contribute to all the Results. EDIW, an international youth NGO focusing on bridging inter-sectorial communication gap, will focus on Result 4, while also contributing considerably to Results 1 & 3. ___ All project Results will be open access and made available on a variety of platforms by the end of, and well beyond, the project lifetime. ____ (2) International Learning & Teaching Activities (LTTAs) will be held in each of the project HEIs during the project lifetime with a double aim. Firstly, to offer Professional Development activities to Academics working with 1st-year students and to local faculty developers who can later reach more local Academics. Secondly, to pilot project Results, obtain feedback on the materials to be included and collect more elements that can be included into the final products. ___The 5 LTTAs are as follows:__ 1. What does student transition to HE imply and why does it matter?__ 2. Becoming aware of the students YOU have: what do you need to know about your students and how can you get to know this?__ 3. Setting students for success: Making your expectations clear [being clear about your expectations yourself; making sure your students know and understand your expectations; informing pre-HE education actors].__ 4. Ensuring students can succeed: Helping students become the learners YOU want to have & THEY need to be.__ 5. Becoming the HE Teacher who can support student transition [focus on Continuous Professional Development). ____ (3) Multiplier Events will promote dissemination & sustainable exploitation of all the project Results, at local, national & European level. They will be held by each START Partner at the end of each project Year (6 events at the end of project Year 1, 6 at the end of project Year 2, and 6 closer to the end of project Year 3), and jointly by all partners at the end of the project:__ 1. Multiplier Events focusing on Result 1: “Why do those teaching first-year students have a special role to play? What challenges first-year students face in their transition to HE & why it matters.” (end of Year 1; 5 MEs, online, one by each START HEI). _____ 2. Multiplier Events focusing on Results 2 & 3: “Teaching first-year courses? Find out how good you are at supporting student transition to HE & how you can get even better at it.” (end of Year 2; 5 MEs, online, one by each START HEI). _____ 3. Multiplier Events focusing on Result 4: “Bridging the inter-sectoral communication gap to achieve inclusive excellence in Higher Education” (on at the end of each project year, 3 in total, online, by EDIW). _____ 4. Final Multiplier Events (focusing on Results 1-4): “Striving for inclusive excellence in higher education: what can be learnt from the START project” (closer to end of Year 3; 5 MEs, F2F, one by each START HEI) & “Supporting Teachers who Support Student Transition: Why, What, & How. Striving for inclusive excellence in higher education: what can be learnt from the START project” (end of Year 3, online, by all START partners, for HE authorities, representatives of university networks & E+ national agencies). ___ Finally, Transnational Project Meetings (online & F2F) will help to ensure timely and well-coordinated project implementation.<< Results >>START will produce 4 RESULTS: __ (1) “Addressing the Why: Why do those teaching first-year students have a special role to play?” Toolkit for promoting awareness of the special role of those teaching first-year students in making HE inclusive and accessible; __ (2) “How can I help my first-year students engage, persist & succeed?” Handbook featuring a collection of concrete activities and approaches to (i) help first-year students build their learning power (learn to learn in ways required in HE) & (Iii) guide those teaching first-year students in revising their own approaches to assessment, learning & teaching to make these more inclusive and set diverse students for success in HE; __ (3) “How good am I at supporting student transition?” A self-assessment tool based on a competence profile of a HE teacher ready to support diverse students in their transition to HE; __ (4) “Bridging the inter-sectoral communication gap: What is required to succeed in HE & How to let prospective students know?” A message to pre-HE actors on how to better prepare future university students & to HEIs on how best to engage with pre-university education actors to better support university teachers who support student transition. __OTHER PROJECT OUTCOMES INCLUDE: ____ (1) strong institutional and EU-level communities of HE professionals engaged in promoting inclusive excellence in HE teaching & equipped to do so successfully [these will have grown from the 24 persons involved in the proposal development to include 450+ new members: 250+ completely new members reached through START professional development activities, 25 new persons engaged in supporting Academics in their professional development & further 175+ reached through Multiplier Events]; ____ (2) motivation to continue building inclusive HE & striving for excellence in HE teaching increased, created & sustained thanks to building institutional and transnational communities of practitioners; ____ (3) making isolated best practices in supporting teachers who support student transition known at international level through interinstitutional peer-learning; ____ (4) giving institutional, national & international visibility to champions of promoting inclusive excellence in HE teaching through supporting diverse students & through supporting Academics working with 1st-year students; ____ (5) diverse students [1st-generation students, international students, older students, as well as other students coming from less/under-represented socio-economic groups & joining universities through non-traditional routes] being better supported in their transition(s) to HE & set for success (negative dropout & other threats to students success are addressed/prevented); ____ (6) the 5 START HEIs becoming more inclusive & making a significant step towards installing an institution-wide culture of recognising, rewarding & consistently & competently promoting inclusive excellence in HE teaching; ____ (7) EDIW becoming a champion of inter-sectoral communication crucial for supporting SS of increasingly diverse backgrounds in accessing HE & succeeding in such personal development paths.

Expansion, excellence and equity is what Indian higher education strives for; every university student should have a high quality educational experience, while every person dreaming of higher education should have a right to enter a university. To make sure all the students who enrol in Higher Education institutions across the country benefit from high-quality educational experience, Indian Higher Education needs to develop comparable and compatible degree programmes, and build the capacity of university teachers improving the quality of education and teaching. The project is based on the results of a Feasibility Study launched by the EC in cooperation with the Indian Government to find to what extent a Tuning project can contribute to, and be appropriate within, the strategic objectives of the reform of Higher Education in India. Recommendations formulated as a result of the interviews with members of Indian national authorities, associations key to Indian Higher Education and academics from universities across the country (South, East, Centre, North and West), as well as the desktop research, were validated in a final seminar by members of the Indian universities, regional and national governmental organisations in Delhi in October 2014. The Indian universities in the consortium participated in the Feasibility Study, or were recommended by those who did, as key actors of the Indian Higher education. The EU partners participated in different Tuning initiatives in different regions of the world.Hence, the Tuning India brought together 15 Indian universities along with 5 EU partners. Academics, students, graduates, employers and other relevant stakeholders from the five sub-regions of the country have been involved in the process of (re)designing degrees to make them learner-centred, comparable and compatible, as well as relevant for the society and the labour market. The project started with the four selected subject areas – Law, ICT, Medicine and Teacher Education, but thanks to the Tuning Community for India and the Tuning Centres is going well beyond these areas, and well beyond the 15 universities directly involved in project activities. Already during the project lifetime, the 3 National Dissemination Seminars, over 60 Local Workshops and 2 International Policy Forums permitted to make the Tuning India project a truly nation-wide and international initiative. Apart from brining curricular innovation and capacity-building opportunities, the Tuning India project also collected and shared wide empirical data on importance and the current level of achievement of key generic and subject specific competences, and on the students’ workload. Thus, the outcomes of the project are of high relevance for all higher education institutions in India.

Formation of Teachers for Emerging Challenged Areas in the Philippines (FORTH) addresses the reality of teaching in socio-economic deprived areas with very specific needs and contexts for both children and teachers. FORTH particularly addresses teacher´s loss of motivation and self-esteem ending in absenteeism and attrition. It addresses this challenge with a number of joint measures such as bringing to the forefront the relevance of this mission for the eradication of poverty through education, highlighting the importance of this task creating new curricula and developing it into a Master and then into an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree while making it accessible to a) people already in the area (part time) and b) those who make it a choice and a vocation to go to these areas. The curricula will be designed jointly by specialists from Phil and EU, having a critical mass 10 per university fully trained (total 50 people) and making it a centre of excellence by research and international links.Other measures relate to a plan for BA students, willing to take their practical year in these marginal areas, learning and taking part in the project. Further, the project will foster the creation of University clusters, learning communities of university- school teachers (in the selected areas as a pilot) enjoy join learning activities related to exploit specific methodologies existing for these type of teaching and use and build new material relevant to the children´s in these areas to learn and create self-esteem, sense of value and conviction that they can make it. Web repositories and audiovisual material will be created jointly the Master students and the teachers in the area.FORTH intends to be a pilot in the Philippines to be replicated in other parts of the world, making a network of interested partners. FORTH counts on a privilege team both in Phil and in EU and particularly it counts on the presence and support of the Ministry of Education of the Philippines.

Tuning Asia-South East project brings together 7 South East Asia nations and 6 EU Member States giving the opportunity for 30 higher education institutions to engage in policy dialogues, work on key issues related to harmonising competences, and enhance mutual recognition of higher education qualifications. In order to contribute to and support the harmonisation process within the South East Asia region through building of a framework of comparable, compatible and transparent degree programmes, project aims to apply the Tuning methodology in the South East Asia universities in three subject areas – Civil Engineering, Medicine and Teacher Education, develop Tuning Meta-Profiles in three subject areas; develop, implement, monitor and improve degree programmes, and promote regional and international cooperation between the South East Asia and EU universities. The project main results are ensured by using a multi-stakeholder bottom-up approach while taking European and world Tuning experiences in collaboration with key stakeholders at national, regional and international levels. They include: a well-established group of trained academics and managers (65 academic staff and 40 management staff); Reference Points for the Design and Delivery of Degree Programmes in Civil Engineering, Medicine and Teacher Education; 4 BA Degree Programme Profiles and 1 Master’s Degree Profile; 2 Regional Dissemination Seminars; 2 International Dissemination Conferences; 2 High Level International Policy Forums; 1 Public interactive website. The outcomes of the project are of relevance for all higher education institutions in South East Asia.

A global discussion is taking place among Higher Education (HE) stakeholders to strive for HE that does better justice to the needs of the learner and of society. The relevance of study programs is probably the most pressing issue in HE today worldwide, including the countries in South America. In the public eye HE institutions should offer high quality programs that contribute significantly to the welfare of society by preparing graduates well for work and for civic and social engagement. To meet this need, a paradigm shift is required from traditional expert-oriented teaching to student-centred and active learning, based on competences and learning outcomes. Although there is full awareness that this shift is to be made, HE institutions and their academic staff in SA (and beyond) lack capacity, expertise and experience to make this happen. Building on work already done in Europe and in LA, ACE aims to develop effective mechanisms to give student-centred education a serious boost by acting as a catalyzer in 6 South-American countries, involving 13 key universities. ACE covers in each country 1-4 core academic fields, Nursing, Environmental Engineering, Education and History, representing as many HE sectors. At the heart of the project are 20 local working groups (WGs) consisting of 5 academics and of 5 student representatives each. The broad involvement of (local) staff and students is a unique feature. The WGs are all represented in transnational Subject Area Groups. Its members will be empowered to train their local WGs to reform their own programs. For this purpose, subject area qualifications frameworks will be made, based on (updated) meta-profiles developed in earlier LA projects. These will be complemented with in-depth training at 7 transnational meetings. As a result, ACE will result in 20 well informed learning communities that have reformed their programs and be equipped to assist other programs to make the reforms so urgently needed.