The main concept of RiHEI consists of a cross-disciplinary platform that will facilitate a processual upskilling experience for HEI academic and non-academic staff aimed at equipping them with competences and skills required by their HEIs to become sustainable and responsible (environmentally & socially) job and enterprise creation engines
Furthermore, RiHEI will adopt the design-thinking model of the TraCCE (2020) project to develop the capacity building toolkits (WP2). This model is based on an absolute representation and inclusiveness of all voices within decision making. This model covers the following stages: Emphasize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. In order to enhance this model event more, principles from the Helsinki Design Lab will be adopted. Such principles are used to turn trans-disciplinary and trans-epistemic approaches into practice, able to build bridges between the new knowledge created and social innovation in a
comprehensive yet complex way. This is of absolute necessity given the transdisciplinary nature of the envisioned RiHEI training toolkits.
The following capacity building toolkits (CBT) will be developed:
| Title | Content / Pillar / Required focus of the CBTs |
| Accessing EU resources to improve HEI operational and content quality | Pillar 1 aims at developing capacity building toolkits related to quality assurance of educational programmes as well as processes. On one hand it seeks to provide trainees from Georgian HEIs with the key mainstreamed HEI frameworks (EQUIS , ETF , ECTS ) that would make the Georgian HEI programmes more internationally compatible, attracting thus regional talent while enabling a better control also for the educational content that will be made more market-oriented (serving thus market actors and facilitating employment and job productivity). Besides these, competence frameworks such as DigCompEdu and EntreComp will also be included to boost the digital capacity of university staff (academic and non-academic) but also to boost the entrepreneurialism of university lecturers that would then change the mindset of students paving the way to more entrepreneurial ventures stemming from the HEIs. Furthermore, to better serve industry’s needs with very specialized courses, Pillar 1 also includes guidelines for setting up microcredential certification options aimed to train learners on very specific skills (which can also open the path to corporate trainings, diversifying the funding base of the HEIs and providing a more trained workforce). The microcredential framework will be enhanced with best practices from the European Institute of Technology (EIT Label, EIT Learning outcomes) which proved to have immediate upskilling potential for EU industries. Ultimately, specialized guides into how to find market-oriented best practices and training content (from past Erasmus+, Horizon Europe and EIT projects) will be devised to support both academic and non-academic HEI staff access ready-made training content (to homogenize EU best practice use and avoid result duplication). |
| Innovation commercialization and regional impact via RRI and young citizen science | Pillar 2 looks at developing innovation commercialization capacity and technology transfer. This pillar has a direct impact on HEIs’ ability to trigger regional job creation either through university-industry partnerships or via university spin-offs that create employment and economic welfare. Firstly, to achieve such improved competences, RiHEI will provide capacity training around the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI). The overall objective is to train Georgian HEIs on a novel way R&D is being performed in universities in order to ensure immediate commercialization and involvement of a large number of internal stakeholders in the entrepreneurial discovery process with quadruple helix actors. RRI implies that societal actors (researchers, students, university administrators, young citizens, policy makers, business, third sector organisations, etc.) work together during the whole research and innovation process to better align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society. RRI often leads to institutional change, commitment and transferability of behavioural change, results, and best practices across the entire institution by motivating and engaging internal actors. Moreover, RRI has gained relevance through policy, which has defined six pillars deserving of attention (ethics, gender equality, open access and data, science education, public engagement, and governance) that largely affect the research dimension of RRI more than the innovation dimension. To better facilitate the use of existing resources, RiHEI relies on the repositories of RRI-TOOLS and OPENAIRE to bridge available toolkits and adapt them for the needs of the envisioned startups/scale-ups. Through RRI, Georgian HEIs can better bring citizens (especially young people) closer to innovation development processes while better engaging and connecting the quadruple helix. Technology transfer offers from the involved HEIs will be modernised with RRI as well as with better public-private equity and investment models. Besides RRI, Pillar 2 looks at providing capacity to Georgian HEIs with regards to embedding the RIIA framework as transformational strategy and impact measurement with regards to regional employment and development. By adopting the RIIA framework, Georgian HEIs will better embed in their university strategy the following pillars of job creation, enterprise, and young people engagement: Education and youth development; Research, technological development, knowledge transfer and commercialisation; Entrepreneurship and support to enterprise development; Regional orientation, strategic development, and knowledge infrastructure. Ultimately, HEIs will benefit from capacity building based on the HEINNOVATE matrix that will be utilised as the main yearly performance measurement mechanism as well as benchmark mechanism to identify improvements. The HEI pillars will be transferred both in the university strategy as well as in the newly formed university analytics matrix. |
| Public-private investment in HEIs | Pillar 3 looks at funding diversification primarily via public-private partnerships. Here, the goal is to trigger an ecosystem level transformation in Georgia and to motivate public-private investment partnerships in higher education initiative (i.e., innovation commercialization, university spin-offs, industrial projects, educational projects), with the overall objective of creating new agile companies and decent jobs. Traditionally, private investors find it risky to invest in university-led initiatives due to slower procedures, rigid IPR agreements, etc. To this end, if HEIs become closer to the regional/national priorities (i.e., via RIIA and HEINNOVATE), they would be able to better attract public investors that would pave the way to private investment (via derisking processes and facilitation of public-private partnerships). To this end, the Georgian HEIs will be mentored towards developing strategic partnerships with public and private investors while keeping them onboard (via supervisory boards) towards directing innovation and teaching/learning development and implementation processes. |
| Improving student services & greening campuses | Pillar 4 looks at improving student services and at the future greening university campuses in light of the New European Bauhaus principles. Firstly, the student services operations from the involved HEIs will be improved by setting up industry-driven job counselling via university-industry partnerships through which industry HR staff will provide scheduled mentorship sessions for HEI students. Furthermore, innovative demonstrations of career and skill guidance by adopting EIT Manufacturing’s Teaching Factory concepts through which batches of students are exposed to course delivery within company/industry premises will also be performed. On top of this, to better tailor students’ personal development, RiHEI will facilitate the development of digital student career/development profiles with badges and personalization that would enable skill-gap identification (and mitigation actions) for students that are keener to adopt a personalized education approach. Reliance will be made on the Europass Skills Passport framework . Such improved student services will make graduates more prepared for the market and will boost their employability. Similarly, to provide an inclusive student support ecosystem, RiHEI will devise a hybrid strategy social group at risk inclusion and support in higher education (based on EU’s Inclusion Strategy) by enabling learners in difficulty (cultural, economic, social, disability, geographic/distance – i.e., remote/rural areas) to better access quality higher education and career support. This refers to: student recruitment bias, student support and inclusion in the learning process, non-discrimination actions, effective assessment support fi different needs. This also involves the empowerment of the 3 Georgian HEIs to undertake EU initiatives for gender-balanced in STEAM such as Girls-go-circular and Supernova (from the EIT). These initiatives will bring young women closer to enterprising and sustainability while boosting their participation in STEAM. Lastly, RiHEI will devise a strategy for soft campus transformation towards greening campus facilities and infrastructure via information & collective action (i.e., waste separation, energy saving, heating optimisation, etc). This will be done in the spirit of the New European Bauhaus Initiative that will pave the way of Georgian HEI campus transformation towards the values of sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion of all social groups in the design and operation of HEI campuses. |
| Upgrading international relations offices towards European University Alliance values | Pillar 5 looks at improving international relations offices by: building international networks of HEIs; understanding how to set up Erasmus Charters, engaging in Erasmus+ projects (mobility and cooperation partnerships), international student recruitment, international R&D projects, agile project management methodologies, internalization at home, brand awareness raising, communication and dissemination, maintaining alumni networks and developing international communities. These activities are aimed to raise the internationalization and brand power of the HEIs, attracting thus more talent to the region that can improve the job market by attracting FDI, new companies and innovation hubs capacble to be inclusive of job creation and integration of young people from rural/remote areas. |
| Ecosystem transformation for sustainable and responsible job creation and enterprise | Pillar 6 looks at improving quality assurance processes that would upgrade/replace the existing ones with regards to: teaching and learner certification systems via: EQF, ETF, ECTS; Higher education management procedures (EQUIS); yearly staff training and appraisal mechanisms (a blend of teaching, research and funding acquisition for income diversification and better value production). This pillar also looks at the Institutionalisation of mandatory staff training and certification on digital and entrepreneurial competences (on DigCompEdu and EntreComp) to support entrepreneurial teaching and learning as well as potential student-led startups while being capable to fully deliver digital education and account for social groups at risk. Furthermore, as part of this work programme, RiHEI aims to develop and introduce university administration analytics that would monitor quality, student satisfaction, financial management, environmental/social impact, and that would facilitate a better insight into a more flexible and resourceful HEI apparatus. Each HEI will have such indicators with metrics and achievement goals by the end of the project. Furthermore, to better boost both the quality of the processes and learning content in the 3 Georgian HEIs, RiHEI will enable a simplified and integrated tool on how to identify good learning resources from past Erasmus+ / Horizon Europe and EIT funded project. This is aimed to ensure that the Georgian HEIs uptake ready-made outputs and benefit from the EU added value products with top-rated quality. Ultimately, RiHEI will Develop a quality framework for issuing microcredentials towards enabling a more industry/skill oriented learning pathway that can directly upskill both graduates and current workforce, reducing the skill-gap mismatch. |
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.