The main objective of this project is to create a sustainable capacity building programme in environmental management and modelling, and to improve the quality and accessibility of higher education in Iran and Iraq.Geographical information systems (GIS, remote sensing (RS) are key techniques to be included in the thirteen courses to be developed and implemented, and eLearning is the form of the courses.eLearning courses based on identified needs and the labour market will benefit society in terms of accessibility and quality. The management of higher education will improve through the development and use of student-teacher-admin communication and reporting tools. Our consortium of 8 university partners builds on extensive experience and continuing cooperation. However, 3 out of 4 non-EU partners have not previously received EU capacity building support.Iran and Iraq are countries where our consortium can make a significant impact, by enhancing political, cultural, educational, and economic links between the EU and the region, as well as by disseminating EU social and democratic values. This partnership is uniquely positioned to maximize the opportunities for, and delivery of, successful capacity building. The specific objective of the project is to improve the level of competences and skills of HEIs in the region by developing, adapting, and delivering state of the art eLearning courses focusing on environmental modelling and climate change/food security. The extensive alumni and contact network of our partners ensures that the demand for, and relevance and quality of, graduates and courses will be properly evaluated. Staff training will be part of course development, including skills in geo-information science and earth observation, providing added value in finding solutions to climate change and food security challenges.The course material to be developed will build upon existing courses used by the EU-partners, modified to meet the requirements (academically as well as pedagogically) of the Partner Countries. An additional output of the project will be 13 highly relevant courses/modules (all together 112.5 ECTS) to be used by the project partners.

In Kurdistan region of Iraq, students enrolled at public elementary schools are educating by elementary school teachers whose 90% of them are graduates from colleges of Basic Education of the HEIs in Kurdistan. The Basic Education colleges in Kurdistan are the main provider of the primary school teachers in the region. The current teaching staff at our primary schools are 75% graduates of the Basic education colleges and 20% are graduates from two years teacher preparing institute which is equivalent to the secondary school. The WIDE project aim to enhance the capacity of the Basic education Faculties in each Partner institutions with the final outcome to improve the general regional standard of primary education. The project builds on two assumptions: (1) the integration between in-and-out of the classroom as a key driver for developing employability skills as well as civic awareness; (2) the digital transformation as embedded in teaching, learning, and work. Universities, therefore, need to increase their capacities at two levels: (1) dialogue with the business world or local institutions; and (2) pedagogies based on active methods integrating digital and virtual components. WIDE adopts work-integrated learning as a methodological approach. The project will update previous experiences and allow universities to draft and put in place procedures to implement work-integrated learning activities. The ambition of the project is to establish a solid system for work-integrated learning activities, with particular attention for internship and traineeship, working both online and F2F, since the future of work will increasingly include remote/online work.

The educational system in Iraq and Iran is facing many challenges such as lack of professional skills and competencies of teachers, weakness of methods and applications, inadequate access to technology, lack of sufficient knowledge and ability to exploit technology. PC universities have overcome these challenges.The aim of OPATEL consists in establishing and developing a center in IR&IQ unis to train staff and students by using an Online Platform for TEaching and learning to be as a hub for using best practices of ICT in education, as well as raising competencies of lecturers and teachers by enhancing learning processes of students.Wider Objectives:- Establishing a well-equipped center for E-Learning in partner unis- Transfer of EU-Experience in areas of ICT, skills development and merge new generations in this experience.- Training and following up with staff and students on how to develop, share learning objects, and collaborate their courses, presentations and exercises on online platforms.- Improving quality of teaching and learning by building the capacity of universities how to evaluate, develop and design e-courses.- Enhancing cooperation with EU partners through mutual visits to develop strategies how to move from teaching to learning and develop scalable sustainable solutions.The use of Online Platform will steer the education in the right direction. Training of staff to enhance and develop their abilities, solving the problems of ICT use in education and creating and publishing common methodology and documentation for lifelong learning, E-learning and training for IR&IQ in accordance with EU-Standards. 3 languages will be used in the project: Arabic, Persian and English. Many factors will be used for dissemination and success of OPATEL such as press and media; presenting progress using websites; participation of staff and students, participation of ministries of high educations and other HEIs.

The partner countries involved in this proposal, namely Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (but also some of the Programme Countries involved, such as Turkey and Germany) are experiencing a very critical situation due to the high number of refugees present on their territory: most of these are Syrian citizens, and include a high percentage of former University students who had to interrupt their academic curriculum.The main specific objective of RESCUE is to help the Partner Country Universities in structuring an effective response to this problem, by creating ad hoc units (the Refugee Student Operational Support Unit – R-SOS), whose mission is to structure specific services supporting the refugee students in resuming their academic training path. The analysis carried out by the target Universities has shown that each one of them has different approaches and constraints vis-à-vis this problem, therefore ad hoc solutions must be implemented in each one of them.Hence each EU university with an experience in dealing with this issue has cooperated with the Universities of one specific MENA Country: TU Berlin supported the Lebanese Universities, Aydin University supported the Jordanian Universities whereas Barcelona University supported the Iraqi Universities.One major change in the partnership composition was made in order to increase the project impact in terms of refugees to be reached: in January 2019 the Lebanese International University was added as a partner and had to make a big effort to catch up with the other partners. Once the R-SOS units have become operational during the first half of 2019, the services they deliver help the refugee students in resuming their academic training path, in some cases by accessing the standard curricula on the same basis as all the other students, in some other cases by following ad hoc training courses providing them with basic skills and competencies useful for employment purposes.Therefore the setting up of the R-SOS units is helping in improving the situation of the refugee students either by supporting them in getting a job in the hosting countries either in preparing them for returning to their origin country once the crisis is over.

APPRAIS addresses governance, strategic planning and management of higher education institutions, with a particular focus on enhancing the capacities of human resources and proposing a reform for the local Higher Education system through the implementation of Bologna process. APPRAIS project idea comes from the willingness of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHESR KRG) to improve and develop higher education system in Kurdistan region of Iraq. Within this logic, the MOHESR KRG has encouraged several Iraqi Universities to adopt the European education system thus to implement the Bologna process. Therefore, APPRAIS will contribute to allow HEIs in defining a roadmap for a better university governance and implementation of Bologna process in the HEIs of Kurdistan region of Iraq. Secondly, it will upgrade by means of training and CB action delivered by the EU universities, the skills of presidents, vice-presidents, heads of IROs and QA responsibles on strategic planning, quality assurance and credits recognition, as well as the capacities of administrative staff on university administrative management, quality assurance and internationalisation strategies. Finally, thanks to the harmonization phase, the piloting process of reform from Kurdistan region will be enlarged also to the whole country and each university will define its own institutional strategic plan.