The #IBelong project is an innovative programme of evidence-informed interventions to improve students' sense of belonging and success in higher education, with a focus on – but not limited to – ethnic minority students and first-generation entrants in higher education. Central in the #IBelong programme are a suite of interventions that operate at course programme level, engaging first year students, student-peer mentors and the staff team to improve diverse students’ belonging and success. Interventions include dialogue about diversity, belonging and success (Dialogue Days; DD); staff engagement with and reflection on diversity, and changes to practice (Team Teacher Reflection; TTR); and student-peer mentors building a community (Student Community Mentoring; SCM). The three interventions interact as a suite of activities to improve students’ belonging, continuation and attainment. The #IBelong consortium started implementing these integrated interventions in single course programmes in Pedagogy and Education at the four partner universities involved in 2019/2020. During the 2019/20 academic year however, global challenges – both the COVID-19 pandemic and world-wide anti-racism protests – impacted the importance and the scale of our #IBelong project and activities. The #IBelong team redesigned and redeveloped all IO’s for online and blended education in 2020 and 2021. In the 2020/21 academic year the #IBelong interventions were implemented in additional course programmes with activities that were scaled up to faculty- or university-wide levels. #IBelong activities impacted directly on 5 higher education institutions, 11 course programmes, 2100 students, 208 staff members, and 73 mentors offering mentoring to the 2100 students on the 11 course programmes. DD1 take place at the beginning of the academic year and are embedded into the face-to-face and online teaching as appropriate within each university. Staff is involved, sharing their stories and facilitating the sessions, and developing their own understanding of and capacity to be inclusive. DD2 takes place towards the end of the first academic year, and assist students with reflection on the year, and looking forward to supporting their success in year 2. TTR is integrated into regular staff meetings throughout the year and makes use of evidence and specific cases which may are collected by student community mentors, to stimulate authentic and continuous discussion. If necessary, the sessions can be delivered online to ensure that all staff are able to participate. SCM benefits from embedding the scheme into existing structures and models of mentoring and support available. There are different models of mentoring, including group and 1-1. Where individual mentoring takes place the matching (e.g., first- or continuous generation in higher education, migrant or non-migrant, urban or rural) is very important to help students engage and belong. A schedule of mentoring sessions or meetings is very useful for students, rather than relying on mentees requesting meetings.Common methods of evaluation evidence collection have been used across the interventions and universities, drawing on a mixed methods design. Student surveys about belonging and student-staff interaction have been administered in each of the universities. Focus groups have been conducted with students and with staff about diversity, belonging and success and their experiences of the interventions in all four universities. The #IBelong team used Programme Theory evaluation tools, namely the Logic Chain Model and the Theory of Change (Thomas, 2020), for monitoring and evaluation. The #IBelong interventions had a range of short-term benefits for participants (students and staff) in terms of better understanding diversity, belonging and success as a result of the IOs. In the medium term the outcomes were generally changes to student and staff behaviours in response to the improved understanding, and which promoted improved engagement and belonging. In the longer-term we expected #IBelong interventions to contribute to retention and attainment. We have not been able to prove this due to the pivot to online learning and related consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the partner institutions have however made changes to learning and teaching to ensure it is more inclusive, acknowledging and engaging with diversity, and facilitating belonging and contributing to success.Overall, the #IBelong interventions have been (re)designed, (re)developed and implemented in on-campus, online and blended education in all the universities. We have (successfully) adopted an embedded, mainstreamed approach to reaching and supporting students from diverse backgrounds and others who may be less able to participate – to engage. The learning from the evaluation and experiences has informed the final outputs delivered by the #IBelong team.

Data at the institutional level as well as regional and European research provide hard evidence that inequality of opportunities persists all throughout higher education (HE). Characteristics such as among others, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, skin colour, religion, able-bodiedness, or socioeconomic class often influence access to and success, and belonging in HE.The experiences of COVID lockdown education show that students in vulnerable situations have been affected disproportionately by the measures taken, putting precisely those groups that were already struggling at an increased risk of exclusion. When students in more vulnerable situations fall victim to a renewed HE in the 21st century, this imposes an unacceptable mortgage on human and social welfare.At the same time, online education has a strong potential to enhance inclusive excellence, because of flexibility, access, diversification, and participation. This has not yet been systematically inventoried, implemented nor validated. In most cases, the transition to online education has primarily consisted of a mere shifting of existing educational concepts, working methods, and assessments of analog education to the digital context. The question of what inclusion means in the context of online education, and how to best establish this in online or hybrid, is yet unclear. And since inclusion often is not even a primary focus of analog education, it is consequently also not written into the core of digitized education. The educational changes necessitated by the COVID pandemic create a window of opportunity in which we should seize the moment to rethink education and to evolve towards an excellent education that is at its core inclusive. The e-Inclusion brings together a consortium of four universities and two policy-focused organisations with leading expertise in both inclusion policy and digital learning to:- support educators in implementing inclusive models of digital education in blended and hybrid environments- assure that the accelerated transition to digital education prompted by the COVID-19 crisis does not exclude vulnerable groups from participation in HE or exacerbate existing inequalities- take advantage of the opportunities of digitization to reduce structural barriers for exclusionIn this project, we develop a research-based inclusive excellence toolkit, consisting of separate building blocks for teachers to develop inclusive online education that is tailored to specific phases, aspects, and contexts of inclusion. Handbook for Inclusive Digital EducationThis will propose a vision for inclusive education that covers contexts of hybrid and blended learning. It will identify drivers of exclusion, which will cover 'traditional' exclusion drivers, but also identify new elements of exclusion which may be new to or exacerbated by the response to COVID-19. We will use desk research and expert-consultation to then isolate a set of success factors for digital inclusion, backed up by examples of good practice. Micro-Learning Modules on Inclusion in Digital Education ContextsThis will be designed around a set of 15-20 skills for digital inclusion, with a micro-module being designed to acquire each skill by following a challenge-based approach that will instruct leaders by giving the opportunity to practice and develop the required skill. The course will take a self-directed free-flowing approach, to allow participants to personalize their own learning pathways based on their specific needs. Digital Inclusion CourseFor those who prefer to (a) experience a course designed with inclusion in mind via a learning management system, and (b) gain all the skills outlined above via a linear pathway, we will also create, moderate, and assess a course based on the modules. Awareness Raising ToolThe foundation of all the above-mentioned tools is an awareness module, which helps teachers explore their own identity and positionality, based on the premise that teachers are not neutral outsiders to the students’ learning process, but are part of the classroom dynamics.The project will offer around 150 educators the ability to further develop strategies that work against the social reproduction of in digital settings. It will enhance universities’ expertise in promoting an inclusive digitally-mediated personalized learning environment for every student, by working towards opportunities for a diversity of students to construct a strong sense of belonging. In the long term, the project will impact a change in organizational culture to create and sustain a more inclusive university by developing a systemic approach that integrates a vision of high-quality digital education and also a vision on supporting diverse students' engagement in meaningful learning experiences.

<< Objectives >>Objective of IDEA-net is to develop coordinated set of tactics for building a sustained diversity change and capacity-building programme, that supports and expands campus' big-picture strategic agenda as an inclusive and equitable institution. Project will result in set of packages that will equip Universities on their path to building strategies for diversity, access and inclusion, and will expand the knowledge of their leadership and support staff.<< Implementation >>Activities include production of:-Database of more than 70+ good practices of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access (IDEA) work strategies and approaches-Guidelines on how to set up IDEA offices and how to set up the right infrastructure and build ally-ships from within-Capacity building peer-learning activities for support services and piloting those in Universities of Ljubljana, Zadar and Belgrade;-Community of Practitice centered around knowledge-sharing, future trends and cooperation<< Results >>By using IDEA-net set of tools and resources the educational practitioners will be equipped to actively advocate for social justice change in their educational environments, while at the same time they will have unique and supportive space to exchange, learn, grow and build on each others' experiences and expertise in the field of IDEA. At the three Universities at Western Balkans, the outcome will be initiation of IDEA structures and support services, leading to better outcomes for its students