<< Objectives >>The aim of the participants in TOPIC is to implement small partnership between a production company from Bulgaria and an educational institution from Romania, aimed at acquiring practical skills in preparing individualized medicinal products. - 1 - increasing awareness and competence and teachers - 2 - formulation of principles and methods (good practices) for training pharmacists - 3 - improving the awareness of the medical community<< Implementation >>The activities that TOPIC partners plan are: 1 Project management 2. Preparation and application of pedagogical practices 3. Activities for acquiring professional competencies with included trainings - TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OF DISPERSE SYSTEMS; - THE ETERIC OILS AS ACTIVE INGREDIENTS IN THE EQUAL CLINICAL PRACTICE; - ANALYTICAL CONTROL IN DIZE OF INDIVIDUALYZATED MEDICINAL FORMs. 4. Sharing and promotion: FINAL CONFERENCE<< Results >>TOPIC achieves its goals with the following results: • study of the practice a TOPIC for achieving methods (good practices) for training master pharmacists - 1 pc. • study of the practice of TOPIC for achieving methods (good practices) for training master pharmacists - 1 pc. • curriculum for applying methods (good practices) for training master pharmacists - 1 pc. • mag. pharmacists and students who have improved their qualification in courses organized by TOPIC - 38 pcs.

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT ----- The concept of knowledge societies brings the need of progress in pedagogy, as the traditional approach to teaching consisting of in-class time delivering content does not allow students to achieve deeper learning. There is a broad range of instructional approaches which support collaborative learning (CL), i.e. activities involving joint intellectual effort by students who work together in groups, test their own understanding and examine the understanding of others. A widely accepted and widespread CL activity is Problem-Based Learning (PBL) developed in 1960’s. It is a student-centric learning activity in which an educator only acts as a moderator supporting the discussion around a problem to be solved by a small group of students. The group determines all necessary learning outcomes for solving the problem, conducts research around them and discusses the arisen issues together. A relatively new development in higher education is team-based learning (TBL), which has formed an alternative to PBL. Both PBL and TBL emphasize student engagement and active participation in learning, and adopt the general blended learning approach by mixing face-to-face instruction with online resources.OBJECTIVES ----- The TELSON project has aimed at innovating teaching and learning practice by using two collaborative learning methods – PBL (Problem-Based Learning) and TBL (Team-Based Learning). A unique feature of this project was the use of VS (Virtual Scenarios), which in both of the collaborative learning variants encourage students to use their knowledge-base to explore simple management decisions as they work through a case that mimics a real-world problem. Within this context, the TELSON project aimed at the following particular objectives; (i) developing students’ critical thinking and reasoning skills with the use of SBL (Scenario-Based Learning) methods in the study programs encompassing selected biomedical and life sciences; (ii) sharing know-how and transferring best practices from universities which have already gone through a successful implementation of authentic, motivating, competency-based learning styles into curricula; (iii) delivering interactive VS in the languages and cultures of the partners and associated educational networks; (iv) comparing pedagogical value and efficiency of two different but established SBL methods: Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Team-Based Learning (TBL). The multi-institutional investigation of this type represents a benchmark in the exploration of pedagogy, efficacy and staffing efficiency of each method, in an era in which learning activities are increasingly blending face-to-face with eLearning. PARTICIPANTS ----- The partnership of this project comprised three institutions from three European countries: Masaryk University (Czechia), “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iasi (Romania), and St George’s University of London (United Kingdom). The project also engaged with partners’ networks, particularly RoEduNet and MEFANET, in order to increase the use of VS tools and SBL methodologies and to assess their effectiveness and advantages on large populations of students and teachers.RESULTS, IMPACT AND BENEFITS ----- Educators in the participating institutions acquired cutting edge skills in virtual scenario development and in pedagogy for collaborative learning activities, namely PBL and TBL. The created learning resources – 17 interactive virtual scenarios – with the carefully prepared PBL and TBL lessons contributed to education in biomedical and life science subjects at the involved institutions thanks to the implementation into parametrically mapped curricula. The number of training and learning activities organized during the project period enabled to trigger several feedbacks and thus to continuously test and validate educators’ efforts on real students. The project was concluded with a brochure and a paper describing multi-institutional investigation of students’ and other stakeholders’ perspectives on PBL and TBL. As a result, curriculum development staff at universities will have an opportunity to consider relative merits of PBL and TBL. This also has a value for general training and education in any area of competency.

Medical practice represents a highly specific professional activity. It requires a very distinct set of skills and, most important, the ability to bring them together. In real practice, the clinical professionals execute a complex cognitive algorithm in order to synthesize a wide range of data and to provide a minimal risk/maximal efficiency solution for every particular case. In order to achieve a good training of medical students towards this goal, the teaching and learning processes require a different approach - significantly more complex than the traditional information feeding.The CLEVER project aims are the following:(i) To transfer know-how and best practices from the institutions which have already gone through a successful implementation of authentic, motivating, competency-based learning styles into the medical curriculum.(ii) To compile guidelines/guidance (methodological and didactical rules) on the proper use of virtual patient cases and case-based learning sessions aiming at developing clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills with respect to the national standards and cultures as well as internationally accepted evidence based clinical guidelines.(iii) To investigate and implement an IT platform for authoring, reviewing and playing virtual patient cases.(iv) To enrich existing curricula at the partner institutions with sets of new virtual patient cases authored by well-trained young medical teachers.(v) To evaluate students’ and teachers’ attitudes to the innovative education methods as well as the changes in their learning and teaching habits with the use of data gathered and analyzed along the whole period of the project.(vi) To link with the existing regional educational networks – ROEDUNET and MEFANET - and other groups or similar projects at the European level and use the wide audience of teachers and students to disseminate the project outcomes including the virtual patient cases authored in various European languages.(vii) To develop the skills in digital competence.(viii) To increase the competence in foreign language.Based on a long-standing collaboration, in-depth knowledge of each other’s work, aspirations, and common interests in research and education, the partnership of this project comprises three institutions from three European countries: “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iasi (Romania), Masaryk University (Czech Republic) and Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice (Slovakia).The CLEVER project will produce the following four intellectual outputs:(i) compiled methodologies and guidelines on preparation, training and implementation of the proposed approach to clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills,(ii) implemented ICT platforms for virtual patient cases to be used in case-based learning sessions,(iii) authored and reviewed virtual patient cases with their translations to three European languages,(iv) analyzed datasets gathered with the goal to evaluate teaching and learning styles as well as attitudes of students and educators to the specific parts of curricula before and after implementation of CLEVER’s methods and tools.CLEVER addresses the fundamental goal of safe clinical training. This purpose will be achieved by exercising not the real patients than VPCs within an ICT platform developed for CBL management. The VPCs will be designed and produced based on a set of anticipated guidelines and training ICT tools delivered to the educators who will become the authors of virtual patient cases and, at the same time, will act as the leaders able to conduct case-based learning sessions.The project will strongly promote the open-source software designed to address complex educational challenges. The ICT platform will be selected as a result of careful needs analysis.Substantial efforts will be spent on linking the content of the ICT platform to European educational networks (such as MEFANET and ROEDUNET). The dissemination will also include workshops and interactive sessions organized with four international conferences, linking the CLEVER project with wide academic communities: MEFANET 2019 in Brno, Medical Informatics Conference 2020 in Iasi and International Student Medical Conference ISMCK 2020 and ISMCK 2021 in Kosice.CLEVER will bring fundamental benefits to both students and teachers. For students, it will create an interactive, innovative, highly motivating learning environment. The teachers will be provided with best practices and expertise, which together with the ICT platform will allow them to exploit their clinical experience effectively in the pedagogical part of their career. At the institutional level, the ICT platforms will stimulate the development of partnerships and collaboration between trainers (educators), trainees (students) and employers (academics and clinicians.

Erasmus Mundus Master in Biomedical Engineering (EMMBIOME) is a two-year master programme focused on academic skills and specific knowledge acquisition in line with the current world practice for biomedical engineering studies. EMMBIOME offers in-depth training and development of research skills that ensure both expertise in state-of-the-art topics and future involvement in the field, but also encourage our students in the formulation and promotion of scientific thought, as well as their enrolment in industry. The quality of EMMBIOME programme is ensured through strong collaboration and partnership between three programme countries: Serbia (University of Kragujevac), Greece (University of Patras) and Romania (University of Medicine and Pharmacy Grigore T. Popa).

The Building Curriculum Infrastructure in Medical Education (BCIME) project dealt with the challenges of curriculum management and its optimisation in terms of curriculum mapping and outcome based education focused on learners. The activities of project partners aimed specifically on curricula of medical and health care disciplines, however, the methodology and results of the project are generally applicable to other fields of study.BCIME developed the innovative, intuitive, well structured and easily applicable standard-compliant curriculum management system EDUportfolio. The EDUportfolio platform has been setup and implemented for all partner institutions in the light of both the results of BCIME needs analysis and the review of the latest literature in the field, so that it is applicable by the widest possible community and stakeholders, including curriculum developers, teachers, students, university and faculty management, administrators and technical staff as well. Moreover, BCIME provided and used a coherent and comprehensive framework with all necessary instruments for a well-structured curriculum management. Doing so, the BCIME project has met all its objectives and now shares (i) the know-how in the field of curriculum management, innovating on and optimising the proven methodology of parametric description and a step-by-step manual for curriculum development; (ii) the descriptions of selected parts of the curricula represented by the Anatomy in English as taught at all involved partner institutions and by the Neurosurgery in Romanian, the Conservative and Prosthetic Dentistry in Slovak, the Clinical and communication skills in German, the Communication skills in Polish and the Analysis, Data Management and Informatics for Healthcare Specialisation in Czech; (iii) a set of curriculum mapping research and exploratory questions with the analysis answered by the project in an visualisation toolkit capable of exploring hidden relations in described curricula.During the BCIME project implementation, all its outcomes and outputs were continuously distributed and publicly shared to all persons interested in curriculum optimisation and standardisation via the project's website, dissemination activities as well as multiplier events. In order to identify both the conceptual as well as functional features of the complex curriculum management platform and to meet expectations and requirements of participating institutions, we conducted surveys and personal discussions among 63 participants representing faculty managers, guarantors of study programs, curriculum designers, teachers, researchers, technicians and administrative staff involved in curriculum management. As the results of this needs analysis, the curriculum system’s key characteristics and features were derived and integrated into the methodologies and platform that was tested and implemented across partners’ institutions within our intellectual outputs. The same types of participants, extended by medical students, were invited to multiplier events we were able to conduct during the implementation period which was significantly affected by the worldwide pandemic situation. During three multiplier events, we shared our achieved outputs to 143 stakeholders. The exploratory and confirmatory research questions in the field of curriculum mapping were communicated to 27 stakeholders of each partner institution interested in the process of curriculum management. Based on the nominal group technique, we achieved formal consensus that generated the prioritised set of 56 right research questions. Answers to the individual research questions, together with the methodologies, step-by-step manual and outcome-based metadata description of selected parts of curriculum can be browsed by particular target groups using EDUportfolio (https://eduportfolio.iba.muni.cz/) and analytical and visualisation tools the BCIME project delivered.The BCIME project addressed the fundamental need of curriculum management and standardisation for which the systematic solution based on proven pedagogical approaches and methodologies was developed. Our set of intellectual outputs resulted in the system capable of managing and analysing curricula and is ready to be used by more than 12 500 students in the theoretical and clinical phases of medical and healthcare study programmes, more than 60 faculty members involved in the curriculum management and the 5 BCIME partner institutions (UPJS, JU, UMF, UAU, MU). Due to our project consortium cooperation the outcomes of the project are available to stakeholders at all the faculties of medicine and health care sciences involved in the MEFANET network, to other professional medical societies and general public. In order to reach a wider scientific community, the consortium was involved in dissemination of the project activities at international conferences and journal articles.