Improving digital skills through innovation centers

Funding: National Youth Congress – Program “Tirana European Youth Capital 2022”

Project summary: This project aims to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy for increasing the capacities of innovation centers in Albania in the development of digital skills among young people in general, but with a special focus on entrepreneurs or startup teams that have innovative ideas to develop and carried forward. The strategy will focus on providing relevant training, mentoring and networking opportunities to enable the innovation center to support the young people who are activated near it in building successful digital businesses.

Key elements:

1. Building a strategy on the development of digital skills for innovation centers in Albania. (min. 30 pages)
2. Implementation of 3 presentations.
3. Implementation of 3 workshops for the development of digital skills.
4. Implementation of a 2-day Hackathon where young people provide solutions for social or business problems offering digital solutions based on the skills acquired in previous trainings.

Project Lead: CIT

Project partners: IETT – Institute of Education, Heritage and Tourism

CIT HUB – Innovation Center

Funding: National Youth Congress – Program “Tirana European Youth Capital 2022”

Project summary: CIT HUB is an innovation center for promoting creativity and entrepreneurship. It is a place where people can meet and interact, create, undertake, work and innovate together. CIT HUB goal is to encourage students across multiple disciplines to work together in one location where with the help and support of our exceptional and resourceful team of professors, mentors and experts they can spark and fuel new ideas that can lead to potential intellectual property and new businesses.

Link: https://cit-hub.al/

Project Lead: CIT

Project partners: IETT – Institute of Education, Heritage and Tourism, Tirana Municipality, National Youth Congress,  Tirana European Youth Capital 2022

Supporting Quality Research in Albania 2016-2018.

Funding: PERFORM, Helvetas Albania, Universite de Fribourg, Swiss Agency for Development.

Project summary: Among the largest projects and with a very large weight for scientific research and the quality of scientific research in Albania was the project won in 2016 (with a duration of two years 2016-2018) from the CIRD Foundation of KU “ICT” “Support of Quality Scientific Research in Albania” (Supporting Quality Research in Albania), sponsored by PERFORM, Helvetas Albania, Universite de Fribourg, Swiss Agency for Development. Within this project, the staff of the Faculty of Engineering, Dr. Fabian Lashi (head of the Software Engineering Department) and MSc. Ibrahim Çekiri, in collaboration with two other experts, drafted and worked on a scientific research report in the country with tangible results and quantitative and qualitative data. After that, the COORP.al Platform was worked on and built, which was put into operation in 2016 and its maintenance continued until 2018.

Project Lead: CIT

Project partners: CIRD Foundation

Integrating Digital Content and Digitalization of High Schools”

Funding: EU/Cooperation partnerships in higher education KA220-HED-A776F195

Project summary: This report provides a comprehensive overview of strategies and best practices for developing Open Educational Resources (OERs) for high schools. It details the process, opportunities, and challenges based on insights from project IDADOHS conducted by the Canadian Institute of Technology and 9 other partner organizations.

The key aspects covered include:

• Benefits of OERs and their alignment with emerging pedagogical approaches
• Critical factors in developing quality OERs
• Use of multimedia formats, interactivity, and localization
• Ensuring accessibility and inclusion
• Technology infrastructure and tools
• Content validation and peer feedback
• Teacher training and motivation
• Institutional policies and sharing networks
• Sustainability and maintenance

The report concludes with a set of recommendations and an action plan customized for high schools to integrate OERs into teaching practices. It aims to help educators adopt OERs to enhance learning experiences for students.

Project IDADOHS is a pioneering initiative in this direction focused on high school education. The project was undertaken by a consortium of 5 partner universities along with 5 associated high schools with the aim to: Digitalize at least 2 courses from each partner and courses had to be – STEM related.

The Main Web Site of the developed portal is at the following link: https://sites.google.com/unt.edu.mk/idadohscourse/home

All the courses that have been created were in English language so they can be reusable by others, and because we have to offer Open Reusable Educational Resource. We also needed to train Professors so we need to create a Course for training as well.

Project Lead: CIT

Project partners:

1. Mother Tereza University/ Skopje
2. Goce Delcev University/Stip
3. University of Maribor
4. High Technical School “Gostivar”
5. Tesla Technical School
6. Secondary school “Kole Nekhtenin”, Macedonia
7. Kranj School Center
8. Electrical Technical School “Gjergj Canco”

Inclusive Digital Education – a Tool to Understand Circular Economy” under the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships, hereinafter referred to as “the Project”, as follows.

Funding: EU Commission

Project summary: Erasmus+ Project “Inclusive Digital Education – a Tool to Understand Circular Economy” focuses on the topics of Circular Economy and circular business models and will help HEI to implement digital education solution into their curricula.

The project developed an innovative, asymmetrical online course on Circular Economy //Green Business theme and it will strive to improve digital pedagogical competences of educators, enabling them to deliver high quality interactive digital education. The project will support “EU Digital Skills & Jobs” policy, Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027) and by including topics of CE in the E-learning, it will help to forward EU to its set objective in “Green Deal” to be the first continent, that becomes environmentally neutral by year 2050.Four CIT academic staff participated in a training program on DiGitool competences  for one week under this project in Riga , Letony.

Project Lead: CIT