Priorities
ATHENA will contribute to encourage cooperation between European universities integrating in the Europe 2030’s focus on innovation and digital skills. The project will generate wider benefits for lecturers and students, including diverse types of digital competencies, throughout digital education. It will address the goals of the “Education and Training 2020 Report” in higher education and will focus on two key competencies: innovation and digital, learning to learn.
The aim of ATHENA is to generate wider benefits for local and regional educational systems, creating a network in several European and non-European countries, allowing transnational knowledge transfer. It will use social media technologies to create a learning, knowledge exchange and collaboration framework at national and transnational levels in the world.
Moreover, ATHENA will concur to the European Commission new Action Plan for Digital Education (2021-2027), which proposes a set of initiatives for quality, inclusive and accessible digital education across Europe, promoting a strategic and longer-term approach to digital education and training.
Including Cape Verde, Tunisia and Brazil, ATHENA will contribute to reinforce the cooperation between European universities and partner countries with fewer opportunities to improve and modernise their educational systems. The collaboration of University of Santiago in Cape Verde, ESSEC-Tunis in Tunisia and UFRJ in Brazil, has the objective of giving these countries the opportunity to participate in the process of testing the project results, and replicate them in their educational practices.
ATHENA project will contribute to an inclusive higher education encouraging cooperation in different regions of the world, through the active participation of higher education institutions from partner countries, and the AUF (Agence universitaire de la francophonie) network. The project will therefore address Europe 2030’s focus on sustainable and inclusive education goals, by providing lecturers and students with appropriate digital and learning skills to prepare them to face future challenges. This way, ATHENA is aligned with the strategic goals from our universities, which is to strengthen cooperation with Partner Countries in order to implement Capacity Building projects in collaboration with universities in Latin America and Africa.
Considering the implementation of the Fundamental principles of the ECHE Charter, inclusion is already a transversal guideline for all the activities carried out in our projects.
Internationalisation is the core of the strategy of building the European Education Area, as stated on the ECHE charter.
ATHENA project will create common courses and tools for the use of the four European universities, three higher education institutions from associated partner countries and an international network of universities (AUF). This peer-learning process provided by cooperation between staff and students from different countries is a good opportunity. Indeed, they will participate in common activities to create innovation and exploit the results of the project, maximising their impact on individuals, other institutions and the wider European academic community.