Las primeras calls relacionadas con las Universidades Europeas dejaban entrever que había que apostar por colaboraciones intensas y ambiciosas, como son los joint degrees, pero a la vez pedían actividades que pudieran ser masivas en cuanto al número de alumnos. Necesitaban que la iniciativa de las universidades europeas tuviera un impacto rápido y masivo. Evidentemente los títulos conjuntos son muy interesantes, pero afectan a un número reducido de estudiantes.

Había pues que idear algo que fuera mucho menos intenso pero que pudiera llegar a muchos de una forma ágil a la vez que diseminaba rápidamente EELISA entre las universidades participantes. Esa fue la idea que dio lugar a las Comunidades EELISA y la Credencial EELISA. Como casi todo en la propuesta inicial de EELISA, la idea fue de Víctor Gómez Frías y sobre ella, los dos tratábamos de aterrizarla y darle consistencia. En este aspecto en concreto fue decisivo también el apoyo del itdUPM, con Julio Lumbreras y Carlos Mataix a la cabeza, que estaban desarrollando cosas parecidas. Si revisas las propuestas de otras universidades europeas, lo cierto es que, con otros nombres y con algunas diferencias, todos nos movíamos en los mismos parámetros: unas actividades intensas para pocos (joint degrees) y otras más ligeras para muchos (credenciales).

La puesta en marcha de las comunidades EELISA, ya con Julio de vicerrector, fue un verdadero soplo de aire fresco en la UPM. La idea del rector de hacerlo pasar a través de convocatorias de innovación educativa fue bastante inteligente y de repente nos plantamos con más de 20 comunidades en la UPM y cerca de 800 profesores involucrados. Creo que hay mucho que aprender de lo que pasó entonces, pero eso es otra historia. La Escuela, en concreto, presentó varias propuestas y tenemos una participación significativa, liderando o colaborando en diferentes comunidades, de la que ya hablaremos. Pero quería centrarme primero en cómo pensamos las comunidades.

Cuando dejé el vicerrectorado, dejé también de ser el coordinador de EELISA, pero puse en marcha, junto a Claudio Feijoo, una Comunidad EELISA sobre un tema que nos apasiona a los dos (Tech Diplomacy & International Cooperation). Entonces, el nuevo coordinador de EELISA, Alberto Garrido, me pidió que echara una mano para definir más claramente lo que habíamos pensado al hablar de comunidades y credenciales. Fruto de ello surge este documento, en el que trataba de explicar a los potenciales alumnos lo que era la comunidad y la credencial. Releyéndolo ahora, sigo compartiéndolo plenamente, aún sabiendo que la definición final de credenciales ha sido menos ambiciosa y probablemente más realista. Pero yo creo que no viene mal recordar las ideas originales, porque pueden ser inspiradores para el futuro. Guardo muy buenos recuerdos de aquellos meses en los que Víctor y yo estábamos escribiendo una propuesta sobre cómo soñábamos que podría ser nuestra universidad europea, fue un privilegio haber estado allí.

EELISA Community: Tech Diplomacy & International Cooperation.

EELISA Credential: Global Competence & Global Partnerships for Sustainable Development

As a UPM student, you are part of the European University EELISA, a transnational alliance of nine of the best European universities focused on preparing the engineers of the future. The European Universities Initiative is the flagship project of the Erasmus program for the next decade. Only 5% of the universities in Europe have been selected to be part of the project. The aim of this initiative, according to the EU, is to “bring together a new generation of creative Europeans able to cooperate across languages, borders and disciplines to address societal challenges and skill shortages faced in Europe”.

EELISA recognizes that learning is more than just the acquisition of knowledge and skills: it has a human dimension, requiring tools to deal with a changing world, a complex life and a transforming work environment. In this regard, EELISA wants to transform European engineering education promoting interdisciplinary learning, the development of transferable skills and real-world problem solving together with extra-university partners.

So there is something new for you!!!

Together with the students of other eight prestigious universities of France, Italy, Rumania, Germany, Hungary and Turkey, you will now have the possibility to decide on your learning path with a vision to tackle big challenges, such as the UN SDGs, the Green Deal and other European agendas. To do that, you will join a EELISA Community according to your interests, where you will design your own individual learning experience, with all the activities and accomplishments acknowledged on your EELISA Credential, a certification recognized by the job market throughout Europe.

Communities will be constituted across countries and institutions as challenge-oriented interdisciplinary teams of a few hundred actors (students from all our universities, teachers, researchers and administrative staff, and external partners like companies, local authorities, NGOs, European agencies…); they will jointly focus on social and technological global challenges, looking for real-world engineering solutions. In this document, we will present to you the EELISA Community on Tech Diplomacy & International Cooperation together with the information necessary to design the correspondant EELISA Credential.

Our Community is built around the relation between two keywords: international and engineering. Are you interested in the international implications of engineering and technology? Would you like to develop your Diploma Project about humanitarian engineering in a developing country? Do you want to experience the innovative ecosystem of Shanghai? How about understanding the geopolitics of technology and how they shape policies? Or are you interested in exploring the possibilities to get a job in the European Union institutions or in the many multilateral organizations increasing relevant in today’s world?

If so, the Community of Tech Diplomacy & International Cooperation will offer you plenty of activities to build up on your interests. Flexibility, diversity, inclusivity and self-directed learning paths are the fundamental values of our Community.

The correspondant EELISA Credential will certify your global competence understood (OECD definition) [1] as “the capacity to examine local, global and intercultural issues, to understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldviews of others, to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with people from different cultures, and to act for collective well-being and sustainable development”. All of them, key competences for the job market of the engineers of the future.

As a EELISA student you enter a diverse, European environment that strives towards shaping the future of Europe. Our Community will offer you the possibility to design a journey through the international dimension of engineering where you will gain the global competences needed for the job market.

Do not miss this opportunity. Enjoy the journey!!

Why? EELISA Credential & Job Market

During your first professional interviews, human resources specialists will frequently not care much about your technical competences or your marks in the subjects/modules of your degree (probably because they already take for granted the technical skills acquired at a prestigious university). However, they will focus on and will ask you about other aspects of your cv such as your participation in international mobility programs or your practical experience when confronted to multi-cultural challenges. Companies refer to practical international experience as a relevant quality because it often seems that young professionals with this experience display a stronger professional profile.

There is no doubt that mastering depth in technical engineering disciplines and logical thought has always been, and will always remain, necessary for successfully analysing problems, designing solutions, and advancing knowledge, now and in the future. To prepare students for the knowledge-based economy, engineering education has to focus on the acquisition and development of core knowledge and capabilities in the domain of the engineering sciences. These attributes are hard-won and are embedded in your Bachelor and Master´s Degrees.
However, University diplomas may soon no longer be the only pre-requisite for the engineering professional world. The job market already assesses the competency levels of their future employees looking at a portfolio of accomplishments of learning gains at university level and daily life.

To this regard, EELISA Communities will offer you plenty of opportunities to pursue your own aspirations and interests. Communities will address social challenges, tackled by different actors (students, faculty, researchers and staff from EELISA partners, companies, local authorities, NGOs, etc.). Multiple activities (e.g., long and short courses, competitions, capstone projects, etc.) will engage these actors. EELISA communities will be the place where education, research, innovation and public debate coexist and connect, deepening the link between engineering/architecture and society, and they will allow you to personalise your cv including your personal interests and commitments while studying your Bachelor or Master´s Degree.

Industry wants real-life validation that future employees have specific skills. Portfolios with a synthesis of skillsets and mindsets, micro-credentials, open badges… will soon become key elements within a relevant cv. This requires new forms of teaching, certification and administration. EELISA Credentials are certification-style qualifications, offered to you to improve or develop skills related to soft competences and societal challenges, that will be easily recognized by the job market. They will certify the process quality and the level of involvement of the students in the different EELISA Communities. EELISA credentials will help to define your identity as a professional and as a European citizen.

W2. A Community focused on the international dimension of engineering and architecture

The world is changing rapidly, is increasingly complex, often chaotic, and fast-flowing. We are on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution, built on the revolution of globalisation, digitalisation and hyper-connectedness. In Europe, we live in a time of transitions. The twin green and digital transitions are reshaping the way we live, work and interact. The EU’s move to a resource-efficient, circular, digitised and climate neutral economy and the wide deployment of artificial intelligence and robotics are expected to create new jobs while other jobs will change or even disappear. These transitions show the need for an unparalleled shift in skill sets to reap their full potential. The COVID-19 pandemic has even accelerated this need.

To be future-ready and remain relevant in the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world, professionals should be competitive in this global landscape. The population of engineers is a particularly emblematic example of an occupational category deeply affected by this process, because of the rapidly changing technology that continually transforms engineering practice. Engineering and architecture as a profession should be developed based on global approach. In fact, because technology regularly crosses international boundaries, it has become obvious that technology and international interaction are intrinsically entwined.

Engineers and architects of the 21st century will spend appreciable portions of their careers in environments rich with global connections. Therefore, engineering colleges and universities must develop strategies that provide the global perspectives and international experiences that will help their graduates excel in this new world order.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the European Network for Accreditation of Engineering Education (ENAEE) both stipulate that engineering graduates should understand, “the wider multidisciplinary context of engineering” and, “the impact of engineering solutions in a global context”. One of ABET’s new criteria, introduced in 2019–2020, is “an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors”. This new criterion clearly implies the need for such knowledge and skills by referencing the multidisciplinary, international, dynamic and global nature of the engineering setting.

The Community of Tech Diplomacy & International Cooperation presents an approach to creating multi-organizational, international partnerships of academic and industrial organizations that emphasize collaborative educational programmes and research efforts to prepare students to meet the globalization needs and understand the international dimension of engineering and architecture.

By being part of our EELISA Community:

You belong to an international network of students, university staff, professors and professionals that are interested on the international and multicultural dimensions of engineering and technology. The Community will still be open for you when you leave the university giving more flexible opportunities to broaden and update competences, knowledge and skills throughout life.
You will participate in an educational journey, in which you will have access to a personalized path of international activities and experiences to improve your global competence. You will design your own portfolio (Passport), that will reflect such activities.
Your international experience and global competence will be certified by a EELISA Credential according to the European standard on Micro-credentials [2], with the same quality assurance principles applied to our higher education degrees but in a way that will be easy to understand by the employers.

How? EELISA Credential Educational Model: Transformative, Experiential and Impact-based

Today, there are plenty of organizations (not only universities), public and private, offering microcredentials, understood as bitesize chunks of knowledge studied within a short time frame. In many cases, they are built around MOOCs or blended learning short courses and require a minimum dedication.

What is new, then, in our EELISA Credential?

It is much more ambitious.

First of all, EELISA Credential is transformative. Based on a holistic framework including cognitive, affective and behavioral domains, it is more ambitious than a typical microcredential, aspiring not only to add some additional skills to your cv, but a complete change in your way of looking. The purpose is to empower learners to see the social world differently and through ethical lens, so that they will challenge and change the status quo as agents of change.

This ambition requires work and time. You could think that it would be difficult to carry on while studying your engineering degree. However, it has been designed secuencially to be developed while studying your Bachelor or Master´s Degree, with activities distributed all along your different years at the University and, in many cases, recognised as elective credits or other academic activities required for your degrees. So, it will be easily combined with your engineering modules.

Secondly, EELISA Credential is focused on employability and based mainly on experiential activities. Maybe you could select some more traditional courses or seminars included in your credential, however, the main activities required will always be practical and oriented to solve real engineering problems. Students must know how to apply knowledge in real-world situations. There is a greater emphasis on creative problem-solving, critical thinking, reason and logic, and on applying these skills to assess and analyse problems.

The experiential model has a crucial prerequisite: highly trained faculty [3]. Much of the success of an experiential model rests on the ability of teachers to move away from Powerpoints and lecturing, and towards interacting with students and creating open dialogue. It is essential for faculty members to wear multiple hats: instructor, mentor and listener. The Community of Tech Diplomacy and International Cooperation brings together faculty from diverse disciplines, non-academic stakeholders of engineering business and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) with a great professional experience in the global engineering practise that will give you support all along the process.

Finally, EELISA Credential focuses on the impact of engineering on society [4]. EELISA aims to link the academy with society, making a positive societal impact with its education. With that ambition in mind, we are building an experiential credential in which students can work on the wicked problems of our time, alongside professionals from the field and fellow students from other disciplines. It requires the accentuation of the relationship between engineering and society, where societal relevance should be the centre of engineering.

Students embark on challenges that are always related to meaningful real-world problems or research questions that are expected to have potential and palpable impact on society. For instance, if this appeals to you, the Community will help you to develop your bachelor thesis, collaborating with students from other EELISA universities and an NGO, providing water systems to rural communities in Tanzania or Kenya. These Impact projects are multi-year projects with interdisciplinary cross-functional teams engaging in the research, design, field-testing, and implementation of projects and social enterprises in developing countries. These ventures aim to deliver practical, sustainable, and scalable solutions to complex challenges including those related to food, energy, water, and health.

Sustainability, in this context, refers to the notion that real solutions must be technologically appropriate, socially acceptable, environmentally benign, and economically sustainable. During your university studies, the Community will progressively introduce you in all the aspects you will need to face such a challenge. To be able to do that, you will have to understand not only the technical solutions for the water supply, but also the cultural and sociological scenarios of rural areas and those West African countries. Also, you will have to internalize the way of working of the NGO, in Spain and in Africa, how to collaborate with other cultures, etc… There is a recognition that ideas, presentations, and prototypes do not solve problems; the real challenge is in the implementation, assessment, and fast-paced pivoting to reach a higher sustainable equilibrium. The challenge is in the execution – getting the job done in partnership with diverse actors in an ethical, harmonious, and self-determined manner.

This is only an example of possibilities of this community: our relations with tech-companies, NGO or multilateral institutions allow us to offer this kind of educational journey, fitted for each of you.

A recent MIT study [4,5] about the global state of the art in engineering education anticipates five distinctive curricular experiences that would be shared by the world’s best engineering programs in the future. They are the pillars around which we have built our Credential:

Student choice and flexibility (educating students in the profile that is more oriented to their ambition, aspiration, future career);
Multi- and interdisciplinary learning (in collaborative design or applied-research projects).
The role, responsibilities and ethics of engineers in society (solving human challenges and problems facing society).
Global outlook and experience (working across nationalities, cultures and disciplines).
Breadth of student experience (more choice, learning beyond the engineering disciplines).

So, what’s in it for You?

An opportunity to work collaboratively with students from the Universities of EELISA on ambitious multi-year projects striving to deliver social impact.
Work across disciplines, cultures, language and time barriers to develop practical, innovative, and sustainable solutions with in-country partners.
Engage in fieldwork with faculty mentors with decades of experience conducting research, designing solutions, and building systems in developing countries.
Conduct original research and get your work published in journals and conference proceedings. Travel to conferences to present your work and build your professional network.
Develop your life skills and build life-long friendships with peers oof EELISA and with some amazing people in the countries we work in.
Distinguish yourself and become more competitive for that dream job./li>
Impact! Conducting research and jumpstarting social enterprises is incredibly difficult but also deeply rewarding.

We expressly invite you, to develop this type of education together with us. Therefore, together with the Credential, we are launching an open call in which we are asking for your ideas concerning impact-focused education. You can propose your own activities.

Learning Objectives of the Credential

Three are the main learning objectives of the Credential:

1. We are committed to providing global competences for our students.
The European Commission invested fundamental resources in the form of public policy initiatives focusing on the New Skills Agenda [6]. As Europe sets off on its path to recovery, the need to improve and adapt skills becomes an imperative. As universities regularly produce graduates who work abroad or work alongside co-workers from other cultures, the importance of providing a global education is more pressing than ever.

In recent years, the European project “Tools for Enhancing and Assessing the Value of International Experience for Engineers” (TA VIE) [7], a Erasmus+ program leaded by UPM, has focused on the detection of the most relevant global competencies, currently essential to working in multidisciplinary and international contexts, required from engineers within the labor market and the way to measure them, aiming to strengthen employability through cooperation across national and organizational borders. The TA VIE project showed that companies understand the relevance of global competencies, considered the key to increase the quality of young engineers. This research has also shown that international experience is a great opportunity for engineers to strengthen these competencies. That means that students should invest in international opportunities to forecast global competence training.

TA VIE assumes the definition of global competence by the OECD [1]. In this definition there are several observable dimensions: an important aspect is the focus on multiple dimensions (local, global, and intercultural), followed by the capacity to interact with other individuals from different cultures and act for global well-being. This competence should be developed in a holistic framework that includes cognitive, affective and behavioral domains. TA VIE has identified a framework of global competencies for engineers, structured in three macro clusters (dimensions): organizational, relational and self-knowledge competencies (see Figure 1). Six sublevels were also introduced: service to organization, cooperation, communication, leadership, self-awareness, and proactivity. Our EELISA Credential will use the framework of global competences and the assessment method proposed by TA VIE.

Framework of global competences for engineers (TA VIE Project) [7].

2. We will try to make the students understand the geopolitics of technology and how this will shape policies and affect the engineering practice in the next future.
International cooperation in engineering and technology is crucial to reduce poverty and inequality, guarantee access to public services (drinking water and sanitation systems, develop rural areas, energy access, telecoms,…), reduce hunger and malnutrition, tackle gloabal challenges in climate change and health, achieve more sustainable cities, prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and create communication infrastructures, among others. These challenges have introduced new avenues for policies where engineers are called to take center stage in international relations.

The globalist and liberal world order since the fall of the iron wall has definitively shifted into a multipolar and fragmented environment. The consequences of this different geopolitical order for international cooperation in research, education, innovation and mobility are clearly emerging. The traditional concept of modernity, or progress toward more democratic access to industrial technology, has now given way to a humbler postmodern situation in the face of the dangers of uncontrolled technology.

In parallel, there are growing tensions among the EU institutions between the previous focus on being ‘open to the world’ compared to emerging focus to enhance strategic autonomy and technological and economic sovereignty. For Europe, it is critical that technological developments support and uphold the ethical use of personal data, accessible technologies for all, the democratic values, the universal human rights and dignity, and the integrity and accountability of our societal model.

Based on this conviction, we want to prepare EELISA students to understand the challenges of the new tech and digital diplomacy and to help Europe to build a robust roadmap for internationalizing its vision of technoscience diplomacy and cooperation as such.

3. We will prepare the students for facing the challenges of the SDG 17: Strengthen the implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

The 21st century presents huge challenges that have never been seen before with impact for mankind. Climate change, energy transition, over-population and ageing, mega-cities and mobility, migration, water and food access, security, peace and justice and so forth. Engineers and architects will play a key role to tackle these challenges and deliver on the the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG). They will have to develop innovative and impactful approaches, breaking old rules and recipes.

In this Community, we will focus mainly on Sustainable Development Goal 17 (SDG 17) about «partnerships for the goals”, however some other SDGs will be trained in specific projects and activities. SDG 17 refers to the need for cross-sector and cross-country collaboration in pursuit of all the goals by the year 2030. It is a call for countries to align policies, and to institutions like universities to follow those policies in their education and research areas. It is about strengthening and streamlining cooperation between nation-states, both developed and developing, using the SDGs as a shared framework and a shared vision for defining that collaborative way forward. The global progress map for SDG 17 shows that significant and major challenges remain in most of the world.

The UNESCO project “Education for Sustainable Development Goals” [8] provides an orientation to the sustainability competences and specific cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural learning outcomes that are relevant to each SDG. In this Community we will focus on the specific learning outcomes related to SDG 17, closely related to the global competences, global governance and global citizenship, very much connected with the two learning objectives described before.

The International Journey and the Passport

Our Community will offer you the opportunity to design your own International Journey that will include physical, blended and virtual mobility activities. To this end, you will take advantage of the already-existing huge network of partner universities and institutions built around EELISA universities. If we were to plot on the world map the relations of the members of EELISA, we would certainly find that EELISA has links to and across all continents, forming a web of global connections.

EELISA includes some of Europe’s best and oldest engineering schools that have forged relationships with the best universities in the USA, China or Russia, examples of geopolitically important countries with prominent engineering universities. At the same time, some of the EELISA partners are strong players in humanities and social sciences and have the capacity to provide a critical perspective to the development of science and technology taking into account the importance of ethical and societal issues in international relations.

In today’s world, the universities that, like EELISA members, compete globally are rather like multinationals that end up developing research and cooperation projects in different parts of the world with lasting relationships, that also have a very peculiar slant on the countries and the technological evolution. You have the opportunity to make the most of the wealth of these relationships to develop your global competences and understand the international dimension of engineering.

The journey wil be composed of different courses, experiences, and activities that will be collected and recorded in your personal Passport. These activities will be classified according to the following levels:

Level A: Engagement (Generating Community)

Examples: Any kind of social event for networking and generating community: Visits to special places to increase awareness on topics related to the Community, Conferences about specific areas, attending advice from international industry, hackathons on international challenges launched with the support of internationally-focused institutions (multinational companies, diplomatic schools, NGOs, etc…)

Level B: Knowledge (Cognitive Learning Objectives): knowledge of global and intercultural engineering issues.

Examples: Courses, Seminars and Workshops about the European Social Contract, Chinese Culture & Technology, Tech Diplomacy, How to work in EU institutions and multilateral organisms, How an engineer could become a “diplomat”, How to use technology to solve conflicts (and avoid abuses), …, enroll in a language courses?, Summer Schools on topics ranging from international innovation and entrepreneurship to tech-based cooperation,…

Level C: Commitment (Socio-emotional Learning Objectives): Be open to and engage in relationships with people from different cultures, Respect cultural differences and human dignity, Global perspective and responsibility.

Examples: Participation in Associations related to international relations, Launch of multi-cultural activities when in an exchange period, Mentoring program to tutor the new students of the community,…

Level D: Impact (Behavioural Learning Objectives): Analytical and critical thinking of complex engineering problems, capacity to engage in respectful, appropriate and effective interactions with others in the international engineering and architecture community, Empathy and Adaptability.

Examples: Humanitarian Projects in developing countries, Internships in EU institutions or multilateral organisms, International Exchanges with some additional requirements, Participation in international programs on innovation & entrepreneurship, …

Students can select activities of any level. However, the four levels show a secuency of the progression in the credential and are related with the academic level of the students:

Level A – first year BSc students, first year Master students
Level B – second & third year BSc students, first year Master students
Level C – second & third year BSc students, second year Master students
Level D – third & fourth year BSc students, second year Master students

Any student, staff or professor is welcomed to propose additional activities to increase the existing portfolio. The Educational Commision of the Community will accept it (or not) and will classify it to the levels accordingly.

All the activities that are followed by the students will be certified in their portfolio (Passport) which will include the name of the holder, the achieved learning outcomes, the assessment method, the awarding body and, where applicable, the practical impact, the qualifications framework level and equivalent credits gained. Passports are owned by the learner, can be shared, are portable and may be combined into larger credentials or qualifications. They are underpinned by quality assurance following agreed standards.
Itineraries

All the students can participate in any activity. However, for a better understanding they will be classified into three basic Itineraries (some other itineraries will be added in the future):

1. Technoscience Diplomacy: Technoscience—the synergy of science and technology especially after the Second World War— has never been more pervasive in the lives of people around the globe. It is indicative that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, recognizes that international cooperation in engineering and technology is crucial to face global challenges. New technologies impact on how people interact and societies function and they reshape how we engage with the world. These challenges have introduced new avenues for foreign policy where engineers are called to take center stage in international relations.

Both engineering and technology are today central components of the strategic competition between the world powers including the EU, which has the ambition to play central role in global international affairs. National states invest in research and development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and practices such as cybersecurity as key competitive parameters in shifting the geopolitical balance of power.

As a truly international, interdisciplinary and innovative network of engineering actors EELISA has the capacity

to build a coherent and robust framework for Technoscience Diplomacy & International Cooperation in Europe.
to train the next generation of engineers and architects who could play key roles in international relations.
to provide an interdisciplinary think tank of experts in EU’s technoscience diplomacy.
to convey to diplomats and admin staff of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs the engineering culture.

2. International Cooperation and Humanitarian Engineering and Architecture: UPM international cooperation area has focused on the application of technology for human development, with more than 30 years of experience working in Latin American and African countries. The experience of UPM researchers working together in the provision of public services with other partners, as multinational institutions, public governments, NGOs, or companies will be used as reference for the activities of this community. Also, there is a good cooperation with universities of developing countries in joint research in new technologies applied to specific problems of their societies, or in institutional strengthening of the education system of some universities located in rural areas of developing countries.

Therefore, this community, through the international cooperation activities, will focus on the use of the technology to solve the problems of people in specific social conditions, based on the concepts introduced by United Nations of Human and Sustainable Developments, and in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. Our students will have to apply their knowledge to the situations of geographical areas with social, economic, or ecological challenges, in different cultural contexts.

3. Accesibility & Connectivity: Education and employment must be inclusive to ensure that “nobody is left behind”. When we design products or services for people, we want them to be useful and the perceived utility is hardly conditioned by its accessibility for all the users: any user, anywhere, anytime.

Nowadays, around a 1/5 of the worldwide population suffer functional limitations and struggle to access to the same services and products in equal conditions of participation. We all face the disability in many contexts and circumstances (temporary or definitive disability, language barriers, lack of functional abilities, unavailability of appropriate technology, etc.), accessibility must be people centred. Physical world accessibility is about ensuring that the features and conditions of physical places match the abilities of people visiting them to ensure optimal access for all. Digital accessibility is about the right of everyone to use the digital products (websites, apps, documents) in an efficient, easy and satisfactory way.

We need to incorporate accessibility, inclusion and connectivity principles in everyday design so that products and services get ready for everyone, keeping in mind the accessibility guidelines with the physical and the digital world. We are passionate about building solutions that make our university accessible to everyone. Economic and social equity is also conditioned by accessibility and inclusion policies. Infrastructures, cities and natural environments must comply with accessibility legislation and standards so that the whole population can enjoy them and contribute to its sustainability. Accessibility must be sustainable and social sustainability depends on the guarantee of inclusive opportunities for everyone independently of functional ability.

Assessment and Recognition

Each activity will have an assessment method, varying from the classical test/exam for cognitive outcomes and courses, to evidences to be defined-collected-verified-assessed for socio-emotional/behavioral outcomes. In any case, we will use the tool developed by the TA VIE Project [4] to certify the advance in global competences of the student, comparing the developments from entry to exit.

Participation in community activities allows to validate educational outcomes of the student credential, but also possibly ECTS for some of them (and thus learning outcomes of the engineering training). Most of the activities of our Community will be recognized in your Bachelor or Master´s Degree as elective credits, Diploma Project credits, Internships or others (according to each University rules).

Assessment method and recognition will be referenced in the data sheet of every activity, together with the general description of the objectives, the learning outcomes, the awarding body and all the necessary information regarding the activity.

Requirements to obtain the EELISA Credential

To obtain the EELISA Credential, it will be required to have successfully completed, at least, one activity of each level, together with an assessment of the global competences.
The credential is not measured in ECTS, however, just to have an idea of the workload required for it, it can be compared with, approximately, 30 ECTS.

References