SMARTI

The SMARTI project has been funded by the European Commission through the Capacity-Building in Higher Education Programme (CBHE) as part of the Key Action 2 projects. CBHE is the European Union’s programme whose aim is to improve, develop, and modernise higher education systems and to support cooperation of Partner Countries across different regions of the world such as Eastern Europe and (Central) Asia mainly through university cooperation projects.

For further information, visit the SMARTI website.

SMARTI overview

English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) is a current phenomenon. This project can be described as innovative as it offers to develop, teach, mark, test and benchmark a sustainable model of teacher training and retraining based on EMI pedagogy integrated into the student-centred learning and the project method. SMARTI includes the following innovating elements:

• Development of the cross-disciplinary competence model and EMI descriptors for pedagogical skills of university teachers delivering EMI courses comparable to EU standards and national qualifications framework. It involves consideration of student-centred skills based on the requirements set by today’s labour market and employers to the quality of university graduates;
• Development of EMI educational tools and student-centred teaching methods applicable for HEIs based on the analysis of EU best practices and with regard to the characteristics of the higher education systems of the project participants;
• A student centred learning combined with the project method. The plan is to integrate this approach into existing curriculum and programme in order to create and maintain a supportive and effective EMI teaching/learning environment.

SMARTI Project Aims

The priority of SMARTI project aims at enhancing the quality and the effectiveness of teaching. The project will help improve the teaching capacity of the project participants and will benefit the higher education systems of PC by enhancing cross-disciplinary teacher competences and introducing new approaches in education.

This project supports teacher and student mobility and attracts international students at the respective universities with all the added benefits this brings. The establishment of EMI Centres will bring new academic and research networking among all partners directly involved into the project. Judging from the previous projects, no similar ones have been carried out in either of the PC HEIs. EMI pedagogical training using the ECTS/TUNING framework as a tool of QA of academic content makes the project a "brand new" offer for both countries and their participating HEIs.

Project number: 617489-EPP-1-2020-1-DE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP

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