Deliverables

Inspired by the ambitions stipulated in the mission letter of the President of the European Commission to the Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, the EPICUR European Universities Alliance herewith pledges its commitment to contribute to fostering multilingualism and raising awareness on the key role European languages play in enhancing European identities.

The declaration on the commitment to multilingualism underpins each partner to promote multilingualism within the EPICUR alliance in a concrete and sustainable way. Please find below this statement in English and in the 5 languages of the EPICUR Alliance.

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The Mobility Strategy for European languages addresses two key challenges:

• The viability and sustainability of “smaller” European languages programmes is under threat, due to decreasing numbers of degree student enrolments (in some institutional programmes first year enrolments include less than 10 degree students per cohort)
• Traditional mobility and study abroad opportunities are still difficult to get access to for the majority of European students, as over 75% of students do not participate in mobilities

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Liberal Arts and Sciences at AMU is a three year interdisciplinary BA program. It seeks to equip students with a range of universal competences (writing, public speaking, critical thinking) and fundamental knowledge from the main fields of research. An ideal graduate should be a person of unexhausted curiosity and broad horizons, dedicated to the pursuit of truth, but at the same time able to meet the demands of the modern market and society.
The LAS program at AMU consists of three main parts: (1) introductory classes, (2) disciplinary classes, (3) elective classes.

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In this deliverable we will provide guidance for other higher education institutions (HEI) to either implement a solution like the Virtual Campus Learning Platform we have designed and developed for EPICUR and to connect and integrate the local Learning Management System (Moodle or ILIAS) into the VCLP platform. VCLP is part of the EPICUR Inter-University Campus (EIUC), which will provide a unified access for students and teachers to the courses EPICUR offers. The technical installation of the necessary components of the VCLP part are described and explained in detail in the following chapters.

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This deliverable contains:

• 1 set of Technical and methodological guidelines on VURS for EPICUR members
• 1 set of guidelines for other HEI on how to design, develop and implement a VURS

It should be noted that the implementation of the VURS systems should:

• be based on open technologies, standards and specifications
• be agnostic about the current infrastructure of the participating universities
• explore innovative solution (like blockchain or others)

The definition of the guidelines for the Virtual University Registrar System, functionalities and prototype will be made through the following steps:

• Case study of existing systems within partner universities
• Identification of all the information needed to be integrated: accepted mobilities, ECTS gained, grades, contact details etc.
• Specification of necessary modifications in existing systems to comply with the outcome of Activity 4.1
• Design of the VURS infrastructure to be integrated into the VCLP but also to deliver transcripts back to the local (home) university

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This Common Research Agenda is created as a ‘living document’, initial scrutiny and basis on which a more substantial research agenda for the alliance in the following years can be developed. It represents a first analysis of the status quo of EPICUR partners, which can evolve and adapt in the following years to mirror changes within the European Research Ecosystem, the EPICUR Alliance and Society in general. Our EPICURResearch project is laying down the foundations of a possible future common research agenda by identifying research strengths of the EPICUR universities, defining EPIChallenges, scoping future ones, and identifying appropriate resources, incentives and research infrastructures to support the growing common research ecosystem.

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This deliverable comprises the core text of the EPIQAssess, including a model set of assessment criteria. EPIQAssess is a flexible and dynamic model researchers’ assessment framework, a deliverable for Task 2.1.1 (EPIQAssess) and part of EPICUR-Research Work Package 2 on ‘Strengthening Human Capital’. EPIQAssess builds upon ongoing debates and publications focusing on fostering research careers in national and European contexts, including the recent Council Conclusions Deepening the ERA: Providing Researchers with Attractive and Sustainable Careers and working conditions and making brain circulation a reality. The framework is intended to provide an actionable model for fostering attractive and sustainable research careers, which can be deployed by universities. In doing so, EPIQAssess marries together both quantitative criteria as well as qualitative assessment practices. EPIQAssess’ key characteristic is that it is a practical tool offering concrete instruments to EPICUR universities aiming at igniting transformation in how staff performance is recognised and rewarded. At a later stage, components of the EPICUR assessment framework will be integrated into an EPICUR gamification framework, which will include incentives and rewards for researchers’ achievements. EPIQAssess has been drafted in close consultation with an Expert Group, comprising researchers and senior staff of all eight EPICUR partner universities, as well as members from the Early Career Researcher Board. In addition, internal consultations within EPICUR partner universities have taken place and all feedback received has been taken into account.

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This deliverable is part of Task 2.1 Action plan for the establishment of EPICommunity [(M01-M12) of Work package 2 “EPICommunity as basis for strengthening human capital”’. This work package aims to enhance sustainable research careers in the context of the European Research Area and is broken down in four tasks:

• Task 2.1. It elaborated EPICUR’s researchers’ framework (EPIQAssess) and will combine this with a gamification framework, namely incentives and rewards (EPIGame)
• Task 2.2. It will elaborate blended mobility formats (EPIMove) for researchers and will produce policy recommendations to the EC on the needs of early career researchers in the context of blended mobility, with a view to the new instruments in the next Erasmus+ programme
• Tasks 3+4. Tasks 2.3 and 2.4 will be devoted to design and implement the EPICommunity prototype by exploiting (a) EPIQAssess and (b) EPIGame (see Figure 1)

The main activities of Task 2.1 are:

• Activity 2.1.1: the definition of the researcher’s assessment framework (EPIQAssess) and
• Activity 2.1.2: the definition of researcher’s gamification framework (EPIGame).

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The main objective of the deliverable is to make the inventory of the available courses for ECR. An online access will be given to these courses, regardless their formats and sources. Sharing of knowledge and experience between partners will enable to enlarge the research vision. This will be the preliminary to collaborative working like EPIMove and EPICradles.

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The main objective of the deliverable is to provide a benchmarking exercise about the different existing mobility formats for researchers of all the members of the EPICUR Alliance, including doctoral candidates all the way to tenured professors, whether they are in-person or virtual.

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The main objective of D2.5 is “to design a non-commercial, open and inclusive registry of European researchers and the necessary platform for creating a European Social Network of researchers (EPICommunity) to support academic matchmaking and collaboration […]”. This deliverable will give input to deliverable D2.6 in order to “[…] further develop the EPICommunity (technically), to be open and accessible for members of other European University alliances and beyond. Like this, EPICUR will offer services to researchers across the globe who are able and willing to collaborate in order to solve global (EPI-) challenges”. 1.3 Methodology This paragraph is briefly presenting the methodology for escribing and deciding the EPICommunity Design. More specifically three workshops have been conducted with the EPICUR-Research WP2 experts and the participation of EPICUR ECR board

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The main objective of this deliverable 3.1 is to generate a better understanding of the needs, interests and potentials of partners from other sectors to be involved in research on EPIChallenges as well as possible value propositions of EPICUR for them to systematically include actors from outside academia into the design and implementation of jointresearch projects. An inventory of the (existing) cooperation and actions between EPICUR’s partner universities and partners from outside academia was carried out. Based on this work analysis, the formulation of recommendations will build up the development of a common EPICUR strategy for the involvement of non-academic partners in joint research projects, referring to the task 3.2.a of the Grant agreement.

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The task of 3.1.b) outlined in the Work Package 3 (page 21 of 48) states that ALU is in charge of providing an analysis of the “requirements and preconditions for joint infrastructure-based research on EPIChallenges including respective recommendations”, leading to the deliverable 3.2. The EPIChallenges in question are “Sustainability Research”, “Mobility, Migration, Identity” and “Public Health”. The task required a common definition for Research Infrastructures which was passed via a PMT written procedures in April 2022 and is stated below. It furthermore requires a better understanding of different types of research collaboration pursued within the context of EPICUR.

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This concept note defines the purpose and action plan for the establishment of a research residency prototype (EPICluster) and the residency will serve as a test run in order to determine its feasibility. EPIClusters are collaborative projects furthering international cooperation among researchers and professionals outside of academia meant to tackle scientific and societal challenges and designed to support early career researchers in putting new ideas into action. EPIClusters offer tailor-made experiences at one of the partner universities for scholars, thinkers, and experts alike from both academic and non-academia, and serve as a network for scientific exploration and ideas spanning the Alliance. EPIClusters also serve as a first collaborative experience in an early career researcher’s professional life and provide EPICUR Fellows with the opportunity to complete a European research project.

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This deliverable provides an overview of the updated communication and dissemination framework
established in the Erasmus+ project that is now implemented in the EPICUR-Research project. It includes
information on the shared administrative bodies dedicated to communication, dissemination and
exploitation activities. The EPICUR-Research communication strategy needs to be adapted because, while the Alliance
communication in general concerns the whole academic community, EPICUR Research is more specifically
aimed at early career researchers. In addition, as the organisation in each partner university and the people
involved in EPICUR-Research are not the same, the tools and actions must be adapted to reach this target
group and create awareness about the project and a sense of belonging.

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