Projects

## MICRO-GEAR, EU Erasmus2027 CBHE (Strand 3)

Micro-GEAR is dedicated to supporting structural reforms within the South Caucasus region's higher education sector, with a primary focus on Georgia and Armenia. Our mission is centered around the introduction and facilitation of micro-credentials as a tool to enhance the relevance, quality, and flexibility of higher education.

Key Objectives:

• Updating National Qualifications Frameworks in Georgia and Armenia.
• Building national consensus on micro-credentialing principles.
• Encouraging educational initiatives leading to micro-credentials.
• Promoting the mutual recognition of micro-credentials.

Our Approach:

To validate the proposed reforms and provide valuable feedback at the policy level, we will implement a pilot program. This program encompasses capacity building on micro-credentials and the development of educational units leading to micro-credentials.

Dissemination and Sustainability:

To validate the Our project's dissemination and sustainability activities will ensure that the obtained results reach all relevant education and training providers in the beneficiary countries and the broader region.

Partners:

Our collaborative effort includes key stakeholders from Georgia 🇬🇪 and Armenia 🇦🇲:

• Updating National Qualifications Frameworks in Georgia and Armenia.
• Building national consensus on micro-credentialing principles.
• Encouraging educational initiatives leading to micro-credentials.
• Promoting the mutual recognition of micro-credentials.

On the European side, our consortium includes three Higher Education Institutions with complementary competencies and the Italian ENIC-NARIC Centre.

GIRAF is a consortium member leading the work package on Quality Assurance.

## MICROCASA

is the first international project aimed at sharing the European experiences and building institutional capacities in Southeast Asia to co-create, promote and deliver short competence-oriented educational units leading to micro-credentials with the goal of solving various economic and social problems.

Focusing on different aspects of micro-credentialing, for instance course content co-creation, educational technology, transparent quality assurance, technologies for issuance and verification of digital micro-credentials, the project builds a comprehensive set of competences and technical capacities in Southeast Asian Universities. Leveraging on the partner networks, as well as on the links to the national educational authorities and regional initiatives, MICROCASA has an ambition to have a systemic impact on the ASEAN region as a whole.

The project plan builds around the following groups of activities:

• Regional Micro-credentials Study and Roundtables, which will allow gathering factual data and experts opinions about the barriers and enablers for introducing micro-credentials into the regional HEIs, as well as to benchmark the regional approaches to the ones in the EU.
• Micro-credentials capacity building Programme covering all abovementioned aspects of micro-credentialing.
• Pilot development, delivery and evaluation of the set of Digital Competences courses granting micro-credentials.
• Targeted awareness raising and dissemination activities spreading the excellence beyond the project consortium.

On the European side, the project consortium includes 3 European Universities with complementary competences, Italian NARIC Agency and the quality assurance expert company. The representative group of 6 Southeast Asian University includes central agenda-setting national Universities, as well as Universities with regional development missions.

GIRAF is a Quality Assurance partner in the project.

## MENVIPRO

The overall objective of the project is to significantly improve the quality of MSc studies in the field of Environment Protection in Armenia and Georgia on the basis of complex modernization of the curricula in line with the Bologna principles, Salzburg principles of EAU and best European practice.

The curricula development is firmly based on the analysis of the best practice obtained in Europe, target countries and beyond, and incorporate the latest innovations in educational technologies.

The focus is on close relations between postgraduate studies and research activities in order to equip the graduates with cutting-edge knowledge and practical skills. University-society-industry links will play also a key role to guarantee high employability of graduates.

The focus is on close relations between postgraduate studies and research activities in order to equip the graduates with cutting-edge knowledge and practical skills. University-society-industry links will play also a key role to guarantee high employability of graduates.

In order to radically modernize the MSc education in EP - technology-intensive domain of knowledge, the project will establish a unique inter-University education and research facility, which will be used for student projects, collaborative projects with external stakeholders and demonstration activities to reinforce links to the University environment and promote environment-friendly mindsets.

The project consortium combines credible partners with diverse and mutually complementary expertise from the region of South Caucasus, as well as Italy, Portugal and Germany.

GIRAF is a Quality Assurance partner in the project.

## ECoVEM

ECoVEM is an Erasmus+ KA3 project building a European VET Centre of Excellence in the field of Miscoelectronics, the project website is here ECoVEM

The key personnel of GIRAF has been provided as a contribution in-kind to EXOLAUNCH GmbH (consortium member of ECoVEM) to lead Quality Control tasks in the project.