Final review of the EPICA project by the European Commission with the participation of Edul@b

The final review of the EPICA project took place on Tuesday the 23rd of February. The meeting involved the Project Officer, the EU expert reviewers and all associated partners. Lourdes Guàrdia, project coordinator for the UOC, Marcelo Maina, Federica Mancini and Montse Martinez attended the meeting on behalf of the UOC research team.

Marcelo Maina, coordinator of the pilots carried out under the Work Package 6 (WP6), presented the methodology designed for the development, assessment and micro-credentialing of employability skills of Bachelor and Master students close to graduation. He then presented the implementation of the pilot together with an overview of the results obtained in the four tests carried out at the UOC, Makerere University (Uganda), Maseno University (Kenya) and the Open University of Tanzania (Tanzania). The presentation also provided details of the UOC’s pilot implemented in the University Master’s Degree in Education and ICT of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. 

Afterwards, the local pilot coordinators elaborated on their experiences, focusing in particular on lessons learned, the transferability of the project to other programmes and the organisational and methodological changes needed for a successful implementation at an institutional level. 

The reviewers appreciated the work carried out during the pilot coordinated by the UOC and showed great interest in the future opportunities that this experience has opened up for the local contexts.

Lourdes Guàrdia co-led in collaboration with ICDE (The International Council for Open and Distance Education) the Work Package 7 (WP7), which focused on the validation of the project and whose results were presented to the reviewers at the end of the day. The discussion that followed also involved the members of Edul@b who answered the reviewers’ questions. This session also gathered favourable comments despite the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic which entailed the application of mitigation measures to ensure the accomplishment of the project’s goals.

The Edul@b team involved in the project would like to highlight the high level of commitment and enthusiasm of the partners and collaborators who made this rewarding and enriching experience possible.