The Kick Off Meeting of the VOLCANIC Erasmus+ project, took place on March 11-14 2024, and was hosted by the Project Coordinator, Universidade de Lisboa – Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon.
Representatives of all of the partners (from Europe, Morocco and Israel), participated in this event. During the meetings, the participants presented and represented their institutions and the other members of their teams.
The first day was devoted to openning sessions, and included introduction of the partners, the project’s timeline and its various Work Packages (WPs), with an emphasis on Wp2 (identifying the needs, best practices and gap analysis).
On the second day, discussions and activities were devoted to two central issues: (1) Characterizing and meeting the needs of vulnerable populations in HE both in Morocco and in Israel. It was evident that identifying the needs of vulnerable populations, both in Morocco and in Israel, requires input from the partners. The input is necessary for establishing agreed vocabulary and conceptualization that will afford the team with the adequate design principals for designing the courses (WP3). The discussion and the work plan regarding further exploration of this issue was orchestrated by the KUL team from Poland. (2) Partners from Israel and Morocco presented their first ideas about courses to be piloted at the beginning of the next academic year (October 2024).
The third day concentrated on continuing the discussions on the course development in Morocco and Israel. The team split up into small groups of Israeli and Moroccan partners, and worked on finetuning a joint design approach for the courses. The second half of the day was dedicated to getting to know the hosting Institute – the Campus of Técnico Lisboa, and ended in the evening with a dinner gathering hosted by Técnico -Lisboa.
The fourth and final day of the KOM focused on moving on and discussed:
(1) Learning spaces design for vulnerable populations in HE; (2) Planning the joint work of WP2, 3, and 4; (3) The To-Dos lists and next steps for the coming months.
The KOM proved to be as a great success mainly for getting to know each other and for setting out on our joint venture in the project.