University Politehnica of Bucharest (UPB) with its previous Tempus and H20 Lead Partner experience will undertake activities to ensure sound management of the project and will perform the duties of authorising officer and coordinator of the project. It will set this tone from the start reviewing along with other partners the importance and positives of best management strategies and potential conflict areas and ways of avoiding these through the establishment of clear task responsibilities and clear communication channels to facilitate consensus and decision making. They will, in consultation with the consortium, designate which universities pilot the various modules. Thus, the Management package is a key UPB focus. They will be supported by three other EU universities and PFE with very strong management experience.
An EU Steering committee of one member from each EU partner will co-ordinate with the PC Steering Commitees also with one member from each PC university (the EU and Programme Country have the same format but near project end the Programme Country representatives have the additional key focus to form an Action Group to support curricula integration and post-project dissemination and sustainability).
In addition the PC partner HCMUTE will be responsible as Steering Group Leader for the Vietnam PC consortium and the National University of Laos for the Laos PC Consortium. This will be conducted, apart from email and telephone contact through monthly EU and PC single and joint skype conferences.
In addition there are none of the Vietnamese and Laotian partners that have been in a Tempus/Capacity Building project.
Concerning the Preparation Workpackage this responsibility will be given to another very experienced Tempus and CBHE Co-ordinator – TU Dresden.
Paul Francis East representing The Pyramid Group will be responsible for the Development Workpackage.
Edge Hill University with its strong QA experience in other Tempus projects will also take responsibility for managing the Quality Plan Workpackage.
The Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) yet another experienced Tempus and CBHE Co-ordinator will bear responsibility for Dissemination and Exploitation Workpackage.
All EU partners will implement the ESP training and EMI Pedagogical Training. All partners will be involved in evaluating the creation, piloting and implementation of the modules and offer advice around Quality Assurance, ECTS and Bologna compliance. All PC partners will be involved in evaluating the creation, piloting and implementation of the modules and offer advice around Quality Assurance, ECTS and Bologna compliance.
Resources are set aside fairly for each activity and equipment resources are primarily directed at PC universities for training operatives to run them effectively and to support piloting.
The Viet & Laotian partners will participate in the Start Off meeting and contribute to all the discussion and planning and QA procedures and QA training at this meeting. They will participate in the initial ESP and EMI training program and on return to their country engage in Home Multiplier Factor training of these two trainings to support dissemination and sustainability and the success of the project. They will contribute content to the Online Platform throughout the project and give feedback. Importantly they will contribute to the development of the CATALYST Core Curricula modules (based on ESP and EMI training) and will pilot agreed modules (with other PCs) from this curricula and be involved in their evaluation and improvement with EU and PC partners.
They will additionally be engaged in the Home Multiplier Factor training of the final CATALYST Core Curriculum. During the period life there will be two National PC Project Status Conference Awareness Days in Year 1 and Year 2 with a Status Report to non-project Stakeholders and collect and review open-ended questionnaire feedback from participants. They will be involved in the Sustainability – Official Accreditation Process for the CATALYST Core Curricula including Inter-university Module Recognition Agreements and the creation of the Action Group for a CATALYST Strategic Plan and for co-operating with key non-project stakeholders to further post-project dissemination and sustainability.
However, it must be recognised that the project has been designed to enable the Partner Country partners to conceptualise, design, test and embed the proposed curricula modules and seminars for their own setting and depending on their own needs. This project does not seek to transfer practices from EU settings to partner country settings; rather, the aim is to work together to ensure that the Partner Countries are at the centre of developments, contributing particular expertise, in order that each partner feels ‘ownership’ of the final curriculum. Thus they will design bespoke programmes to best meet their target market enabling flexible and responsive solutions that stem from an agreed set of principles and enabling a hands-on practical vocational teaching methodology.
