Bartın University is a public university founded in 2008. Currently, there are over 17.000 students and 184 programs. Department of Foreign Languages, which coordinates this project, provides both English Preparatory Programme and Departmental English Courses (DEC) and aims to enable the students to communicate both in written and spoken English. The Preparatory program consists of 24 hours/week of class tuition and runs a two-semester intensive program placing emphasis on reading, writing, listening and speaking. This program is optional so the students can decide to attend or not. As of 2017 fall, in line with the demands of the century, DEC have started to be provided online through the distant education system of the university and students attend these courses through their computers.
The staff have been involved in various EU projects since 2013 and successfully completed a Strategic Partnership in Vocational Education between 2015-2017.
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) is the oldest and largest Spanish technical university, with almost 3,000 faculty members, around 35,000 undergraduate students and 6,500 postgraduates in 18 Schools of study. UPM’s Schools cover most of engineering disciplines, as well as Architecture, Computer Science and Geodesy & Cartography, and recently Fashion and Sports. Moreover, UPM as a top quality academic establishment has a strong commitment to R&D and Innovation, boasting 203 Research Units and 17 Research Centers and Institutes, contributing significantly to the international scientific community with a high number of journal papers, conference communications, and PhD theses. UPM has a long tradition of collaboration with Industry (around 50% of its R&D funding] and participation in international R&D programs. As UPM participation in FP7 is concerned, the University has taken part up to now in 242 European R&D projects with more than 64 M€ of funding, ranked first Spanish University.
Concerning the involvement on online education, UPM is sustaining member of the Open Education Consortium and it is very active on MOOC platforms like EdX, MiriadaX, etc. And their courses have received several awards
BEST Institut für berufsbezogene Weiterbildung und Personaltraining GmbH (www.best.at) was founded in 1990 as an independent Austrian organisation for providing continuous training, vocational qualification and career services. Its main activities comprise the development of innovative training programmes for young (+16) individuals and adults, many of them disadvantaged and with migration background, on continuous and vocational training, counselling; coaching and activation for job seekers and employees. The training schemes are client-oriented and based on both the specific needs of the labour market and the participants & individual situations, skills and competences, previous experience and life circumstances. Within its International Projects Department, since 1995, BEST has been engaged in more than 200 European projects, both as coordinator and partner, in the framework of various EU programmes (Leonardo,Socrates/Grundtvig, EQUAL, LLP, ESF, eTEN, FP, EuropeAid, Erasmus+, H2020, IEE, INTERREG, etc.). The institute disposes of a network of more than 290 international organisations, both public and private, from different sectors, and is focused on networking, exchange of experience and practices, peer learning, research and development of innovation, knowledge management, personal and professional development.
Anadolu University, founded in 1982 has gained a well-deserved place as a modern, dynamic and innovative institution among the largest universities not only in Turkey, but also in the world. Its campus houses 12 faculties (undergraduate level) – three of which offer distance education, 3 applied schools – one of which is of music and drama, 2 vocational schools (associate level), 6 graduate schools – four of which are graduate and postgraduate level, and 30 research centres. Anadolu University has been a pioneering institution on many fronts. Most important of these is the success of implementing the distance education system. Today, the total number of students of the three distance education faculties is over 2 million. The success in the development of this system has been taken as a model by many institutions in various countries. In its departments equipped with cutting-edge technology, Anadolu University with its faculty who strive to be the best in their field and devote all of their time to their students have been working hard to prepare their students to be the best in its creative and dynamic learning setting.