Argumentation

Since 2003 higher education institutions in Europe participated more actively in the construction of what the European Commission called a ‘Europe of Knowledge (Maassen & Olsen, 2007), serving its strategic aim to remain competitive within the global knowledge economy. The aim of building the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is to promote, on the one hand, education designed according to a knowledge and skills approach and, on the other hand, to improve the professional integration of students (Bologna process, 1998). However, European universities often face a high failure rate for bachelor's degrees. For decades, European educational policies have aimed at improving teaching and learning to encourage academic engagement and integration and the professionalization of teaching staff. Providing better conditions for study, monitoring, and a better balance between studies, training, and professional careers is a major objective of the reform of universities in Europe to face these challenges.  

This purpose remains nowadays more relevant than ever, especially with the constant crises from which our modern world suffers. The forthcoming conference is to be held in this context. In particular, the main objectives of the conference are the following:

a) maintaining and improving the quality of education in a constantly changing world;

b) improving the new institutions created in recent decades, through the exchange of know-how with university institutions that have a great history and excel in international assessments;

c) reducing the gap between education graduates and the labor market;

d) retraining people who have graduated from education but are unemployed;

e) development of soft skills as the abilities to respond in an observable and effective way to dynamic and complex situations;

The main axes of the conference are two, each consisting of individual subsections, as follows:

1. teaching strategies for quality learning in education, ICTs, online learning, and teaching in higher education.
2. policy, assessment and evaluation, professional development, graduate employability, and skills mismatch.

The aforementioned objectives with their corresponding thematic sections will be covered through the contribution of the conference participants, interested in a plethora of academic subjects and coming from various university institutions. Representatives of companies and NGOs will also participate in the conference delivering their speeches and presentations, as well as workshops on the aforementioned topics with the cooperation of all stakeholders (students, professors, lecturers, and representatives of companies and NGOs).

The Conference will have a hybrid format to allow broad participation.

English is the official language of the conference.