The main objective of the EMBRACE project is to transform higher education institutions through the development of digital and pedagogical skills, enabling the creation of learning ecosystems that link university education with the demands of the labor market and society, producing environments conducive to solving complex local and regional problems. Participating in this project are Brazilian (UFABC, IFES, IFSP), Colombian (UTP and Areaandina), Portuguese (IPB) and Finnish (HAMK – project coordinator) higher education institutions.

Within the scope of the project, teachers are considered to be agents of institutional transformation and pedagogical innovation, through the acquisition of digital and pedagogical skills and the creation of learning ecosystems, involving teachers, students, directors, staff, members of civil society and representatives of the labor market in the training processes, in order to produce environments for solving complex local and regional problems, in the context of a constantly changing world that requires the systemic articulation of various elements.

The project is organized into work packages (WP) that enable the main and secondary objectives to be achieved, namely:

WP1: identification of impact indicators to assess the quality of the actions carried out at a personal, institutional and inter-institutional (regional or global) level;
WP2: pedagogical, digital and cultural training of teachers involved in the production and evaluation of MOOCs that will remain available in the institutions for the continuing training of other teachers;
WP3: creation of management guidelines for pedagogical innovation that drive transformation through the development of strategies for the implementation of ongoing teacher training, the digitization of education and the recognition of learning ecosystems in their institutional processes;
WP4: establishing collaborative models based on learning ecosystems that link the training provided at the university with the contextual and contemporary issues of the surrounding institutions (labor market, civil society, among others);
WP5: the creation of sustainability strategies for the educational transformations envisaged in the project and the creation of a hub to disseminate digital and pedagogical transformation practices in the institutions.

Through face-to-face and remote collegiate meetings (meetings, kickoffs, trainings, consultations, workshops, among others), the competencies required for teaching in higher education were defined. These competences were grouped into 3 different MOOCs, produced by 25 instructional developers (5 per partner institution) and analyzed by approximately 75 tutors from the 5 member universities. These MOOCs are now available to the communities of higher education institutions and promoted on the basis of strategies developed by the managers of each institution participating in the project. The resulting MOOCs, designed in English, Portuguese and Spanish, were:

Digital and Pedagogical Skills MOOC – DigiPeda;
MOOC on Active Pedagogies with Digital Tools;
MOOC on the world of work: Digital skills and innovation.

Passing the activities provided for in the MOOCs will entitle you to training certification of 60 hours each and can be used in institutional continuing training procedures.

The EMBRACE Project team invites the entire UFABC internal community, as well as the external community, to take part in the MOOC launch event, which will take place on May 21 from 10am (Brasília time) and can be accessed via the link https://www.youtube.com/live/_Oe_e95GsL8.

After the launch, the courses will remain open so that teachers, students and other interested parties can take part in continuing training free of charge, helping to strengthen innovative teaching practices that are connected to the demands of contemporary society.