VOLCANIC- Innovative Technological Pedagogy in Hןgher Education

The 21st century confronts higher education institutions' (HEI) staff and social and educational policy makers with the challenge to adjust existing curricula and teaching methods to improve the level of competence, skills and the employability prospects of their students. The Volcanic project aims to train HEIs and K6-K12 teachers to master effective pedagogies for using Computational Thinking (CT) to incorporate ICT in their teaching. As the Moroccan and Israeli HEIs participating in this project teach mainly disadvantaged populations - the Bedouins in Israel and scattered populations in Morocco - we will focus also on the special needs of these populations and the conditions upon which they could acquire proper skills and knowledge to use ICT in their learning. The need to boost the use of ICT in the Moroccan and Israeli HEIs is evident and declared a national mission in both countries. Overall, 500 disadvantaged students from remote areas, 200 K6-K12 teachers and 50 HEI teachers are expected to benefit from the work and results of this project. Nine partners - 3 Moroccan, 3 Israeli and 3 EU HEIs - will join forces in the project to fulfil this mission through the design and piloting of 12 courses, establishing learning spaces in HEIs, and training K6-K12 teachers. The project's sustainability and impact will be achieved through the dissemination of its results on national and international digital learning platforms. Furthermore, some of the courses to be developed and implemented are planned to be adopted by the involved HEIs as an integral, accredited part of their permanent curricula and offered to external institutions for utilization in their learning environments, thus adding to the expected legacy of VOLCANIC. Besides all the above, this project will certainly become a milestone in the Israeli-Moroccan cooperation, inspiring other countries in the region to follow its steps in comparable endeavors.