On January 25-26, 2024, the inaugural meeting of the participants of the project “Sustainability and Internationalization Capacity to Modernize Higher Education for Debutants from Eastern Partnership Countries” (SIN-NEC-101129029) was held in Teramo (Italy), which will be implemented during 2024-2026 within the framework of ERASMUS+ projects in the CBHE direction. The event was attended by employees of the Institute for Digitalisation of Education of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine: Svitlana Lytvynova, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Deputy Director for Scientific Work, and Maria Shyshkina, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Head of the Department of Cloud-Oriented Education Informatization Systems. They presented the achievements of the institute and the vision of the project implementation in terms of digital transformation of education.

The meeting was attended by key project personnel: Laura Tudor – project manager, University of Teramo, Italy; Paola Pittia – project coordinator, University of Teramo, Italy; as well as Aleksandra Jama (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria) and Rainer Svacinka (Sumo technologies, Austrian company) – developers of an innovative platform to support virtual communication of project participants.

All project partners were presented at the meeting, including 4 universities of Ukraine (Institute for Digitalisation of Education of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine, Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics, Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs, Alfred Nobel University) and 4 universities of Armenia (Eurasian International University, Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture and Sports, Yerevan Haybusak University, Northern University).

The event discussed issues such as: project management; self-assessment of internationalization and sustainable development missions of higher education institutions; increasing the potential of higher education institutions; developing internationalization in them through language strategy, heterogeneous student management and virtual exchange; building sustainable development capacity to promote internationalization and interaction between academia and industry.

The participants developed an action plan for the implementation of the first stage of the project, in particular, preparation for virtual communication of project participants on an innovative platform and development of the training module “Internationalization in the context of sustainable development and digitalization of education.”