Abstract

Universities of Applied Sciences face challenges in pre-award skills development among their staff. The ENCARE project (funded by Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnerships for higher education) aims to increase the capacity of research office staff and researchers of Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) to develop and write EU-funded projects successfully. This will improve access to funding and increase interinstitutional cooperation at the EU level and the overall quality of applied research. The currently developed ICER-Pro training program will consist of three different modules, tackling the needs of researchers and research manager in terms of skills development in pre-award activities with different level of experience.

The project is managed by HAW Hamburg in Germany. The other partners are Turku University of Applied Sciences in Finland, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht in the Netherlands, P.PORTO in Portugal, Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain and University of the West of Scotland in the UK. The partnership aims to join forces in developing a collaborative training program, which will deliver online and offline training to researchers and research managers within and outside the project partnership.

In this presentation, we introduce the development work of the training program:
1) the needs analysis results
2) final strands of the program
3) training structure
4) possibilities for RMAs and researchers to participate in the program
5) Universities of Applied Sciences as a unique group of research support providers
and give the participants the opportunity to comment on the program drafts, offer ideas, and express their interest in participating in it.

Learning outcomes:
- Special challenges of the UAS sector in RMA
- Possible solutions in providing and receiving pre-award training
- International collaboration model for higher education institutions in staff training.