During the month of June 2026, the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava (Czechia), welcomed several academic colleagues from Aleksandër Moisiu University in Durrës (Albania).

The mobility brought together colleagues from the Institutes of Foreign Languages, creating valuable opportunities for professional exchange and future cooperation. The visiting academics represented a wide range of expertise, including English language teaching methodology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, English literature, culture and translation studies, classroom management, technology-enhanced learning, intercultural studies, and many more.

Good practices

Throughout their stay, they engaged in inspiring discussions with colleagues from the Department of English and American Studies, namely Michaela Weiss, Diana Adamová, Barbora Hamplová, and Veronika Nogolová, who are themselves experts in these fields, sharing good practices in language teaching, curriculum development, innovative pedagogical approaches, research, and the internationalization of higher education. The exchange of perspectives fostered meaningful academic dialogue and helped identify common areas of interest for future collaboration.

The meetings resulted in several concrete outcomes. The institutions agreed to organize mutual invited lectures for students and academic staff, explore opportunities for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) activities, and develop joint specialized projects, further strengthening cooperation within the STARS EU Alliance.

Cooperation in teaching

The Department of English and American Studies at Silesian University in Opava looks forward to continuing this successful cooperation with Aleksandër Moisiu University and implementing the initiatives discussed during the June mobility.

The visit strengthened the partnership between both institutions and laid the foundation for future cooperation in teaching, research, and academic mobility, further supporting the internationalization goals of the STARS EU Alliance.

The STARS EU Alliance offers five BIP during the 2nd semester 2022/2023 in the following topics:

• Challenge Based Innovation (6 ECTS credits)
• Circular Bioeconomy (6 ECTS credits)
• Cybersecurity (6 ECTS credits)
• Emotional Education (6 ECTS credits)
• Smart Grids (6 ECTS credits)

BIP are short and intensive training programmes, including online cooperation by combining physical mobility with a virtual part, and promoting and using innovative ways of learning and teaching, research-based and challenge-based learning.

The virtual part will allow the participation in teaching/training of experts from all partners. The physical short-term mobility will allow the face-to-face cooperation of teachers and participants.

Students can maintain their study plan at home institution and include the BIP training as parallel activity. The short-term physical mobility will constitute the only period outside their home institution. Students will credit the BIP at their study plans.

Physical mobility support

The individual support to students and teaching staff for the physical mobility should be provided by the sending organisation, that can use their own regular Erasmus funds for mobility. Short-term student mobility grants are now allowed for BIP within the new Erasmus+ programme.

For more information about the STARS EU BIP for the 2 nd semester 2022/2023 please see the following PDF file:
Blended Intensive Programmes available at the 2 nd semester 2022/2023

Students from the STARS EU partners and also from other Erasmus HEIs can still apply to one (and only one) of these BIP and receive ECTS credits.

BIP for Teachers
In addition, it also has been designaed a BIP program especifically intended for teaching staff, called “Unlocking Imagination”  and will address contes as transdisciplinary creativity fields and approaches; methodologies fostering individual and group creativity potential and Design, implementation, and evaluation of creative
processes, among others.

ABoth students and teachers applications can be  formalised at www.ipb.pt/bip

 

Applications at www.ipb.pt/bip

The Erasmus+ face to face week of Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) took place in Bragança (Portugal) from 23^rd to 27^th of January.

Students from the four STARS EU partners -Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB, Portugal), Hanze University of Applied Sciences (HUAS, The Netherlands), Silesian University in Opava (Czechia) and University of La Laguna (Spain)- had the face to face component of BIP – Challenge-Based Innovation course 2022/2023, together with other participants, as Universidad de Almería (Spain), Kaunas University of Technology and Šiauliai State University of Applied Sciences (Lithuania), and Medical University Wroclaw (Poland).

The partners professors of IPB, HUAS, SU, and ULL enabled the students to develop their projects ideas, with workshops about interviews, storytelling concept and the perfect pitch. This on-site week was the last stage of a semester of work involving different institutions and external business partners.

Students had the opportunity to improve their ideas being challenged, which resulted in a week of creativity and problem-solving skills. The last day, all the groups presented their Final Pitch, were they reported all the outcomes from the entire semester, and could realize the high increase of knowledge curve in a few days.

The next edition BIP – Challenge Based Innovation group, the online component, will start in April of 2023, and the face to face week is booked to the last week of June of 2023 broadening the participation of professors and students to other STARS EU partners.