3rd Joint Call for inter-institutional activities within EELISA Communities: €130,000 total budget

General objective 

This call aims to promote inter-institutional activities within the framework of EELISA Communities. These activities may adopt a variety of formats and should be interdisciplinary, while focusing on transforming higher education by using innovative teaching methods to solve complex societal problems related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  

EELISA Communities, activities and credentials 

EELISA Communities are mission-driven, multi-stakeholder (students, teachers, researchers, companies, NGOs, start-ups, and public authorities), interdisciplinary, and international working groups, with members from at least three different EELISA partners, from at least two different member states. To fulfil their mission, EELISA Communities carry out diverse types of activities. Student participation in these activities is recognized via EELISA Credentials, academic evidence of how they are engaging wtih SDGs and creating a real impact on society. To find out more about EELISA Communities, their activities and EELISA Credentials, please see: https://community.eelisa.eu/get-started/  

For this call, EELISA Communities are called upon to organize one or more activities using innovative teaching methods such as Challenge Based Learning (CBL)[1]. This will help to boost transnational mobility (physical, virtual, blended or hybrid formats), as well as foster inter-disciplinarity, inter-culturalism and inter-institutional cooperation.  

Evaluation criteria 

This Joint Call targets bottom-up proposals for activities arising from collaborations forged within or between EELISA Communities and in line with the EELISA goals and the SDGs. Proposals will be evaluated by representatives of the work group responsible for the call based on the following three criteria:  

Excellence and impact (up to 40 points, max 2000 characters including spaces): 

Relevance and novelty of the activity or activities, within an academic (max 20 points) and social context (max 10 points). Activities should be interdisciplinary and tied with the mission of the Community or Communities involved and aim to have a significant impact on society related to the UN’s SDGs (max 10 points).  

Learning ecosystem (up to 40 points, max 2000 characters including spaces):  

Innovative teaching methods used to carry out the activity or activities (max. 20 points), with particular emphasis on CBL[2]. A suitable challenge is socially, economically, technically or environmentally relevant at a local, regional or global scale for which solutions are elusive, inadequate or non-existent. It should be an exciting challenge that motivates EELISA Community members and external stakeholders. Challenges can (but do not have to be) embedded in the context of seminars, lectures, summer/seasonal schools, or BIPs, and should also have clear evaluation criteria. 

The participation of educators (organizers) and learners (participants) should be balanced, with the aim of considering all EELISA partners (max 10 points). Guidelines should be provided regarding the acceptance criteria for participants. Activities should lead to the issuance of EELISA credentials (level of engagement and action), including an assessment of the workload based on ECTS (max 10 points). Priority will be given to activities that involve a high number of students, although new or smaller communities will be considered, as well as the level of impact of each activity and whether it is in-presence, entirely on-line or hybrid.  

Implementation (up to 20 points, max 2000 characters including spaces):  

Execution plan for the activity or activities as well as a budget (10 points). Each activity should be clearly defined and follow the preparation and reporting scheme defined by EELISA, including a final report. Priority will be given to activities that can be reiterated and sustainable in the mid- to long-term (10 points).  

Dimensions of financial support 

The total budget for this 3rd Joint Call is €130,000. The maximum funding per activity is €10,000. Funding for activities can be allocated into two overall areas, organisational costs and participation costs. Organisational costs include four concepts: travel and accommodation for organisers, travel and accommodation for invited speakers, personnel costs for organisers as well as other costs (catering, reserving spaces, communication and dissemination).  

Participation costs include travel and accommodation for people who will attend the event but do not participate in the organization, typically students from partner universities. As the origin (EELISA partners) and the final number of participants is not always known in advance by the activity organizers, when submitting a proposal, the EELISA Community may provide an overall estimation, or participation limits, to help estimate the proposed budget.  

Calls for proposals will be published on a semi-annual basis. Owing to a different funding source, funding for ZHAW is pending confirmation and specific conditions and constraints may apply.

 Call   Opening    Deadline    Acceptance     Estimated funding available 
3rd call   30 Apr 2024  15 Jun 2024  30 Jun 2024  €130,000
4th call  1 Sept 2024    15 Oct 2024  31 Oct 2024  €130,000
5th call    1 Febr 2025  15 Mar 2025  31 Mar 2025  €130,000
6th call  1 Sept 2025   15 Oct 2025  31 Oct 2025  €130,000
7th call     1 Febr 2026  15 Mar 2026  31 Mar 2026  €130,000
8th call   1 Sept 2026   15 Oct 2026  31 Oct 2026  €130,000
9th call    1 Febr 2027  15 Mar 2027  31 Mar 2027  €130,000
Total    €910,000

This timeline of calls and budget is purely indicative and subject to change. 

Application process and template 

Please design your proposal using this template and send it in Word format to communities@eelisa.eu by 15 June 2024 23:59 CEST. 

Important dates 

Call publication: 30 April 2024 

Information session with Q&A: 17 May 2024  (Register Now!)

Submission deadline: 15 June 2024  

Announcement of results: 30 June 2024 (two weeks after submission deadline).  

Period during which the activities can be carried out: within 1 year of call publication.  

Submission of final report: within 6 weeks after the conclusion of the activity.  

Information session 

An online information session on the call including a Q&A will take place on 17 May 2024. 

Please complete the registration form to participate in the information session.   

Additionally, three Q&A Café sessions have been scheduled to facilitate further discussions on topics related to the 3rd joint call and EELISA Communities. Please do not hesitate to register for any of the following sessions.

Communication Guidelines 

All activities funded by this call will be subject to a series of communication guidelines. These guidelines, provided at the time of funding acceptance, will detail instructions on how to consistently incorporate the EELISA branding, the EELISA European University logo and give visibility to the EU funding into all communication and dissemination materials. 

[1] SUMMARY of CHALLENGE BASED LEARNING (from Nichols et al 2016) – Google Drawings 

[2] Johnson, L. and Adams, S., (2011). Challenge Based Learning: The Report from the Implementation Project. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. 

 

Who should be the lead Applicant if several EELISA Communities are collaborating on an activity proposal?

The lead applicant should be the host, or host most the activities, and probably it would be better to choose the Lead Applicant with the most appropriate CV for the activity in question. In addition, you can provide more details about all collaborating people and Communities in an Annex.

Should we include a short biography for co-organizer?

To simplify we only need this for the Lead Applicant but more information can be added in an Annex.

In the three sections of the activity description, is the limit of 2000 characters per cell or per set of cells of the same category?

It is per category (2000 for Excellence and Impact, 2000 for Learning Ecosystem, and 2000 for Implementation). There is margin to provide more information in an Annex if you like, but the most important information should be in the template.

Should I let my Community leader know that I want to send in an Activity proposal? 

We suggest that you inform your community and EELISA Community leader (or Community admin) to strengthen the bottom-up processes and to create synergies.  

Is it possible to get funding for non EELISA invited speakers/attendees? 

Yes, up to 10% of the total requested funding for their travel, accommodation and subsistence. Find this wording in the Budget section of template for call.  

If one has an idea for a project activity, how to find potentially interested partners in the other universities? 

You can reach out to EELISA members in many different ways: 

 

If the main person responsible for the activity does not belong to the institution that will host the activity. Who manages the budget? 

For administrative reasons, the lead applicant needs to be affiliated with the hosting institution and will be the main point of contact with the respective Local Office for administrative and budgetary questions (especially regarding organizational costs).  

Is it possible to combine an EELISA activity with another European activity like an ATHENS week course? 

Yes, it is possible, as long as the funding is used in a complementary way (avoiding double funding) and EELISA participants are not charged fees of any kind. It obviously has to include EELISA partners as well.  

Can you give a few examples what kind of activities EELISA supported in the past? 

Please refer to the call announcement on the EELISA website for a list of previously funded activities, including links to reports from two funded activities: the II POST roundtable and the SusBCC Think Tank at the ESAC building of the European Space Agency in Madrid. 

If the implementation of a proposal requires to develop an app for mobile devices, is it possible to get funding for this expense? If yes, would it go as Other costs funding? 

This will depend on the cost, where organizational and participation costs need to be balanced with other costs. A successful proposal will probably not involve a high budget for “other costs”, it should only be complementary.  

How many partner universities will need to be involved in an activity (is there a requirement for minimum number of partners) and what is the requirement for the length of the activity in terms of days? 

At least 3 EELISA partner institutions from at least 2 countries. No requirement for the length of the activity as long as it is finished by April 30, 2025. 

Can a startup that is affiliated to the accelerator program in one of the partner universities also apply for this call? Do we need to have an academic directly from EELISA partner university or can we just apply as a startup? 

The lead applicant of the proposed activity needs to be affiliated with one of the EELISA higher education institutions, and an EELISA Community, either as an academic or staff of any kind, student or researcher. 

Would these Joint Calls be a good opportunity to make international a previous Challenge-Based Learning experience developed in the frame of an internal call, e.g. the EELISA Challenge at the UPM? 

Yes. The call provides a good opportunity to replicate the activity at a different institution, or at the same institution with participants and co-organisers from other institutions. 

Is it possible to propose an activity that is “blended”, so local activities are blended with online gatherings within the different universities that are involved. In this case, no travel would be involved. Could this type of activity be proposed in the call? 

Yes, blended involves a virtual and a (brief) physical mobility component. Activities where the local audience participates face-to-face and the audience from other institutions does so virtually or remotely are called ‘hybrid’. Owing to their greater cost efficiency and to being more inclusive and sustainable, these activities are highly encouraged and will be evaluated positively in the Implementation section. 

What are the criteria for activities in terms of subject matter? 

There are no restrictions or preferences regarding subject or disciplinary areas as long as activities fulfil the conditions of the call, contributing to the mission of the Community involved, and to societal problems in line with the SDGs from an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional perspective. 

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