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10A DIGITAL EXCELLENCE FOR SUPPORTING RESILIENT IMPLEMENTATION OF ERASMUS+ JOINT CAPACITY BUILDING
PROJECTS IN THE FIELD OF HIGHER EDUCATION OF
UZBEKISTAN
Mansur Asranov, Makhkam Kayumov, Khamidulla Khabibullaev
Abstract. The CBHE Projects within the Erasmus Program are fostering revolutionary social reforms in Uzbekistan, stimulating development and implementation of new study programs, empowering structural reforms for reliable and sustainable Higher Education System. A resilient support powered by digital services can multiply the positive effect, thus boosting the reforms. The paper describes and discusses a positive experience, collected during implementation of the Erasmus Plus ELBA Project, which can be used by the creative groups of the universities, who propose and implement their own initiatives.
Keywords: Digital Services, Web Technologies, Project Management Introduction
The ELBA is an ERASMUS+ project (Project number: 610170-EPP-1-2019-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP). The acronym stands for "Establishment of training and research centers and Courses development on Intelligent Big Data Analysis (IBDA) in Central Asia (CA)" [1]. The project was funded within the Call for Proposals Erasmus+ - EAC/A03/2018. Total five projects were funded in this call, and Turin polytechnic university in Tashkent was leading CA partner in two of them: The ELBA and the ERAMCA [2] Projects.
The consortium consists of 13 partner institutions (listed below) from which the first 3 reside in Europe and have acted as knowledge and expertise providers, while the remaining 10 institutions from Central Asia were referred as the beneficiaries [3].
The following EU partners contributed their expertise in field of IBDA:
- University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Grantholder, as well as knowledge and expertise provider.
- Politecnico di Torino (POLITO), Turin, Italy, knowledge and expertise provider.
- University of Primorska (UP), Koper, Slovenia - knowledge and expertise provider.
The following CA partners were involved in the consortium as the beneficiaries:
- Turin polytechnic university in Tashkent (TTPU), Tashkent, Uzbekistan, CA partner's coordinator.
- Bukhara Engineering-Technological Institute (BETI), Bukhara, Uzbekistan.
- Urgench State university (UrSU), Urgench, Uzbekistan.
- Tashkent State transport university (TSTU), Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
- Akhmet Baitursynov Kostanay Regional university (ABKRU), Kostanay, Uzbekistan.
- International Information Technology University (IITU), Almaty, Kazakhstan.
- Technological university of Tajikistan (TUT), Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
- Kulob institute of technology and innovation management (KITIM), Kulob, Tajikistan.
- Iskhak Razzakov Kyrgyz state technical university (KSTU), Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
- Osh technological university (OshTU), Osh, Kyrgyzstan.
Project was focused on three fundamental objectives:
- Academic capacity building for professors and teaching staff according to the best practices and advanced expertise of European experts in field of IBDA.
- Development, piloting, and implementation of the package, comprehending multidisciplinary courses in field of IBDA.
- Establishment of IBDA Training and Research (T&R) Centers, as well as establishment of academic and professional network for supporting further establishment of community between project partners, and other interested parties of the prospective IBDA domain.
To achieve such objectives the following structure of the work packages and their dependencies were implemented [4]:
WP1 - Preparation. The main goal of this WP was to define the foundations for the subsequent WPs. Particularly, WP1 outcomes were important for the WP2, WP5 and WP7 tasks in terms of developing procedures and guidelines for implementation of the project.
At the initial meeting the Steering Committee was confirmed, the action plans for project management, monitoring and sustainability were developed. This Steering Committee organized meeting for discussion the project lifecycle in terms of management, quality assurance and monitoring. Additionally, during this meeting, USC conducted training on modern pedagogical technologies based on the EU educational system for the staff of CA partner HEIs.
CA partner HEIs conducted surveys and analysis of an academic and industrial sphere, to define the demands for IBDA, therefore outlining the groundings for further development of multidisciplinary IBDA courses, after the first meeting.
POLITO elaborated existing EU programs on IBDA from the first project month. Consequently, based on the correlation of EU programs analysis results and CA partner HEIs survey results, POLITO developed the report, containing the offers and recommendations for further IBDA courses development as described in WP3.
WP2 - Competence building. The WP2 was the core work package from an academic competence building point of view. The activities of this WP were focused on building the Academic English and subject-oriented competence of CA partner HEIs academic staff.
As the instruction language in TTPU is English, its academic staff have developed Academic English training program and content. Moreover, TTPU conducted webinars for the rest of CA partner HEIs academic staff on applying the program for the training of their local staff. Afterwards, the academic staff of each CA partner HEI conducted training for the local staff using the training program. Overall, The English training course lasted for four months.
The next stage considered enhancing the IBDA subject-oriented capacity of academic staff from CA partner HEIs. Therefore, two weeks long CA staff mobilities to the USC, POLITO and UP were carried out. The total number of participating academic staff from CA partner HEIs was 90 (9 teachers from each). This study period, in turn, boosted the training of the CA university teachers -who obtained comprehensive experience of the education and pedagogical styles of EU universities. This also contributed significantly to the sustainability of the project. The academic staffs' benefiting from these training periods in EU universities brought with them a new knowledge and expertise.
Furthermore, the teaching staff from EU partners were involved in the mobilities (2 weeks long) to each CA partner country to deliver the professional modules and share their pedagogical skills and experiences on IBDA for provision dissemination and sustainability of the project.
WP3 - Multidisciplinary package of IBDA courses. WP3 played one of the key roles in the delivery of the objective focused on comprehensive development of the multidisciplinary package of IBDA courses.
POLITO and UP were responsible for the elaboration of the needed courses on IBDA. This EU partner delivered this output in accordance with the comprehensive report, which had been developed during WP1 by POLITO.
CA partner HEIs collectively developed the package of courses on IBDA. To improve and ensure the quality of the package, benchmarking was performed through pilot implementation of the package. After benchmarking, the package content was revised. Overall, the above-mentioned procedures were supervised by EU partner HEIs for the quality provision of the package.
WP4 - Within this WP in each CA partner, the IBDA T&R Centers were established under the guidelines of the experts from EU partners and CESGA -Supercomputing Center of Galicia region, Spain. The IBDA T&R Centers were equipped with the necessary hardware, software and communication infrastructure to support implementation and further sustainability of the project. Specific instructions were given to institutions on securing the necessary requirements for the ICT resources. Equipment installation was done by each CA partner HEIs technical staff. Monitoring and local supervision of IBDA Centers were delegated, and the responsibility for the maintenance and safety of the center
were assigned to the IT Area of each CA partner HEI. This allowed for the sustainability of the functioning of the IBDA Centers after the project lifetime.
Finally, for sharing the research outputs and the resources among the established IBDA T&R Centers, the common platform was developed by TTPU. But each CA university took responsibility for maintaining. All activities of the WP during the project lifetime were carried out under the management of the USC and UP.
WP5 - The goal of this WP was to provide project quality control and monitoring throughout the project duration resulting in project quality assurance (QA). QA was performed on internal and external levels. According to WP4 and WP7, the Cloud Project Management Platform (CPMP) was implemented for project lifecycle management. The webinar on the exploitation of the platform was conducted by the TTPU team. This also played a significant role in ensuring project QA.
WP6 - Dissemination and Sustainability. The project results were presented to the wider community, not only through papers and workshops at highly rated regional academic conferences and by uploading materials to official educational sites but also by proactively engaging the professional and academic network of IBDA centers (thematically bound web platform, thematic groups, and pages in social media). All the results of dissemination activities were linked to respective tasks in the CPMP.
The project website played a significant role in dissemination activities, it was developed and maintained by the TTPU and UP teams during the whole project lifetime. On top of that, the UP was responsible for monitoring dissemination activities from the EU, while ABKRU was a task leader for CA partners.
Additionally, in terms of strengthening dissemination, a Knowledgebase on IBDA and competition for IBDA applications were conducted. Knowledgebase was developed by TTPU team, while competition of IBDA applications was conducted by BETI.
WP7 - Project Management. The main instrument for partnership management within the consortium was the organization of the Steering Committee and the SC meeting for the purpose of consensual decision-making with the participation of every partner HEI involved. USC functioned as Project coordinator, TTPU was CA Partners Coordinator.
Effective communication between the consortium members was established with the use of the CPMP. The local level of the project management was covered by the project workgroups created in every HEI participating in the project implementation. Those local workgroups were responsible for solving
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local problems of the project development, implementation and dissemination of the project results on their respective regional levels. I. Methodology 1.1. Needs identification Effective needs identification was performed by analyzing the taskset of each WP to find out specific requirements for the digital services, that could support effective implementation of the taskset (Fig.1).
Figure 1. Tasks and digital services mapping framework
The figure 1 illustrates the framework for identifying the tasks, which require digital support, and mapping these tasks with corresponding digital services. According to the framework, each WP was carefully inspected to identify the tasks for further analysis. The tasks descriptions were analyzed in order clarify the requirements for the prospective digital services. Finally, after the analysis, the digital services with corresponding features and capabilities were mapped with the previously analyzed WP tasks. In the figure 1, the interconnections (arrows) between WPs tasks set and corresponding digital services were illustrated with the colors of the wrapping blocks of each WP, to reduce a confusion of the reader, as much as possible.
1.2. Requirements analysis
The following section briefly describes the requirements for digital services, as identified from the tasks set in the order of WPs:
- Knowledgebase. The deliverables of WP2 and WP3 had implied generation of significant amounts of academic materials. Therefore, storage and effective User Interface/User Experience (UX/UI) for users' access, should have been the key capabilities of the Knowledgebase (KB).
- Project website. The website was considered as a key tool not only for publishing the outputs from the different WPs, but also the place for publishing the facts about the activity performance within the project. Therefore, the regular standard requirements by the EACEA, as well as the state-of-the-art UX/IU guidelines, such as responsive design and multibrowser support were considered by the team members, responsible for website development and maintenance.
- Facebook Ads Targeting Tools. Along with the website of project, the appropriate groups and pages on Facebook and LinkedIn platforms were established. However, since normally the posts and announcements are only visible for group/page subscribers or followers, the need for enriching the audience to be covered still has not been covered. So, the expertise in using paid Ads Targeting Tools on Facebook platform and appropriate design and strategy of running the Ads campaign were required to expand reachability of the posts and advertisements, included in the campaign.
- Network web platform. The platform should have been an online discussion web service where individuals could conduct dialogs in the form of published messages. The platform should be designed to organize various events such as conferences, forums and seminars. With the help of the application, participants should get all the essential information about the event, including the current program, data about speakers and other participants, contacts of the organizers, meet in chat and much more. Moreover, capabilities of sharing files and data should also be covered by the prospective solution.
- IT architecture design. This item is more an expertise rather than digital service. However, a prospective provision of the required services which could be offered for supporting didactic and research activities in the IBDA T&R Center, strongly depended on the correct technological decisions in terms of IT architecture design of the center. Therefore, solid expertise in field of highperformance computing and networking were required to design the IT architecture, considering technical requirements of the prospective didactic and research activities: Data Engineering, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence workloads, as well as remotization.
- Cloud Project Management Platform. The CPMP should enable all the partners to precisely accomplish their own tasks collaborating with other teams,
using allocated resources, meeting deadlines. The partners with control and monitoring privileges for tracing the statuses of the tasks and if necessary, implement corrective measures to steer the processes.
II. Results
This chapter describes the practical implementation of the design and delivery of the digital services and expertise, according to the previous sequence of representation, starting from KB and ending with CPMP.
Knowledgebase. This digital service is developed using HTML5 framework for UX/UI and WordPress open-source software for Content Management.
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Part 1
Part 2
Mobile view
Figure 2. The screenshot of the Knowledgebase
The figure 2 depicts the screenshot of the KB, implemented on the project website [5]. The layout of the KB is designed as a landing page, which is divided into parts 1, 2, and 3 in this paper for the sake of space efficiency, which are vertically monolithic on the real page going from 1 to 3. The figure also includes mobile view. This is the result of implemented responsive design approach of the layout. The KB comprehends links to developed academic materials, paper, webinar presentations and videos.
Project website is also developed using HTML5 framework for UX/UI and WordPress open-source software for Content Management.
About ELBA
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Figure 3. The screenshot of the project website
The figure 3 illustrates the frontpage of the project website. The layout is designed using the same responsive approach. The frontpage comprehends a top menu with necessary links to the rest the pages and digital services, as well as the key facts about the project. Using the same way as in the Figure 2, the screenshots are divided in parts (1 to 4), with monolithic vertical layout on the real website. The full User Experience can be observed by accessing using the link [1].
Facebook Ads Targeting Tools. Total 6 posts were developed and published on the Facebook page of TTPU. After publication, the posts were boosted using Facebook Ads Management toolbox. The following targeting configuration of the Ads campaign was implemented:
1. Target countries: Belgium, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
2. Target groups: all users of ages 18 to 65+.
3. Total budget for all 6 posts: 400 euros.
4. Boosting duration: 7 to 8 days.
The Ads campaign allowed for obtaining important results, presented in the table 1. The table contains key metrics, such as reach, post engagement, link clicks and reactions. The following section describes the meanings of each metric:
- Reach - number of total users reached beyond the subscribers and followers.
- Post engagement - Post Engagement is the ratio of interactions with a social media post to the total number of followers the page or profile has. This metric shows how involved followers are with the content posted on a social media page. Generally, higher Post Engagement Rate shows higher levels of follower involvement.
- Reach - total number of users a post has reached.
- Link clicks - total number of times the links in ad text, media, or call-to-action have been clicked.
- Reactions - total amount of reactions to post (like, love, haha, wow, sad or angry etc).
Table 1. The Ads Campaign Statistics
# Post name Reach Post engagement Link clicks Reactions QR codes
1 The Project Consortium 568 200 6 327 5 664 565 ÏÏ1Î
2 The Project Budget 520 456 5 356 4 999 333
3 Training session in EU 154 750 15 651 3 986 55 m
4 IBDA Course Development 75 728 7 543 6 948 557 ¡i¡
5 IBDA T&R Centers 108 067 9 197 8 247 930 §ÉÉ
6 Final Management Meeting 120 548 20 680 18 324 401 111!
Total statistics 1 547 749 64 754 48 168 2 841
According to the table 1, total 1 547 749 users were reached, while engagement gained 64 754. Each post in the Ads campaign contains the link to the project website [1], so total 48 168 users were redirected to the project website by clicking on the link. Finally, total 2 841 users reacted to the posts. The last column "QR codes" contain QR codes with the links to the mentioned posts for quick access of the reader.
Network web platform. The platform is also powered by WordPress system for content management [6]. However, the message exchange capabilities are designed using custom plugins and modules.
The following capabilities are supported by the network web platform:
- sharing developed IBDA courses' materials and their discussion.
- sharing results of the testing IBDA courses, recommendations on further
use.
discussions and sharing experience on using IBDA T&R Centers. sharing research on IBDA, publications. sharing other project progress results.
Figure 4. The screenshot of the IBDA Academic and Professional network
The figure 4 illustrates the screenshot of the IBDA Academic and Professional Network. As can been seen from the figure, discussions are organized as forum, which includes subforum and topics. The consortium decided to establish separate forums for each CA partner, where partners are able to run their collaboration.
IT architecture design. The IT architecture of IBDA T&R Centers are based on the networked distributed hybrid computing architecture (see the figure 5).
CPUs: 10th Generation Intel Core ¡7 and Intel Xeon W2223 Processors
GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX High-Performance Card for Machine Learning&AI
GPU: Nvidia Quadra RTX 4000 High-Performance Card for Machine Learning & Al
A B
Figure 5. Distributed hybrid computing architecture (A - configuration of the workstations, B - network infrastructure for the workstations)
GPUs contain application specific components (Tensor Cores) [7,8], which are designed for running Data Engineering, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence workloads (A). Moreover, networked infrastructure (B) supports flexibility of provision remote services for the target groups, such as professors, researchers, staff, students and stakeholders [9].
Cloud Project Management Platform. The platform powered by custom designed software module, build upon WordPress software [10].
Figure 6. Screenshot of the Cloud Project Management Platform dashboard
The figure 6 represents dashboard of the platform. The dashboard contains all the necessary toolbox for managing project: managing work packages, tasks, and amendments, as well as discussion tool for supporting collaboration. The TTPU team delivered webinar sessions on using of the platform, which are available on the KB [5].
III. Discussion
During the lifetime of the project, all implemented services were actively utilized by the consortium. The KB supported the academic activities, the project website was actively used for dissemination purposes.
The dissemination of the results using advanced Ads Targeting tools of the Facebook platform enabled the project consortium to reach more than 1,5 millions of people from CA countries, as well as Belgium, Spain, Italy and Slovenia.
During the boosting activity, a lot of citizens of Afghanistan and similar countries were interested not only in project results, but also the available learning opportunities in CA partner universities were attractive to them.
The IT architecture of the IBDA T&R Center in TTPU, was built on the idea to deliver services to the remote users. Such, idea stemmed from the need to mitigate social distancing limitations during Covid19 pandemic.
In TTPU, there are some Professors with fewer opportunities, who are now able to benefit from such technological opportunity to perform their didactic and research contributions from the remote.
Cloud Project Management Platform supported all the partners, allowing for precisely accomplishing their own tasks, effectively collaborating with other teams, using allocated resources, meeting the deadlines. The partners with control and monitoring privileges were able to trace the progress, and when necessary, steer the actions to mitigate all possible issues. As a result, a new methodology and approach for project lifecycle management was test-driven and being formulated within the Management WP. And obviously, this experience is being shared using the opportunity of this paper.
During the project implementation, TTPU localized the project's digital services in the university datacenter premises, providing necessary computing and storage resources. Furthermore, TTPU took responsibility to perform recurring payments for the "elba-project.eu" domain name services. The project website, Knowledgebase, IBDA Acadmic and Professional network, and Cloud Project Management Platform were added into the list of local digital services of the university. All the services in that list are subject to systematic maintenance provided by IT area staff of TTPU.
This measure will ensure the existence of the project website and linked digital services even after the end of the project's eligibility period.
IV. Conclusion
The Digital transformation undergo in Uzbekistan in all sectors according to the "Digital Uzbekistan - 2030" initiative [11]. The data, being generated in govermental and non-governmental information systems, is expanding rapidly.
The Presidential Decree "On measures to create conditions for accelerated implementation of artificial intelligence technologies" provides a roadmap, which comprehends complex measures, divided into appropriate directions [12]. One of such direction is a Development of international cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence and its application technologies.
The performed activities and results of the projects are perfectly in line with the following three measures of the above-mentioned direction (according to the Annex 1 to the Decree):
#19 Development of scientific research activities in international cooperation aimed at the development of artificial intelligence.
#21 Increasing the activity of joint research projects of national and foreign higher education institutions and research organizations in the field of artificial intelligence.
#22 Sending young scientists conducting research activities in the field of artificial intelligence to short-term foreign scientific internships.
Intelligent BigData Analysis, the object domain of the project, strongly relies on the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the automation of processing and extracting added value from stochastic BigData. From such perspective the project is fully supporting and contributing to above mentioned measures.
The Intelligent BigData Analysis is a novel domain in didactic and research landscape in Uzbekistan. Therefore, the project outputs is stimulating development of intelligent solutions for processing BigData and extracting added value to support sustainability, resiliency, human centricity and green.
The project involvement experience cardinally changed mindset of both academic and administrative newcomers of the university. Academic newcomers have started to dedicate their time for developing new project initiatives, while administrative newcomers are putting their efforts on offloading administrative burden to professors, letting them to focus on their creative activity. Administrative staff has proposed several internal administrative reforms to create fruitful environment for the future project initiatives.
Bibliography
1. The ELBA Project's website - https://elba-proiect.eu
2. The ERAMCA Project's website - https://eramca.com
3. The ELBA Project Partners page - https://elba-project.eu/?page_id=300
4. The ELBA Work Packages page - https://elba-project.eu/?page id=472
5. The ELBA Project's Knowledgebase - https://elba-project.eu/?page id=57189
6. The IBDA Academic and Professional Network - https://network.elba-project.eu/
7. Nvidia Geforce RTX 20 Series GPUs - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/20-series/
8. Nvidia Quadro RTX Series GPUs - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/previous-quadro-desktop-gpus/
9. Videorecording of the ELBA IBDA T&R Center Opening Ceremony, September 20, 2022 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHd3BaG5gxc
10. The ELBA Project's Cloud Project Management Platform -https://cpmp.elba-project.eu
11. Presidential Decree on "Approval of the strategy Digital Uzbekistan - 2030 and measures for its effective implementation" - https://lex.uz/ru/docs/-5030957
12. The Presidential Decree "On measures to create conditions for accelerated implementation of Artificial Intelligence technologies" -https://lex.uz/docs/-5297046
ОБОСНОВАНИЕ ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ ИННОВАЦИОННОГО ПОДХОДА В ОБНОВЛЕНИИ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНЫХ ПРОГРАММ В ВУЗАХ КАЗАХСТАНА, УЗБЕКИСТАНА И ТУРКМЕНИСТАНА
Токбергенов И.Т., Сатыбалдиева Г.К., Китайбекова С.О., Байтеленова А.А.
Аннотация. В мировой образовательной практике компетентность рассматривается в качестве одного их центральных понятий при подготовке специалистов, при этом обучение в вузах Казахстана, Узбекистана и Туркменистана так же проводится на основе формирования целостной системы универсальных знаний, умений, навыков, а также ключевых компетенций, определяющие современное качество образования. Однако при подготовке специалистов, особенно в вузах агротехнического направления, важное значение имеет развитие практической подготовленности, или другими словами - повышение практико-ориентированных компетенций специалиста. В статье представлены некоторые достижения в области формирования новых и инновационных курсов в образовательных программах вузов Казахстана и Узбекистана, с целью усиления практико-ориентированных компетенций обучающегося и для формирования его конкурентоспособности на мировом рынке труда. Представлены результаты, которые достигнуты в рамках реализации проекта Европейского Союза
