University works with other 11 institutions from all over the world
In an effort to building governance capacities for smart and sustainable cities, PUCRS has joined the project Strengthening Governance Capacity for Smart Sustainable Cities, CAP4CITY, sponsored by Erasmus+ Capacity Building. Along with 11 other partner institutions from 7 countries, the institution’s Business School, will design and implement a MOOC (massive open online course). The 80-hour program will be available on EdX in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Applicants will have free-of-charge access to it.
In the view of Professor Dr Edimara Mezzomo Luciano, who coordinates the project, CAP4CITY is mostly intended to develop capacities in the populations committed to creating smart cities. “A smart and sustainable city is one where citizens have better quality of life and whose public services are efficient and in close connection with the private sector”, she comments.
Because it is a project for capacity building, the main purpose is to contribute to public and social actors in cities. Governance, urbanism, energy, use of ICTs, mobility, urban planning and the role of citizens are among the topics to be addressed.
The project is headed Dr Edimara Fabiano. Dr Maira Petrini and Dr Guilherme Wiedenhoft (Business School) and Dr Fabiano Hessel (School of Technology) are also involved. The project will go on for three years and will be coordinated by Danube University Krems, in Austria. Gabriela Pereira, a PhD from the Graduate Program in Business Administrator, serves as the Executive Coordinator of the project.
International Co-leadership
PUCRS co-leads the designing of MOOC, the most important part of the project. It has been jointly developed with Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands. The institution is an international reference both in the designing of MOOCs and other free topics, which are addressed in the project.
In addition to working on the MOOC, PUCRS will be working on other areas as well, including content development. The University is also responsible for getting local governments to participate in the project, such as in data collection and content validation workshops.
A very important workshop is on the schedule and it will include relevant stakeholders (researchers, public agents as well as public and private organization professionals). The event will occur at the University on Aug 14.
After the event, every effort will be made to the development of the MOOC from Oct 2019 to Sept 2020 and will culminate in the production of MOOCs in English at Delft, Netherlands. Then, it will be captioned and localized for the Brazilian and Latin American audience. These last stages will be carried out at PUCRS. “Because of the project, PUCRS will be home to a 20,000 € + professional studio for recording the MOOCS ”, Edimara adds.
Partner institutions
The CAP4CITY consortia comprises 12 partner institutions from 8 countries (Austria, Estonia, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Argentina). They are:
The Dean of the School of Business, Dr Éder Henriqson, claims that Erasmus+ is a pioneering initiative of the European Union to advance international collaboration in teaching. “By taking part in this project, PUCRS will become more competitive for the next editions of the program. It will also earn PUCRS an enviable position among highly prestigious teaching and research institutions. It is also worth mentioning that CAP4CITY will make it possible for the institution to address socially relevant topics in teaching and research in order to develop local capacities to include smart and sustainable cities in the teaching, research and extension agenda”, he adds.
About Erasmus+
Erasmus+ is a European Union (EU) program for education, training, youth and sport in effect from 2014-2020. The program advances actions, cooperation strategies and consistent instruments at the global level. Among the variety of Erasmus+ programs, Capacity Building is the most complex one, both because of the objects and the number of actors. These projects comprise several partners who cooperate in a structured way in an effort to jointly deliver outcomes. These outcomes are to be widely used for the generation and maintenance of sustainable capacities in their area ox expertise.
