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This article discusses the challenges and opportunities identified in the implementation of the Citylab project in Latin America during the period of 2015-2018. The project was funded by the Erasmus+ Key action 2 programme of the European Union. The project aims to innovate teaching for sustainability in higher education institutions through Problem Based Learning (PBL). Opposed to traditional teaching methods, the pedagogical approach of PBL is a learner-centred approach that takes a complex problem as point of departure instead of existing established knowledge. Since application of such learning methods is limited in Latin America, the Citylab project attempts to introduce PBL in the existing curricula of 12 Latin American universities through the implementation and development of interdisciplinary Citylab modules focusing on sustainable urban development. Citylab project will be presented. Third, we highlight some critical issues and success factors experienced during the project. The findings of this paper are based on (1) self-reported questionnaires from the partners at the end of 2017; (2) onsite visits by the authors and expert visits; (3) focus groups, interviews and conversations with project leaders of the participating institutions during the project. Depending on the institution, the project results were varying in terms of innovation and upscaling potential. Critical factors were related to the role of the project leader in the organization, the flexibility of the implementation and cultural differences. Internal regulations created both incentives and disincentives for participation. Competitive elements in the project and available resources for equipment can act as stimulators in some cases. The challenge lies moreover in detecting windows of opportunities for change in order to accomplish curriculum reform and by doing so, pursue continuation of the PBL approach after the project's horizon.

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the COVID-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the COVID-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article's five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

The increasing number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe places new demands on European education systems. In this context, the role that free digital learning (FDL) could play in fostering inclusion has attracted renewed interest. While the existing literature highlights some general design principles for developing FDL for migrants and refugees, there is little information on the use of FDL at specific education levels, or for specific learning purposes. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study that was carried out as part of the Moocs4Inclusion project of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) between July and December 2016. The study, which has a European focus, disaggregates the analysis of FDL initiatives by what were identified as its three most common purposes: (a) language learning, (b) civic integration and employment, and (c) higher education. For each of these topics, the study sheds light on the approaches used by a wide sample of initiatives, users' levels of awareness of what is available and take up, and migrants' and refugees' perceptions of the current offer. In order to collect the information needed to cover different approaches and perspectives, semi-structured interviews with 24 representatives of 10 FDL initiatives and four focus groups with 39 migrants and refugees were carried out. The results show that there are indeed overlaps between the purposes of FDL initiatives and their design principles. Specific recommendations on how to better design FDL initiatives for migrants and refugees, taking into account their specific purposes, have also been identified.