REDUCING THE GAP ON ENHANCEMENT AND VALIDATION OF SERVICE-RELATED COMPETENCES IN WESTERN BALKAN UNIVERSITIES.

This paper is built upon the work packages of the Enhancing and Validating Service Related Competencies in Versatile Learning Environments in Western Balkan Universities (e-VIVA), a project undertaken under the auspices of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education. The methodology employed in this paper is based on the e-VIVA project's work packages, mainly those dealing with the research and needs analysis, service related competencies learning approach, validation, desk research, interviews, online questionnaires, focus groups of universities for each Western Balkan country involved in the project during the meeting of November 2021 in Kotor, Montenegro. The findings of the project help to assess the current situation of the Western Balkan universities about the enhancing and validating competencies, as well as to make some recommendations to the relevant ministries of education, business partners and to the universities themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]