New Project “DIVERSASIA: Embracing diversity in ASIA through the adoption of Inclusive Open Practices”. 

New Project “DIVERSASIA: Embracing diversity in ASIA through the adoption of Inclusive Open Practices”. 

In year 2021, a new project was approved in the Erasmus + K3 program, which also involves researchers from the Pedagogical Research Institute of the University of Latvia. The project aims to develop inclusive education materials to be used in higher education institutions in India and Bangladesh. 

Disabled students have limited access to HE in India and Bangladesh. This project aims to tackle this issue by making accessible HE OERs and MOOCs, and personalization using AI, that will enable better provision of open distance learning for those that experience architectural barriers. The aim of this project is to address this issue and promote students' access to higher education and access to digital learning materials, as well as to personalize the learning process with artificial intelligence and tailor-made software developed by experienced UK inclusive education experts. 

The project results and impact will ensure the provision of: 

- Inclusive education guidelines consisting of flexible, broad educational and extracurricular options. 

- Student-centered, personalized/individualized instruction and course selection based on assessment of engagement using AI technologies. 

- All written materials including OERs and MOOCs which are provided to students will be validated and further enhanced based on guidelines and recommendations provided by a dedicated toolkit. 

- Participating universities from India and Bangladesh (and through their national networks for dissemination and exploitation) will become fully accessible in terms of provision of digital content - this will further enable the improvement of distance courses that will allow students with disabilities to access HE (especially those that experience architectural and physical barriers to access in HE). 

The University of Latvia will be involved in the project study by summarizing and analyzing the current situation in the field of inclusive education in India and Bangladesh. In addition, the University of Latvia, in cooperation with partners from other European universities, will compile good practices of inclusive education in European higher education institutions in order to use the results collected later in the implementation of the project. At the end of the project, the University of Latvia will evaluate the results of the project and the developed materials. 

The project involves 11 partners from different European and Asian countries - India, Bangladesh, England, Bulgaria, Belgium, Turkey, Lavia. 

On January 18 and 19 of this year, the first joint meeting of the new ERASMUS + project “DiversAsia: Embracing diversity in ASIA trought the adoption of Inclusive Practices” of the University of Latvia Pedagogical Research Institute was successfully held. 

Partners involved in the project: 

Project lead partner is Nottingham Trent University (England). The project involves partners from India (Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar​ and Vellore Institute Of Technology Trust-Vit University), ​Bangladesh (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology​ un Jahangirnagar University​), Latvija (Latvijas Universitāte), Turkey (Gazi University​), Serbijas (SoftQNR​), Bulgaria (Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski” and NARHU, National Association of Professionals Working with People with Disabilities)​ and Belguim (PHOENIXKM BVBA​). 

University of Latvia represented by: 

Prof. Linda Daniela (project coordinator), Arta Rūdolfa (asistant of project coordinator). 

Project Nr.: 618615-EPP-1-2020-UK-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP.  

Duration: 15.01.2021 – 14.01.2024 (3 years) 

Total almount fot the project is  1 00 00 00,00 Euro.