🎯 Main goal of the project

The main goal of the project is to create an environment conducive for HE teachers to effectively integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and the development of transversal skills into their teaching. The teachers will then be able to develop a new generation of graduates prepared to solve complex problems and develop healthy cities and regions.

💡 Key project outcomes

The HealthyU project will bring measurable and sustainable results that will also be directly used by Therapolis for further work and knowledge dissemination:

• Innovative program for teacher education: A comprehensive accredited program for HE teachers, focused on an interdisciplinary approach, AI tools and the ability to develop the concept of a healthy city/region.
• AI tool for skills development: An artificial intelligence-based tool (LLM) for simulating interactions and developing transversal skills (e.g. empathy, active listening) of various professionals working in healthcare or in the development of a healthy city.
• New mandatory course for medical students: Newly developed course “Fundamentals of Clinical Medicine” will integrate the topics related to the development of a healthy city and preventive care.
• An environment stimulating quality education at HE institutions: An openly available database of effective institutional policies and practices as well as training materials for developing, monitoring and rewarding the quality of teaching at universities. Based on the materials in this database, the development of necessary skills among teachers, leaders and administrative staff of higher education institutions, as well as HE institutions’ staff responsible for developing the quality of education.

🤝 Project partners

The project is the result of a strong international and interdisciplinary partnership. The Center of Excellence Therapolis contributes to the achievement of the project objectives by providing independent peer-review of the created materials and AI tools and subsequent dissemination of the project results.

📦 Work packages overview (WPs)

The project is divided into five work packages:

• WP1 – Project Management (leader: Faculty of Arts, CU): Ensures overall management, coordination, progress monitoring and financial control of the project.
• WP2 – Quality teaching and education of bachelor’s and master’s students to address the challenges of a healthy city/region (leader: Faculty of Arts, CU): The objectives of WP2 is to enhance the quality of teaching and learning within the HE from the educators’ and students’ perspectives to addressing the complex challenges associated with healthy city/region including environmental sustainability, promotion of well-being, and the capacity to function effectively in interdisciplinary and diverse settings. To attain these objectives, we work to
  • Design a Professional Development programme for HE teachers and pilot it with two cohorts of teachers from Comenius Unviersity Bratislava and Slovak University of Technology. The course helps them to use GenAI in their teaching and to promote student learning.
  • Teachers graduating from the programme will present the outcomes of new ways of student learning on a conference
  • We will evaluate the programme impact based on the feedback from the first cohort of participants and other data as interviews, observations and examples of their outcomes delivered during the programme.
  • We will design and offer at least ten and more workshops on using Gen AI, digital tools and novel approaches in HE teaching.
• WP3 – Transversal/soft skills for Healthy city/region – preparing HE teaching staff to train practitioners in the context of lifelong learning (leader: Zhiva) – WP3 focuses on helping university teachers prepare future health and social service professionals with the soft skills they need to work effectively with communities. These transversal skills like empathy, coaching, and active listening are foundational for preventing and managing chronic diseases and for creating healthier cities and regions. The goal is to combine innovative teaching with digital tools so that practitioners are not only technically trained but also ready to collaborate across disciplines and respond to real-world health challenges in their communities. To achieve this, under the WP3 we work to: 
  • develop a training methodology that HE teachers can use to teach soft skills,
  • create a model online course that can be adapted and used with different groups of practitioners,
  • design a GenAI-based tool where learners can role-play conversations with patients or clients and get feedback on their communication and interaction skills.
• WP4 – Educating medical students for Healthy city/region (leader: Faculty of Medicine, CU): A new mandatory course for medical students (“Fundamentals of Clinical Medicine”) will be designed and introduced, focusing on prevention, health protection, solving urban challenges (e.g. noise, heat) and adopting innovative teaching methods (e.g. simulations).
• WP5 – Environment Conducive for innovative teaching and learning (leader: CEU): The aim is to create a systematic support for innovative and high-quality teaching at HE institutions. Recommendations and training materials will be created for HE institutions’ managers, administrators and teachers, focused on defining, developing, monitoring and rewarding the quality teaching. The establishment of a supportive environment will be achieved by developing the necessary skills of all relevant actors, which will be based on the prepared materials.

Project news

The post Universities for Healthy City, HealthyU appeared first on Therapolis.

Martin is a professor and former Dean/Head at the School/Department of Public Policy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. Founder and Scientific Director of CELSI, Bratislava. Elected member and Chairperson of Section Committee “Economics, Business and Management Sciences” of Academia Europaea.

His current and previous research and teaching appointments include the University of Economics in Bratislava; Harvard University; United Nations University in Maastricht; Bonn University; Bruegel; and IZA. Martin has served in many advisory roles for European institutions, national governments, and international organizations.

The post Martin Kahanec appeared first on Therapolis.

She is a graduate of Oxford University (2012, MSc. in Education) and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2019). Since 2003, she organises workshops and development courses for higher education teachers.

Gabriela has served as leader of three Erasmus+ Strategic/Cooperation partnership projects in the area of academic development, internationalisation, peer learning and mental health. Her academic publications resulted in more than 470 citations (scholar.google). She is a Board of Trustees’ member of the University of Trnava.

The post Gabriela Pleschová appeared first on Therapolis.

He is coordinator of the European Commission’s network of experts on the economics of education, an adjunct professor at Sciences Po in Paris, and a columnist for daily SME. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of St Andrews and has served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies.

He co-founded the Institute of Public Policy at the Comenius University’s Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, where he was an associate professor until 2014.

The post Miroslav Beblavý appeared first on Therapolis.

He has more than 15 years of experience in economic and social research with a strong emphasis on empirical research. Miroslav currently serves as the director of the Institute of Economic Research of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Within Slovakia, he is actively participating in the creation of strategic documents related to public employment services, VET and educational policies. As a member of various advisory boards, he contributes to evaluations of several strategic documents in his field of expertise. His strength lies in processing micro-level data, designing indicators, extracting policy-relevant information and drawing practical recommendations.

The post Miroslav Štefánik appeared first on Therapolis.

He holds a Phd from the Faculty of Law of Comenius University in Bratislava and he studied public administration at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He teaches and participates in research at Comenius University in the field of commercial and financial law (APVV, Horizon 2020).

In 2017, he also took part in the International Visitor Leadership Program in the USA focused on quality and improvement of the justice system. He is the author and co-author of several mainly academic publications.

The post Ján Mazúr appeared first on Therapolis.

He is currently a project manager in the HORIZON – MSCA – 2021 – DN “ActaReBuild” project and leads 4 Ph.D. students dealing with issues of acoustic comfort in outdoor and indoor environments. Since 2017, he has been the secretary of the Slovak Acoustic Society.

Vojtech is the author of several dozen publications in the field of building acoustics, room acoustics, and sound perception.

The post Vojtech Chmelík appeared first on Therapolis.

Alexandra is a member of the international work group Global Burden of Disease and the Council of the Government of the Slovak Republic on Mental Health. She coordinates the Slovak training site of applied epidemiology of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. 

Alexandra completed research stays at the University of California in Berkeley, the George Washington University and the Georgetown University, in the USA. She has led national and international research projects, financed by grant schemes of the European Commission, World Health Organization, Slovak Research and Development Agency, VEGA and others.

The post Alexandra Bražinová appeared first on Therapolis.

Her activities contribute to the circulation of talent and to getting Slovakia on the European AI map. She was a member of the European Commission’s Joint Research Center Board of Governors and the High Level Expert Group on AI.

Prior to KInIT, Maria was a full professor at the Slovak University of Technology, dean and a lead of the PeWe research group (pewe.sk).

The post Mária Bieliková appeared first on Therapolis.

He is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the Comenius University in Bratislava and the Faculty of National Economy of the Economics University in Bratislava and has been active in university teaching since 2009. Matej is  author of several dozen scientific and professional publications in the field of financial law and public finance.

He is a member of the Commission for Law Making at the Constitutional Law Committee of the National Council of the Slovak Republic for the field of financial law. Matej regularly lectures and consults on legislative and practical issues with professional associations, courts and the financial administration.

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