On February 19-20, 2018 at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, a kick-off meeting for the project 585845-EPP-1-2017-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP - "Development of an interdisciplinary master's program in computational linguistics in Central Asian universities" was held. The consortium of the project consists of 12 universities from six countries (EU: University of Santiago de Compostela University of La Coruna, Spain; University of Porto, Portugal; Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Greece; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland; Uzbekistan: UrSU, SSIFL, A.Navoyi USUULL, NUU; Kazakhstan: A.Baitursynov KSU, L.Gumilev ENU, Al-Farabi KazNU).
The partner universities from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan emphasized the relevance of the project for both countries. European partners were active, showed a keen interest in Central Asian universities and demonstrated a desire to cooperate. The Steering Committee of the project was defined, it includes one representative from each partner university. The partners of the project were welcomed by Almudena Hospido, Vice-rector for Internationalization and María José López Couso, Dean of the Faculty of Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela. The meeting allowed the partners to get acquainted personally, to present universities, to coordinate current and prospective joint activities for the project and to envisage partnership opportunities that are beyond the scope of the project.
During the meeting, the coordinator and partners presented and discussed the following issues of the project implementation: Project management, incl. financial management of the project; Quality assurance strategy in two aspects: the quality of the project and the quality of the development of the interdisciplinary master program; Strategy for Dissemination of the project results and Strategy for Sustainability of project results.
The Action plan, approved by all participants of the meeting (3 representatives from each university), defines the nearest project activities, activates the project implementation and stimulates regular interaction between partners. To store and exchange materials for the project, Dropbox folder is used; and since May 2018 - the website of the project will be applied.
From 14.10.2018 to 20.10.2018, National University of Uzbekistan (Tashkent) hosted coordination meeting of the project partners. The meeting went in accordance with the agenda containing three main sections. In the beginning, the international experience of realization of educational programmes in the field of computer linguistics was considered.
A number of presentations were given on that matter the following participants of the meeting:
In the course of the meeting there were also discussions about development of curriculum of interdisciplinary master programme that is being elaborated within the project framework, and approval of the project realization plan for the period from October 2018 to March 2019. Approval of the final variant of the educational plan on behalf of Kazakhstan was conducted by Ye. Kandalina, project coordinator from KSU.
From 18.05.2019 to 31.05.2019 Adam Miczkiewich University in Poznan (Poland) hosted training course on the international experience of realization of educational programmes in the field of computer linguistics.
The event focused on the following topics:
Apart from the individual partner reports, the coordination meeting also focused on the following matters:
In the course of the meeting, the requirements of quality provision, administrative and financial matters were discussed. A crucial topic of duscussion in the field of dissemination was a matter of unified approach to creation and publication of video clips.
