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ReThink Finance Project Background

The contextual opportunity of the current project proposal arises primarily from the stringency to substantiate and improve the digital skills and competencies (basic and advanced) of both teachers and students along with the need for training in digital teaching methods for teaching staff, following the directions given by the EU Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027, while fostering cooperation between all stakeholders. All four partner universities have common needs in terms of improving teaching-learning processes through digital tools through the development of digital skills and competencies of teaching staff, transitioning from traditional towards innovative digital teaching practices, integrating blended learning methodologies, along with the development of new digital practices and instructional design of the curricula to accommodate digital tools.

Moreover, at an organizational level, the partner universities shall update their teaching staff on the stringencies of digitalization, generating institutional progress and innovation. Also, developing international partnerships shall generate additional multiplying effects and future common demarches and projects. In addition, the partner universities and their communities would benefit from updating the current formal curriculum to better accommodate digital skills and a better correlation with the current labor market needs as well as training future generations of students in a progressive manner. Furthermore, in our demarches, through the intensive teacher training program, considering the first target group’s needs, our project seeks to build and improve digital skills and competencies of teaching staff, to ameliorate its individual adaptability to new stringencies of digitalization, consolidating lifelong learning capabilities and generating a better correlation between instructional demarches and current context’s needs. Consequently, the entirety of the teaching and learning processes shall benefit from the project results for years to come. Also, transferring knowledge from the field of neurofinance research to the applied and digitalized instructional activities, to develop relevant skills for students in accordance with the current labor market needs of the financial field.

ReThink Finance Project Objectives

The project aims at two directions: to develop digital skills for teachers to integrate into their curricula modern teaching methods that use digital technologies; to develop the competencies of bachelor economics students in innovative fields of finance (digital finance, behavioral finance, neurofinance, financial simulations) and to integrate current software that is used in practice in their activity, for a better future insertion on the labor market. The ReThink Finance project has 3 main objectives:

• O₁: Development of digital skills and modern teaching methods for economics teachers;
• O₂: Development of economics students’ digital skills and integration of efficient digital practices into the finance field by making use of new technologies and specialized professional finance software through virtual and blended learning activities;
• O₃: Adapting economics students’ knowledge to the latest and innovative finance paradigms involving digital finance, behavioral finance, and neurofinance to dynamically respond to the requirements of the working environment and to increase their level of integration into the workforce, while building on life-long learning skills and professional resilience.

ReThink Finance Project Expected Results

The expected results of the project are both at the individual level and at the organizational level:

• Improvement of teaching staff’s digital skills and modern teaching methods which will lead to an improved and redesigned curricula regarding the digital teaching methods;
• Improvement of students’ digital skills by integrating the use of financial software (Finance lab, FinBoard, and Traderion) and databases (Thomson Reuters Eikon) used in practice;
• Well-trained and better-informed students about new and innovative concepts in finance
• Open access to an e-Learning platform with current relevant information pertaining to topical finance trends;
• Free access to an e-book devised to be relevant support for theory & practice for the tackled finance topics;
• Ensuring the smooth transition from education to the labor market by engaging students in activities that simulate real professional processes;
• Good organizational ability and communication skills for students and teaching staff acquired as a consequence of being exposed to an international consortium.

• Creation of qualitative, modern, and interactive teaching, training, and assessment curricula, materials, and tools using relevant financial software and databases;
• Improvement of teaching staff expertise in the use of digital technologies in teaching;
• Developing a user-friendly e-Learning platform customized for each user category, aimed at facilitating access to quality Open Educational Resources on current paradigms in finance and topical economic realities, geared towards participants, students, and professionals especially those from low-opportunity backgrounds or marginalized communities;
• Elaborating an open-access e-book that will contain new information in the field of finance;
• Access and use of collaborative learning in virtual communities using ICT-based tools;
• The possibility to implement the curricula elaborated within the project as study disciplines in the curriculum of the specializations in the field of Finance in the future;
• Strengthened international cooperation and nurtured the knowledge alliance between project partners.