Page 129 - Reimagining Higher Education : Case Studies On Designing For Inclusion, Equity, And Access In The Buka Project

programme, which has the apt tagline “enriching lives, opening minds” (EU,

2023). More specifically, the BUKA project falls under the Erasmus+ programme’s

Key Action 2, cooperation among organisations and institutions, with a focus on
bringing positive and long-lasting e ects on participating organisations and

related policy systems, organisations, and individuals (EU, 2023). Within Key
Action 2, the BUKA project is associated with the goal of capacity building in higher

education within educational institutions and systems in designated non-EU
countries by, for example, promoting inclusive education, equality, and equity in

higher education or by improving the training of teachers in order to impact the

longer term quality of education systems (EU, 2023).
The institutional teams in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines

developed their own projects based on local, regional, and/or national needs but
with intersecting themes such as: direct capacity building for educators,

development of infrastructure to support such capacity building, and increasing

access to higher education for marginalised groups through innovative structural
and technological advancements. This important work was done against a

backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact that it had on sta in higher
education, something a number of project team members reflected on during the

first year of the pandemic (Teräs et al., 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic,

existing tensions between closed, techno-deterministic approaches to the
development of online learning and more open and inclusive approaches were

amplified, and a noteworthy aspect of the BUKA project was that those partners
without a history in ODL were choosing to take the open and inclusive route in

developing blended and online learning provision. By any measure, the BUKA
project overall, and through the constituent six partner projects, has answered the

call to enrich lives, open minds, bring positive and long-lasting impact, and

promote inclusive education, equality, and equity through building capacity at the
individual, team, institutional, and educational system level.

References
Bozkurt, A., Gjelsvik, T., Adam, T., Asino, T. I., Atenas, J., Bali, M., Blomgren, C.,

Bond, M., Bonk, C. J., Brown, M., Burgos, D., Conrad, D., Costello, E., Cronin,

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