ODDEA – Overcoming the Digital Divide in Europe and Southeast Asia Universities (2022-2026)
The Erasmus+ HORIZON-MSCA Staff Exchange program funds staff exchanges between EU and non-EU higher education institutions. The program promotes collaboration and skill development among higher education staff, with a focus on STEM mobility (STEM). The program funds staff travel to partner institutions for research, training, and professional development. This includes attending conferences and workshops, working on joint research projects, teaching, and mentoring. The HORIZON-MSCA Staff Exchange program allows higher education staff to learn new skills, expand their horizons, and form lasting partnerships with international colleagues.
In 2022, Universitas Islam Indonesia (UII) as a member of a consortium led by University of Economics in Bratislava (Slovakia) received a grant from the Erasmus+ HORIZON-MSCA StaffExchange program for a proposal entitled Overcoming the Digital Divide in Europe and Southeast Asia Universities (ODDEA). The other 7 members of the consortium are AGH University of Science and Technology (Poland), Cracow University of Economics (Poland), University DonjaGorica (Montenegro), Institute of Modern Technology Montenegro (Montenegro), and SzentIstván University (Hungary) from the European Union and 2 other members from Southeast Asia: Universiti Teknologi MARA (Malaysia) and International College of NIDA (Thailand). The grant is worth EUR 1.352.400 over a 48-month period beginning in December 2022 and ending in November 2026.
The main focus of ODDEA is divided into several work packages, namely the state-of-the-art analysis of the underlying factors of the digital divide within the EU and within the Southeast Asia (WP1), the data analysis of the current state of the digital economy (WP2), the quantitative analysis of the causes of observed digital differences among thE economy and among Southeast Asian economies (WP3), and the research on the digital gap in individual partner country using more detailed/disaggregate data (WP4) along with Dissemination and Communication (WP5), Management (WP6), and Ethics requirements (WP7).
Beginning in January 2023, UII will host several professors from partner universities while sending their own lecturers and professors to those partner universities in a series of secondments. Each secondment will last one to three months and will involve the seconded staff in a variety of teaching, research, training, and other academic activities at the host institutions. These secondments’ main deliverables would be data collection, research papers, and secondment reports, as well as other dissemination and communication deliverables.