Opening the FORGE platform – Open Call announcement

Deadline: Jun 17, 2016  
CALL EXPIRED

The FORGE project launches an Open Call as continuous open access to the FORGE tools, meaning that no strict procedures for proposal submission and evaluation will be applied. The FORGE consortium will provide support to the interested users throughout the development of their courses.

The call offers free access to the FORGE tools and processes and guaranteed training and support by the FORGE consortium covering guided training and technical assistance. Moreover, the participants will be acknowledged as associate partners and will receive wide recognition and high visibility through the project’s website.

The call will remain open until June 2016 and proposals may be submitted at any time.

Financial support will be offered to participants for the development of necessary software extensions, providing up to €30k in total. The extensions can be either eBook interactive widgets(1) or wrappers/ FIRE adapters(2) to enable interconnection with FIRE facilities. The software extensions will be used in order to fill in gaps in the development of eLearning tools for supporting external communities of users. It should be noted that financial support does not extend to any proposals focusing on course development alone.

The total amount of €30k will be split between the proposals that will be accepted, providing maximum€5k per project. It should be noted that more than one proposal is allowed to be submitted per participant. The project coordinator will be responsible for the selection of subcontractors, in accordance to FP7 subcontracting rules.

(1) Widget: A widget is a micro-application performing a dedicated task. Widgets expose FIRE facilities to learners and educators and function as standalone learning applications that will be embedded inside interactive courses.

(2) FIRE Adapter: A FIRE Adapter enables a widget to communicate with the FIRE facilities with the functionality that is required for usage in an eLearning context.

Contact for information on the call: opencall@ict-forge.eu

Practical information

Submission of proposals: Participants are able to submit their proposals at any time up until Friday, June 17, 2016.

NEW deadline for submission of proposals that are subject to receiving funding: Friday, April 8, 2016

Implementation of all proposals starts shortly after the submission of proposals.

Type of participants: Educational/research institutions, universities, individuals, small/medium/large enterprises, anyone interested in bringing the worlds of FIRE and eLearning together.

Language in which the proposal must be submitted: English

Address for proposal submission: opencall@ict-forge.eu

Types of proposals

Many different types of proposals may be submitted for the FORGE Open Call, an indicative, non-exhaustive list of which is presented hereafter:

• Deployment (as-is) of a FORGE course (either one of the prototype courses that have been developed by the FORGE consortium or an external course that will be developed within the Open Call process by an external user) in the context of a real-time course offered within the curriculum of the proposing institution(s);
• Design and development of a new lab course, following the FORGE methodology;
• Further development and extension of a FORGE course;
• Transformation of a traditional course to an experiment-driven course;
• Creation of interactive educational material (e.g. editing an existing course and creation of an eBook) based on the FORGE approach;
• Development of new widgets and/or FIRE Adapters (subject to receiving funding);
• Offering of a testbed for remote experimentation;
• Any combination of the above.

Terms and conditions

By submitting a proposal, the participants indicate that they agree with the terms and conditions listed below:

1. Participants from successful proposals within this call will not receive EC funding and will not become official partners in the FORGE project.
2. By submitting a proposal, participants confirm that, in case their proposal is successful, they have the necessary manpower and financial resources to execute the proposed work.
3. Each proposed course has to make use of the tools and/or processes developed within the FORGE project which are described in detail at the FORGE website (see: http://ict-forge.eu/).
4. Participants from successful proposals will also commit that they will evaluate the results of their work and provide feedback to the FORGE consortium during the proposal’s implementation period a before the end of June 2016.
5. All participants are encouraged to deploy their proposed course in the context of a real-time course offered within the curriculum of their institution(s) and execute it at least once within the duration of the project.
6. Proposals that lead to a real-time course offering will be ranked higher in the (implementation and support) priority list.
7. Successful participants will be acknowledged as associate partners and will be listed on project’s website under the “Associate Partners” section (http://ict-forge.eu/associate-partners/)
8. All successful proposers will be called to sign a lean Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for using the FORGE facilities, which includes legal terms including conditions for ownership and use of intellectual property, and limitation of liability.

Ranking Criteria

All proposals shall be eligible and may be accepted, provided that they foresee the use of FORGE tools and FIRE facilities within the implementation of the suggested courses. However, some additional criteria will be also taken into account for ranking the proposals into a priority list in terms of implementation and provided support. No scoring will be applied, since the process is not competitive and the open call is not funded. The ranking criteria are described in detail in the announcement document.