During the whole project duration of March 2021 to August 2022, SKIES reached 9 out of 9 milestones, submitted 16 out of the 16 deliverables and carried out the implementation of all project activities.
The project started with an online kick-off meeting in March 2021 with all the partners. During the first weeks, the Project Board (PB) has been established, including one person from each consortium partner, as well as an Advisory Board (AB) with representatives from astronomy research and higher education, the space sector, innovation and entrepreneurship. Regular meetings are organised with both boards (every 3 months with the PB and 6 months with the AB) and among the Work Package leads (once per two weeks). Internal communication tools have been established to ensure efficient communication and sharing of progress.
Besides, during the first months, a Data Management Plan was developed alongside the ethics guidelines to ensure all (personal) data obtained in WP4 on evaluation and impact assessment will be handled and stored in a secure way. The research tools and strategy for WP4 have also been developed and the impact of the training and mentoring activities has been assessed in the second half of the project. Under WP5 on communication and exploitation, a Communication and Dissemination Plan and strategy were developed with input from all partners as well as guidelines on equity, diversity and inclusion. A visual identity has been created and one of the partners’ websites is used as the central external communication platform. The main project outputs were communicated to various target audiences across several dissemination channels.
The first half of the SKIES project was dedicated to WP2 Course Development and preparing for the implementation of SKIES training courses in each country involved in the project. A minimum of 2 local trainers were selected by each partner and these trainers subsequently performed a local ecosystem scan to assess existing entrepreneurship education, stakeholders and opportunities in their area to complement or collaborate with. The WP leads organised a hybrid Train-the-Trainer event for the local trainers, which took place in the Netherlands and online. In 4 days, the local trainers were taught in an interactive and hands-on way about open science, innovation and entrepreneurship, and how to engage astronomy students with these topics in a training. At the end of the event, they developed a draft roadmap for local implementation in each country and had a list of resources and exercises that could be used.
The second half of the project focused on the final preparations and implementation of the local SKIES training course in each consortium country. 5 workshops were held, reaching a total of 127 PhD students and young researchers. WP2 and WP3 leads supported the local trainers in the further development of the local training course in online meetings. Each country involved in the project had the flexibility to tailor the course content and setup to the local needs and opportunities. Most of the partners reached out to the astronomy PhD students in their country to understand their needs, in order to take these into account in the development of the local programme. Alongside the development of the local programmes, WP3 set up a mentoring programme by doing a needs assessment across the partners and preparing the necessary infrastructures, such as sign-up sheets and a registration process within the website’s CRM system. Participants of the training had the option of taking part in a mentoring programme until the end of the project to continue their professional development.
In the final phase of the SKIES project, the findings were consolidated into an impact assessment report which will be submitted to an open-access journal (see deliverable 4.4). The mOOC was developed based on the SKIES materials and published on the IAU website for anyone to use. In this way, the project will benefit not only the consortium partners, but also reach the wider academic community, HEIs and anyone else interested in incorporating open science, innovation and entrepreneurship into the higher education curriculum. These two project outputs were disseminated widely across the channels and networks of the consortium. The online and offline communication actions reached a total of more than 130.000 people (see deliverable 5.3).
