The purpose of this project is to bring together and strengthen the cooperation between companies and HEIs through the development of courses in Water Resources Management, while taking into consideration potential climate change impacts, with adaptive learning and teaching methods. HEIs are not highly engaged to the larger society that can lead to graduates less desirable by enterprises and companies. This can be alleviated by establishing truly collaborative relationship between HEIs and enterprises. This is one of the purposes of establishing the Water Network. The enterprise involvement in the course should be active and proactive. WaSec will also strengthen the collaboration among the countries of the region by providing courses that could be adopted and implemented by all the courtiers of the region. Students from different countries of the region will have the chance to interact with each other through the virtual courses. The courses with utilize new learning methods and pedagogical approaches that would intrigue the interest of younger generations. Finally, the ability to practice distance-learning will assist students, particularly from rural areas of the region.
The overarching aims of WaSec are: a) develop a new culture of working relationships among HEIs and enterprises to allow HEIs better integration within the larger society. b) true collaborative efforts with enterprises to provide student support from practical placement, entrepreneurship and employability that should allow graduates to develop capacities that guaranty greater success when joining the labor market, c) implement new and innovative learning and pedagogical approaches to offer high quality education, d) graduates with a cultural, environmental and social identity that utilize water resources sustainability assuring its future while also incorporating climate change impacts. The specific objectives are: a) a Water Network among institutions involved in water management to promote HEIs and enterprise collaboration; b) new or updated courses on water management with the true integration of enterprises in English and Arabic; c) graduates specialized in water resource management specialized for the region that understand climate change implications; d) courses with clear learning outcomes and materials, accredited in all partner countries, jointly taught and delivered, tailored to utilize new technologies; e) to run and assess the pilot courses in the partner countries, f) to develop a virtual learning platform with learning materials in digital format to facilitate learning and assessment, g) to disseminate the results in order to be adopted by universities from other countries of the region, h) to exploit the results by organizing knowledge transfer to other practitioners. Finally, the target groups are: Water Management, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Engineers, Foresters, Natural Ecosystem Management, Urban Planning students.