On January 16-22, 2021, in the frames of Erasmus +‘‘Support for Innovative Methodology, Approaches and Tools for Teaching through the Medium of English in order to improve Educational Yield, Sustainability and Internationalization’’ (SMARTI) project a 5-day training was held at the Catholic University of Porto, Portugal (UCP) in a hybrid format. At the beginning of the meeting welcoming speeches were made by Eduardo Cardoso, professor from the host university, leader of WP1 and WP4 of the Project, and by Gerard Cullen, SMARTI Project Manager and representative of the Project grant-holder, Dresden University of Technology (TUD).

Representatives from partner universities and organizations from Europe, the Russian Federation and Armenia were participating in the training sessions which were conducted by EU trainers Gerard Cullen, Sven Riddell from Dresden University of Technology; Eduardo Cardoso, Tim Hogg from the Catholic University of Porto; Professors Maureen Royce, Ryan Wynn-Williams, Casey Beaumont from Liverpool John Moores University; Ieva Ziemele, Marina Platonova, and Tatiana Smirnova from Riga Technical University. Vanadzor State University was presented by Lusik Vardanyan, local project officer, Associate Professor of the Chair of Foreign Languages and Literature and Nune Khublaryan, Assistant Professor of the Chair of Mathematics and Informatics.

The training sessions were replete with theoretical materials and practical activities that were accompanied by lively group discussions. The training topics were primarily related to types and peculiarities of academic writing, ESP (English for specific purposes) and EMI (English as a means of instruction) methodologies, SCL (student-centred learning) strategies, module design, learning outcomes developed by Bloom’s Taxonomy, and criterion-based assessment.

In the frames of the Project, a series of in-house trainings are expected to be held in PC HEIs on the basis of the materials provided by the EU trainers.