The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history. It has affected 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries and all continents. To fight the spread of the virus, schools, colleges and universities have been shut down in the vast majority of EU countries. With few exceptions, courses that had started as face-to-face in classroom environments have been moved online. One of the main challenges faced during this hard transition from the face-to-face to online training, was among others the lack of teachers’ digital skills as well as pedagogical skills with emphasis on (a) the principles of distance education adapted to secondary education, (b) the principles of blended learning, (c) the inverted learning with emphasis on hybrid model and (d) the change of roles and identities of teachers, students and parents in the context of distance learning.

The main objective of CONNECT project is to reinforce the ability of EU secondary schools to provide high quality and inclusive online education. Thus, secondary schools, i.e. students and teachers are the main beneficiaries of the project. The main activities of CONNECT project include:

• A survey of the landscape regarding the delivery of online education in EU schools during the COVID-19 pandemic aiming to define the methodologies and digital tools used, the challenges and problems raised from a pedagogical and technological point of view and the mitigation steps taken,
• A pedagogical framework underpinning the online delivery of courses in secondary schools in addition to the in-class activities,
• Educational scenarios supporting the online delivery of courses in addition to the in-class activities, and especially the courses of Mathematics, Physics and Language,
• A MOOC aiming to equip teachers of secondary schools with digital pedagogies and ICT-related skills to foster inclusive online teaching and learning,
• A teachers guide aiming to support teachers to efficiently utilize CONNECT approach for the online delivery of courses,
• An exploitation plan presenting preconditions and recommendations for the adoption of CONNECT main outputs in secondary schools.

CONNECT project will implement a 28-month work plan with actions and outcomes for both teachers and students. The CONNECT approach will be tested for a period of 3 months at secondary schools by 24 teachers coming from 8 schools from Greece, Cyprus and Italy (involving 360 students) in order to evaluate its effectiveness and make the necessary adaptations on the outputs produced. Prior to pilots, teachers will go through the MOOC and a face to face training event.