A strategic Erasmus+ partnership led by Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (BUW) with Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), University of Aveiro (UA), University of Osijek (UNIOS) and Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology (IZIIS) aims at developing a joint and shared platform for virtual/digital laboratories and experiments under the project title "PARFORCE: Partnership for Virtual Laboratories in Civil Engineering". The project takes place in the framework of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Digital Education program (2022-2023). The objectives of the virtual labs under this project are to support European civil engineering education and to provide teaching materials for students, as well as to provide a bridge between interactive learning and teaching activities for students, especially when the situation requires eLearning (e.g. due to a coronavirus pandemic).

The objectives of this strategic partnership are (Referral: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar: Strategic Partnerships (ERASMUS+) (uni-weimar.de)):

• Development of a concept for performing experiments in a VR environment including the definition of minimum standards necessary for implementing the concept in HE of civil engineers.
• Elaboration of an openly accessible platform for VR experiments.
• Preparation of VR experiments by each project partner and their integration into the open platform.
• Provision of approved e-learning scenarios (teaching methods and learning media) for digital and collaborative learning environment, taking benefit from the partner expertise and facilities for newly introduced jointly taught M.Sc. and PhD courses in CE.
• Implementation of collaborative online international learning opportunities for M.Sc. students at partners universities in form of jointly supervised courses.
• Increasing the quality and attractiveness of the study programs at the project partners through inclusive, sustainable, and integrated internationalization and digitalization of curricula which will ultimately improve the international competitiveness of the partners in the global competition for highly qualified and socially committed scientific talents from all over the world.

Within this project, intellectual outputs, transnational meetings, learning and teaching activities and dissemination activities are accomplished. In the grand scheme of the project, a pilot course for Master program has been organized to serve as an example for collaborative teaching and learning and the implementation of the virtual laboratories in an international environment.