INGENIUM Networking Symposium 2021: Collaborative Digital Teaching Practice across Europe

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As part of the INGENIUM project, the first international event took place on 25 November 2021, with HKA hosting the ‘INGENIUM Networking Symposium: Collaborative Digital Teaching Practice across Europe’.

This online event enjoyed a large number of participants, highlighting the interest in internationalisation strategies and European Universities. Participants from eight European countries took the opportunity to learn and exchange information on topics related to international collaboration in teaching. They also had the opportunity to network with each other for international, collaborative and digital teaching concepts. The INGENIUM project team accompanied the networking and will continue to be available to support interested teachers in the future.

University of Rouen Normandy receives financial support from “RIN Actions Sup’” regional funding program for its engagement in the INGENIUM alliance

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In September 2021, the University of Rouen Normandy (URN) applied for regional funding in order to pursue its engagement in the INGENIUM interuniversity transnational alliance and strengthen its cooperation with the other nine European partner universities participating. A dedicated project team was appointed and since then has been working in coordination with the INGENIUM project team of Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, which has been in place since early 2021.

The URN’s INGENIUM instructional designer provides didactic, methodological and technical support to academic staff that is working on developing digital teaching modules and cross-national teaching offers, whereas the INGENIUM project manager assures project planning, monitoring and reporting. Moreover, promotional videos of the INGENIUM alliance will be created to disseminate information on all partner universities.

Together with its INGENIUM partners, URN will participate actively in the alliance’s steering committee meetings, where joint reflection and decision-making take place to ensure progress towards the realisation of common objectives.  

Funded by the Regional Council of Normandy for 2021-2022 with EUR 180,000, the University of Rouen Normandy will also receive national funds for 2022-2023 for further implementation of the activities of the INGENIUM alliance.

MTU’s 2022 Student Innovation Challenge Identified Innovative Solutions for Enterprise Partners

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Nine organisations from the public, private and social sectors throughout the Munster region are taking part in the 2022 challenge and all are seeking innovative solutions to real-life problems, which they are encountering in their businesses. The challenges posed this year are both complex and varied, with potential solutions requiring a strong multi-disciplinary approach. This provides students with an excellent opportunity to engage and network with colleagues from a variety of courses and disciplines across the university.  

The Innovation Challenges for 2022 were submitted by a wide range of organisations including Adam Audio, Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland, Boston Scientific, Clearstream, Crann Centre, EirData, PepsiCo and WAZP. The challenge topics covered areas such as the following:

  • Machine learning in creation and production
  • Workshop design to increase empathy for those effected by autism
  • Streamlining of manufacturing processes
  • Employee recruitment & retention in a competitive environment
  • Personal care in complex support environments
  • Scheduling for complex inventory management settings
  • Cybersecurity in a challenging environment
  • Reclaiming scrap and avoiding creating landfill

This year’s challenge saw undergraduate and postgraduate students participating from a wide variety of disciplines, including Architecture, Business, Computer Science/IT, Communications and Media, Engineering, Science, Beverage Industry Management, Popular Music, Social Care Work, and Human Resource Management.

Michael Loftus, Vice President for External Affairs at MTU, said:

“This year, we are delighted to welcome on board our US colleagues from Endicott College, who bring an international flavour to the challenge. They join students and staff from a broad suite of MTU courses across the university’s Cork and Kerry campuses. The challenges the students are facing this year are diverse and complex and we are very much looking forward to learning about their innovative solutions during the final presentations on 8 March. For the future, we look forward to our students also competing with students from across INGENIUM universities in similar events.” 

Carole O’Leary, Project Manager at MTU’s Innovation & Enterprise Office said: 

“MTU’s Innovation Challenge is a wonderful opportunity for our students to gain valuable experience working alongside high-powered companies to tackle real work problems using research and innovation. Ensuring our students are workplace ready is a key aspect of MTU’s ambitions, and having students working in multi-disciplinary teams to solve such a wide variety of challenges is great preparation for them to enter a dynamic workforce.” 

For further information on innovation and enterprise at MTU, see www.mtu.ie

Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences successful in ‘European Universities – National Initiative’ programme

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As one of four universities of applied sciences, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences has been accepted into the accompanying national programme of the EU initiative with its application ‘INGENIUM’

In January, a further 21 universities and four universities of applied sciences (HAW) were accepted into the national accompanying programme for the EU initiative ‘European Universities’. With this programme, the German government supports German universities in establishing Europe-wide university networks. To this end, they will receive national funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until 2023 in addition to the funds already provided by the EU. The programme is implemented through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

With its application ‘INGENIUM’, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences had been awarded the contract to participate in this programme. Under its leadership, ten universities from ten European countries now want to systematically strengthen their cooperation in the field of digital teaching over the next three years. Together, they will further develop their academic offer and consistently use the potential of digitisation to further improve the student-centeredness of teaching and to design flexible and accessible courses. Bottom-up and top-down strategies are combined: cross-border teaching cooperations and opportunities for individual exchange of experience are established, and (virtual) student mobility in the network is encouraged. At the same time, the activities are embedded in a cooperation framework, steered by decision-makers at the universities and accompanied by cross-university working groups. The central measure of the project, the collaborative development of cross-national teaching offers with digital components, is carried out with media-didactic and technical support by an instructional designer in the ‘INGENIUM Education Lab’. Furthermore, assistance is provided with regard to bureaucratic and legal framework conditions.

The project is funded by the BMBF over a three-year period with just under 450,000 euros. Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences’ partners in the INGENIUM Alliance are the Munster Technological University (Ireland), Högskolan i Skövde (Sweden), Medical University Sofia (Bulgaria), Universidad de Oviedo (Spain), Università degli Studi ‘G. d’Annunzio’ (Italy), Universitatea Tehnică ‘Gheorghe Asachi’ din Iaşi (Romania), South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Finland), University of Crete (Greece), and Université de Rouen Normandie (France).