First face-to-face meeting between XAMK and URN partners

First face-to-face meeting between XAMK and URN partners

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The first face-to-face meeting between international relations staff of South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK) – partner of the INGENIUM network since February 2022 – and University of Rouen Normandy (URN), took place in the URN’s Mont-Saint-Aignan campus on June 9.

The members of the two universities discussed their international strategies and shared good practices on course digitalisation, student mobility and inter-institutional agreements.

The INGENIUM partner universities continue to build their cooperation within the network and aim to achieve their goal of becoming a European University alliance.    

MTU students in Finland

MTU Students come together to create and Innovate in Lahti, Finland

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A group of MTU students returned from Lahti, Finland this week after taking part in an innovative programme aimed at encouraging a culture of entrepreneurship among students from a range of disciplines.

Entitled ‘European Creative Futures’, now in its 13th year, this Erasmus Intensive Programme was hosted by LAB University of Applied Sciences, Lahti, Finland to bring together students from European countries with the aim of promoting business acumen and entrepreneurial know how among students intending to pursue careers in the creative industries.

This week long programme of intensive study and practical learning allowed 40 students to share experiences, points of view and learn together about entrepreneurship.

The fourteen MTU students came from a wide range of programmes of study including Public Relations, Fine Art, Multimedia, Music, Journalism, Business Information Systems and Business. They were joined by 26 students from similar backgrounds from Finland, Norway and the Netherlands for the programme.
>From the outset, the students worked in small multi-disciplinary groups generating business ideas and carried out market research to identify target markets and pitched their ideas to industry mentors. Students learned by doing through a series of interactive lectures, group discussions and workshops.

Some of the business ideas established in the limited time frame included:

  • E-Ware – an energy saving product that provides awareness and the opportunity for users to analyse what individual product usage cost is in their homes
  • Foobia – a table-top game where players match obscure phobias with professions in order to create a series of unfortunate (but hilarious) combinations
  • Noozle – an educational tool that promotes digital literacy amongst young students through gamified tasks that identify fake news, disinformation and the implicit biases held by all of us
  • Planeat –  a wayfinding mobile app used to help you navigate a grocery store in the most time efficient and hassle free-way
  • Wardrobe-It – a mobile app which will consist of two main features, a wardrobe organiser and an online platform to buy and sell pre-loved and vintage clothing
  • Rest with Ease – a website to relieve the pressure and stress on grieving family members arranging funerals as well as helping to reduce funeral costs

Ensuring it wasn’t all work, the Finnish hosts organised a full schedule of social and cultural activities for the students which included a “Trip to a Local Brewery ‘, ‘Gala – Dinner’ and a trip to go  ‘Ice -Swimming’ an experience enjoyed by all.My thanks to Margaret Mulderrig, Erasmus Officer for supporting this Erasmus Intensive Programme and Louise Byrne, Faculty Administrator for organising the trip and huge thanks to the core ECF Team: Dr Breda Kenny, Emmett Coffey and Frank O’Donovan who travelled with the students and taught on the programme and ensured that all participants including our own MTU students had a great learning experience and a memorable week.

INGENIUM strives to be part of the European Universities Initiative

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Currently, INGENIUM is preparing a proposal for the 2022 call for alliances under the European Universities Initiative. This is organised by the European Commission, which is part of the Erasmus+ action programme ‘Partnerships of Excellence’.

A successful application of the project BOOSTING INGENIUM FOR EXCELLENCE – BI4E

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The emerging INGENIUM Alliance of European Universities is proud to communicate that the evaluation of our project successfully met the required criteria in the competition for Horizon Europe, call HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-05-01 – Capacity building to strengthen networks of higher education institutions and cooperation with surrounding ecosystems.

The BI4E project reflects our ambition of enhancing the existing inter-university cooperation between the partner universities, as well as with other entities (both international and local), and to strengthen the Higher Education Institutions’ (HEIs) capacity to meet the diverse challenges faced by the Higher Education System and Institutions: the twin green and digital transition, the fight against climate change, the achievement of the Agenda 2030 SDGs, all of them profound societal challenges we must be ready to address, while they are under increased pressures to improve quality, efficiency and effectiveness, often with diminished resources.

As its name declares, the project intends to give a boost to the alliance, making it an effective instrument to promote excellence in the partner HEIs: Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi (TUIASI), University of Oviedo (UNIOVI), Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA), University ‘G. d’Annunzio’ – Chieti – Pescara (Ud’A), Medical University – Sofia (MUS), University of Rouen-Normandy (URN), Munster Technological University (MTU) and University of Skövde (HIS).

This project is particularly focused on the research and innovation missions where BI4E activities will directly touch six out of the seven ‘transformation modules’ proposed by the Policy Report ‘Towards a 2030 Vision on the Future of Universities in Europe’ through the implementation of strategic planning adapted to our needs, institutional transformation, cooperation in terms of research, fostering entrepreneurship and the promotion of international scientific careers. The project will help to build closer cooperation links between the partners that will facilitate the exchange of information, knowledge and experience. At the end of the project, the alliance will be much more prepared to become a fully operational European University Alliance, in which cooperation in education and research will be carried out seamlessly.

INGENIUM goes real world: the network’s first face-to-face meeting in November 2021

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On 18 – 19 November 2021, the first physical meeting of the INGENIUM university network took place in Karlsruhe. Representatives of two of our ten partner institutions, the University of Rouen, Normandy as well as Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA), engaged in discussions about international cooperation and blended training programmes. Many thanks to HKA for providing their infrastructure and hosting the meeting!

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).