Boosting relevant and applicable continuing education in the food sector Erasmus Project

Project Title

Boosting relevant and applicable continuing education in the food sector

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

To provide sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious food in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner, stakeholders in the European food sector need to be upgraded to become even more innovative. The Erasmus+ strategic partnership BoostEdu between six universities used innovative learning methods to create a platform for the joint development and implementation of flexible training in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) for food professionals.

The objective of BoostEdu was to establish a 3-staged online and blended learning platform for co-creating and implementing flexible continuing learning, specifically in the field of I&E in the European food sector. This knowledge path had three successive stages of complementary learning: a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), an e-learning course and an on-site course.

The knowledge path intended to first disentangle what the needs for the sector were in this area for the different countries involved. For this aim, a survey was circulated among selected food European companies. By holding national co-creation workshops with participants from higher education institutions and companies, the needs for capacity building were identified. Along the way, some changes to the knowledge path needed to be adopted. Participants to the various co-creation workshops manifested a preference to save time and dedicate resources to few but well structured learning opportunities, and the MOOC was therefore skipped. Instead, more energy was dedicated to the e-learning course and the production of short stand-alone appetizer videos for each of the 19 e-learning subthemes. The I&E e-learning course was the main result of BoostEdu. Moreover, the pandemic COVID-19 clearly disrupted the in-person process of co-creation, and the opportunities to follow up with national on-site courses, which all had to be cancelled. However, the I&E e-learning course will have impact for companies and employees in the European food sector having interest in I&E, since participants will benefit by means of learning entrepreneurial skills and principles, acquiring the necessary entrepreneurial competences to innovate, and feeling empowered of being more skilled employees or to start their own business. The course will continuously be available at the EdX platform.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 194676 Eur

Project Coordinator

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET & Country: DK

Project Partners

• ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA
• WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITAET FUER BODENKULTUR WIEN
• DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET