Innovative Doctoral Courses for Sustainability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Innovative Doctoral Courses for Sustainability

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 : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The Covid19 pandemic has clearly exposed significant deficiencies in virtually all countries when it comes to remote learning. When universities overnight turned from campus to digital supported, this very often meant that what goes online is emulating what happened on campus. And this is not what we understand with quality online learning and teaching. We therefore recognize the need for universities to have easy access to straightforward guidance for moving to quality online and blended learning. However, except for mitigating crisis scenarios, this is a great opportunity to reform the university education and achieve goals as described in the Digital Education Action Plan 2021 – 2027 and the Communication on achieving the European Education Area by 2025.

Utilization of the rapid changes in technology has internationally grown to be a part of every student’s life through platforms for large-scale education and examination. Such models are required and need to be developed now not to lose out in the global competition for talents. It will allow universities to focus resources and share competence and knowledge.

IDOCOS focuses on how to secure both quality enhancement, an increased number of PhDs and increased efficacy. IDOCOS combines an innovative approach in co-creation and sharing with relevant existing building blocks and has the following five objectives:

To support and facilitate university staff and doctoral students across universities in different countries

– in co-creation and sharing of digitalised courses and open learning materials prepared for quality online, flexible and blended teaching and learning

– for adopting a scalable and robust methodology for co-creation and sharing of digitalised courses

– access to shared courses and open learning materials for teaching and learning

– for access to relevant tools, (open when available) for co-creation and sharing of open courses and learning materials

– in building competencies for digital transformation

Five partners have joined in partnerships to deliver solutions for the European Education Area:

– KTH, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation Sweden

– UiB, University of Bergen a leading university in international cooperation and SDG commitment, Norway

– IAU, International Association of Universities, the global association for universities, France

– Nordic Insight, a company specialised in higher education, Norway and

– NORDUnet, the regional Research and Education Network for the five Nordic countries (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland), and a part of the similar network for Europe, GÉANT.

Through the project we bring together complementary competencies and actors that have links to many crucial networks in Europe and globally.

To achieve these objectives, IDOCOS in an agile, iterative process will create 4 Intellectual Outputs:

IO1 A robust handbook for co-creation and sharing of courses in an international context.

IO2 Construct, based on the handbook, a doctoral course in Digital Transformation in an Organisational Context.

IO3 Delivery of the doctoral course in IO3 through the digital platform (IO4).

IO4 A digital platform that support the methodology and availability of course and open learning materials.

This collaborative and sharing model, of online teaching and learning within networks of universities, should when adopted, adapted and further developed, lead to significant improvements, beyond the project. It promises cost-efficiently transfer teaching abilities, not the least to under-serviced regions and socio-economic under-privileged groups. The addition of a transnational cooperation allows for reciprocal exchange of research capacity and resources, while increasing the local competencies as well as providing solid high-quality research education and cross-border cooperation.

This future oriented model for a PhD Education, based on online resources, will provide an urgently needed epistemological uplifting and provide student and academic support for courses and supervision as well as support during the entire production process (resources like supervision, use of databases, library, and use of technology enhanced learning). This flexible format will also be a prototype and normative model for similar initiatives, since our ambition beyond the project is that the courses, methods, data management, links to libraries and sources of literature will be open and thus accessible to all who seek to use this. The PhD courses will also be supportive of the candidates within the old system and their link to disciplines and graduate study programs. We consequently see this as an opportunity to mediate high quality knowledge back to the disciplines, and thus inspire these to focus on how they can contribute with relevant and specialized, knowledge.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 264300 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN & Country: NO

Project Partners

• KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN
• NORDUnet A/S
• International Association of Universities (IAU)
• Nordic Insight AS