Collaboration and Innovation for Better, Personalized and IT-Supported Teaching Erasmus Project

Project Title

Collaboration and Innovation for Better, Personalized and IT-Supported Teaching

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Pedagogy and didactics; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The Colibri project was created as a response to some of the main challenges faced by higher educational institutions in Europe:
– A wider group of students pursuing educations in the ICT domain fosters a need for more personalised and active learning.
– An increasing mobility of students (geographically and between programmes) has led to increasingly diverse backgrounds among students following the same course/eduction, calling for more personalised approaches to learning.
– With fast technological developments and the increasing popularity of MOOCS, universities are struggling to find their position on how to benefit from increasing use of ICT in education and make use of Open Educational resources.
– There is a need for improving interdisciplinary skills and labour market readiness among the candidates.

The aim of Colibri was to contribute to the Modernisation of European Higher Education by developing new and innovative teaching approaches, increase labour market relevance of education, and promote the take-up of innovative practices in education. The project focused mainly on personalised learning, collaborative learning, and use of ICT. Colibri has also been strengthening the link between companies and education by promoting teaching methods where students work together across disciplines and cultures, on projects based on real-world cases. During the implementation of the project it became clear that the international aspects were very appreciated by all participants.

The project partners are seven universities, one research and documentation center, and two companies who ensured that the teaching methods support employability, e.g. by the use of real-world cases as part of the teaching.

Colibri was organised as a yearly cycle of:
(1) Teaching material development
(2) Conducting a course on “Future Internet Opportunities” for a diverse group of students from all universities using blended learning
(3) Systematic evaluation
(4) Dissemination within and beyond the consortium

The evaluations and experiences were then taken into account when designing the material for the next cycle. Colibri lasted for 3 years, thus covering 3 cycles. Each cycle involved 2-5 teachers per institution per year, and 3-7 students per university per year.

The course on “Future Internet Opportunities” essentially was a living lab in a blended learning setting. The course integrated course modules, which provided background knowledge on technical, social and business aspects of Future Internet Opportunities, with project work based on real-life cases from the participating companies. The course ran through the spring semester, and contained the following elements: Virtual kick-off meeting, virtual phase of studying modules, midway seminar to finish the modules and start the project work, virtual project work phase, and finally the project seminar where the projects were completed and an exam conducted. Students passing the course received 5 ECTS points.

There were a total of ten jointly developed IT-supported course modules, each of which could be followed at introductory, basic or advanced levels. These were mainly studied online, based on active participation and/or collaboration between students, and personalised in the sense that they accommodate for students with different prerequisites and learning styles and/or different specific learning objectives. The projects were implemented by having students working together across cultural and educational backgrounds on real-world problems defined by companies.

The teaching material and results developed through the project, including instructions on how to use the material, evaluations, and comments/suggestions, are made publicly available using the Creative Commons licensing scheme. This ensures that the results can be exploited both inside and outside of the consortium. Also, additional papers and reports have been written to different target groups including university teachers, the didactical community, and decision makers at e.g. institutional levels. A cornerstone of the dissemination plan was to make the participating teachers Colibri Ambassadors. These have helped to spread the results and benefits of the project to large groups of university teachers who can use the methods in their teaching.

Based on the evaluations received we can see that the project had a significant impact on the participants. But we also start seeing an impact on systemic level that exceeded our initial expectation: More than 1.800 university staff has been reached through the Colibri ambassadors, 9 conference papers were published targeting practitioners and the didactical society, and dissemination activities were made for also the ICT & entrepreneurial community and the general public.

To learn more about the project, please visit:
Website: www.erasmus-colibri.eu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ErasmusColibri/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCACqthyxuIlHaBMgwO1-uvw

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 449966 Eur

Project Coordinator

AALBORG UNIVERSITET & Country: DK

Project Partners

• ATeNe KOM GmbH
• RIGAS TEHNISKA UNIVERSITATE
• UNIWERSYTET TECHNOLOGICZNO PRZYRODNICZY IM JANA I JEDRZEJA SNIADECKICH W BYDGOSZCZY
• TALAIA NETWORKS SL
• UNIVERSITETET I STAVANGER
• ETHNIKO IDRYMA EREVNON
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA