Community of Practice in Uralic (Finno-Ugric) Studies Erasmus Project

Project Title

Community of Practice in Uralic (Finno-Ugric) Studies

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

COPIUS (Community of Practice in Uralic Studies) was a strategic partnership consisting of nine institutes at European universities where Uralic (Finno-Ugric) studies are taught: Budapest, Hamburg, Helsinki, Munich, Szeged, Tartu, Turku, Uppsala, and Vienna. It was conceived as an innovative international learning community for students and teachers of Uralic studies. The central motivation behind the undertaking was that a small and research-oriented discipline requires of its students not only the mere acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also networking and identity-building, i.e. for students to become members of a community with a set of mores and practices. Therefore, the project at hand aimed to transform existing mostly bilateral partnerships into a virtual, international multilateral community of practice where e-learning is combined with teaching activities involving student and staff mobility.

The main objective of the strategic partnership COPIUS was to create a sustainable international framework for a community of practice in Uralic studies. This was primarily realized through resource pooling: sharing of resources used internally by the different partner institutions, sharing of ideas, tools, and methods, and subsequently processing and editing them into a format making them maximally usable for both members of our consortium and a wider public, and publishing them online. In addition, a main goal of our project was to integrate students into the research community from early on. This facilitated a redrawing of the boundaries of our discipline by making it visible to those outside of the traditional rigid academic structures within which our discipline has historically existed.

This resource pooling, by way of both virtual and real-life communication, enabled and continues to enable, thanks to the intellectual outputs created in the project and being maintained by our partners at the University of Vienna (at www.copius.eu), the sharing of both explicit and tacit knowledge. In COPIUS we aimed to structure knowledge in an openly accessible (both as regards licensing, and approachability with regard to language usage, terminology) and sustainable manner, using new technologies to create online educational resources. These resources are now accessible over the Internet beyond physical, geographical, institutional or social boundaries, and beyond the customary circle of students. They thus can and are also reaching adult learners and early-stage researchers. The broadened exposure of our discipline was especially advantageous for scholars from neighbouring disciplines (e.g. Turkology) and from countries in which Uralic studies have historically lacked a strong academic standing (e.g. Poland, Japan).

Our approach to teaching had three primary constituents in COPIUS: (1) in-person teaching, (2) online teaching, (3) the creation of online teaching materials. These three constituents were interdependent: the in-person and online teaching events served both as a launch platform for the community of practice that was the core motivation behind our project, and as a venue to develop our online teaching resources. The ongoing availability of our intellectual outputs guarantees their sustainability and will allow scholars from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds to profit from our activities, and to participate in teaching events asynchronously.

Our initial plan was to carry out three in-person winter schools and three hybrid courses in which an online course on a particular topic is followed by a week-long summer workshop. The winter schools were intensive programmes where minor Uralic languages were taught and workshops as well as guest lectures on general and Uralic linguistics and related disciplines were held; they also included colloquia where graduate and doctoral students could present results of their research to an international team of experts and peers. The hybrid courses were blended learning events for higher education students consisting of e-learning followed by summer workshops; this included both language courses and general courses on specific topics related to Uralic studies. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one winter school and two summer workshops had to be transformed into online-only teaching events, resulting in a considerably larger share of online teaching than in-person teaching. Nevertheless, we managed to carry out all planned teaching events and convey all intended subject matters. An overview of the specific topics covered in the individual teaching events can be found on our website www.copius.eu.

The most important results of the project are both tangible and intangible, i.e. a new infrastructure in the form of our website and the resources it hosts as well as new ways of cooperation in learning, teaching and research. COPIUS can therefore also function as an adoptable model for inter-university community creation, especially for low-volume disciplines.

Project Website

https://www.copius.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 197292 Eur

Project Coordinator

UPPSALA UNIVERSITET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAET HAMBURG
• SZEGEDI TUDOMANYEGYETEM
• HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
• TURUN YLIOPISTO
• TARTU ULIKOOL
• EOTVOS LORAND TUDOMANYEGYETEM
• LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN