Euro-Asian Collaboration For Enhancing Stem Education/EASTEM

About the project

Project description:

EASTEM aims to bridge the gap between industry and universities, facilitating employability of graduates through student centered competence development.

Based on key issues identified by our needs analysis, EASTEM addresses three key issues in student centered competence development:

a.) Staff development for lecturers
Uppsala University will lead staff development in cascade format in student centered competence development. In the first phase, participating staff are asked to develop and implement a test bed, a student project module, where students solve problems from local industry/communities in international teams across partner institutions. Bringing together lecturers as well as students it will lead to competence development for both groups. In the second phase, the module is run a second time. In addition, the lecturers will develop and conduct their own staff development sessions for other lecturers both within and outside of their institutions. As a primary target group it will give lecturers capacity and confidence to utilize student centered competence development approaches in their teaching. By bringing in industry/community based problems into a classroom setting, the participating students will develop ther competences and the university will be able to strenghten their collaboration with local industry and the surrounding community.

b.) Establishing STEM Education centers
Coordinated by VU, EASTEM will support the development and launch of centers of excellence for STEM Education. Participants will undergo staff development in center establishment and management. With the support of VU and the consortium, each institutional team will establish a center for STEM Education. In addition, VU will provide staff development in cascade format for lecturers involved in organising center activities, on student engagement in the centers and activities for lecturers at K-12 level. This will provide a network of 10 centers for STEM Education connected to european research groups, managed by teams with the capacity to run them, activities with a competence development focus, providing a sustainable focal point for WP2 activities. It will provide institutions with a platform for increasing visibility to developments within STEM Education and a further way to build their relationship with stakeholders, including local industry/community.

c.) Facilitating industry engagement and competence indegration into educational programs
IMT Atlantique will guide discussions in how to integrate competences into educational programs. Recognising the importance of competece development for students, this brings it to a strategic level. In providing support and understanding for how a process for competence integration into STEM educational programs can be developed, EASTEM provide partner institutions with the capacity to develop their own processes for continuous integration of competence development, industry involvement, and how to update or modify existing univerity strategies towards creating competence integrated education educational programs.