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Description
Medical governing bodies require that modern medical graduates show many transferable skills; indeed, the Estonian Ministry of Education recently introduced a framework “approach to learning” to guide practitioners in the qualities that modern students must develop through their education. Within this cooperation program, the University of Tartu and University of Iceland will collaborate to provide unique opportunities to our medical undergraduates to travel to a foreign country and complete short research projects in basic science for curriculum credits. In completing this project, our students will learn valuable skills, including communication, leadership, team work and critically, the importance of basic science to medicine. We firmly believe that this cooperation program will provide exceptional opportunities to our undergraduates to enhance their knowledge of the scientific process.
Summary of project results
Within this cooperation program, the University of Tartu and University of Iceland collaborated to provide unique research opportunities to medical undergraduates and at the same time expand their medical curricula by providing ECTs for successful completion of the work. Students travelled to the partner universities to complete short research projects in basic science. Our goal was to assess whether students felt this improved their science skills, transferable skills and if this experience facilitated further involvement in science projects. Program has contributed greatly to encouraging young medical students to experience basic science. Our program also shows the great benefits to be gained through international collaborations to enhance research opportunities, particularly for students of smaller universities.
Medical undergraduates from the University of Tartu (UT) visited the University of Iceland (UI) and in turn, the medical undergraduates from UI visited UT. Student participants conducted month-long-projects in basic science . Also manuscript to facilitate others who wish to initiate international research exchange program and survey instruments, used for student feedback was created.
In the result of the project 11 student went to mobility. The Guidelines (Guidelines on creating an international research exchange program for medical undergraduates: Experience from the program “Development of curricula via international collaboration” between the University of Iceland and the University of Tartu”) on creating similar programs to enhance science education through international collaborations were formulated. Survey instruments were created, in English and in Estonian and in Icelandic. And main learning platform, within the Moodle learning platform of the University of Tartu, to which all students had access, was finalised.
From the project results different parties benefitted:
- Medical undergraduates at UT receive no formal training in science. Our cooperation project enabled UT students to gain expertise in the application and practice of science in a translational project. UI student must complete a research project as part of their undergraduate degree; however, the techniques that they have access to are limited. Through this cooperation, students received training in several different unique techniques. We believe that our program improved understanding of science among our student participants. This was the primary goal.
- Improved communication skills among student participants.
- A goal of both UT and UI is to improve internationalisation and cooperation. The project aligns with these goals. The project publications will increase awareness of the efforts of UT and UI in this area.
Summary of bilateral results
Partners (UT, UI) participated in the project equally. Partners were very pleasant to work with, all faculty worked hard to achieve our goals under incredibly challenging circumstances (global pandemic, differences in cost-of-living between partner countries, assistance with searching for reasonably priced accommodation).Professors in UT and UI have initiated a scientific collaboration to work further together on lysosome function, which continues work begun during the mobility windows of our student participants. Partners also plan to submit future applications to enhance and develop our exchange program, as several students who were not ultimately selected voiced their great interest in participating in future years. Indeed, students from other undergraduate programs (not just medicine) also voiced their interest in participation.