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Description
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (LBUS) and University of South-Eastern Norway (USN) have already gained substantial experience from interinstitutional collaboration. Since 2014 they have collaborated in more than 5 EEA projects, resulting at least 4 scientifically research papers under the topics like smart cities, embedded systems and IoT. The main objective of this project is to build the capacities and to facilitate the deployment of digital technologies in agriculture. More precisely is based on transferring digital skills, knowledge and technologies from Computer Science domain toward Agriculture, Food Processes and Safety improving efficiency, increasing the wellbeing of the society and reducing the environmental footprint. By exploiting the potential of digital technologies (IoT systems, robotics, automation, software applications) will accelerate the Agriculture modernization and will improve the Food Processes like:- Improved efficiency / crops, modern irrigation practices, crop management products, mobile technology, fertilizer and mechanization management - Sustainability energy availability that implies new methods for food process monitoring and control. Target group is composed by students from Computer Science and Agriculture and Food Engineering. The latter have basic knowledge of specialty technologies and very little digital skills and almost no knowledge of IoT systems, Artificial Intelligence, robotics or drones. By participating in the interdisciplinary courses of the summer school and learning from the expertise of their colleagues from Computer Science, they will equip with digital competences and will be able to develop their creativity to be able to adapt to the modern agriculture requirements. The aim is to involve students with different backgrounds in developing prototypes that may end up in business opportunities. This would also bridge the gap between companies and universities, and promote entrepreneurship among the students groups.
Summary of project results
A challenge was to inform and especially to recruit ten students from each university to participate in the summerschool. For Romanian students probably the motivation to "get out of the box" and try new challenges or the barrier in mentality about the importance of participation in Erasmus mobilities or summerschools or even the fear of travel for two weeks in foreign countries. For Norwegian people was the lack of funds in the case of the first summerschool. Even if they were from Norway they needed to travel large distances between campuses.
However, to accomplish the task of recruiting students, in addition to the posters that were displayed in different places in both universities and the news that were posted on the university website and on the social platforms, a series of meetings were organized with the students (after their class hours) to draw their attention to this action offered by this project and to explain to them the activities that will take place during the summer school. Even if these actions were carried out because we evaluated from the beginning of the project that this could be a risk, it was still difficult to find every year the required numbers to participate in the summer school (especially from the USN partner). The main problem specified by the students was the insufficient funds obtained through the project to participate in the summerschool.
Another problem was the lack of funds offered for transportation and accommodation (especially for Norwegian summerschool).
The main activities that were organized and financed by the project were two summer schools, one that was organized in Norway in 2022 and one that was organized in Romania in 2023. For these activities, a series of actions was started early in each year:
- Before the first summerschool, in February 2022, a methodology called “Selection criteria for student participants at the summer school” was created, where all activities and timelines for action steps were planned and detailed.
In the period February - April a series of posters (both in Romanian and in the English language) were posted in different places in the university and a series of meetings were organized with students from faculties targeted by the project.
In May, the selection interview was planned, a period for appeals was reserved, and a date for showing the final results.
- In June, both managers from ULBS and USN fixed the calendar of the summerschool: classes, visits, etc. The plan was made together with companies and farms where the visits took place.
On the project website - https://digifof.omilab.ulbsibiu.ro/psm/content/mapiot/info?view=activities, there are information regarding:
1. The three Transnational Project Meetings -
2. The two summerschools -
3. The Intelectual outputs, lectures, and practical applications developed
4. The two Multiplier events .
From the scientific part of the project, three papers (with one more that was in the project proposal) were published into the project domain and written by the project members. Details are presented in section 8.2 as the Intellectual Output 1. Also, a digital platform containing six practical applications was developed by the project members. Details are provided in section 8.2 as the Intellectual Output 2. Both project teams developed and presented over both summerschools to the participants nine lecture materials also illustrated in section 8.2.
Two multiplier events were organized over the project period and presented in section 9. Furthermore, at least two additional dissemination activities were carried out during the project period. Both partners presented MAPIoT project results and gave keynote lectures during the Sibiu Innovation Days conference (https://events.ulbsibiu.ro/innovationdays/) in 2022 and 2023.
During both summerschools were organised teaching activities with the students involved in the summer school. The students from both universities and both domains (computer science and food and agriculture domain) were trained in the project domain, in order to collaborate together to develop their IoT applications for improvement and facility work in the agriculture sector.
The real achievements of the project were for the students, and participants of the summerschools because they saw some of the real problems in food and agriculture (after the company visits) and understood that, when they collaborate and discuss between them, they can better understand the problems and offer better solutions.
The impact of the project on a specialist level, both for students and teaching staff, was to innovate education topics and tools, more exactly the part related to modernizing agricultural practices based on digitalization by using modern approaches towards interdisciplinary education and, using and creating open ICT-tools and materials. This impact is relevant both at local, European, and international levels given the European Commission''s analysis about increasing the agriculture performance in every country and today’s mobility of the workforce and globalized working environments.
Summary of bilateral results
Both partners from the MAPIoT project benefitted from bilateral collaboration. The partner institution (USN), from the donor state, was chosen based on more than 6 years of fruitful interinstitutional collaboration with ULBS. Since 2014, they have collaborated on more than 5 EEA projects, resulting in at least 4 scientific research papers published at international conferences under topics like smart cities, embedded systems, and IoT. ULBS’s expertise in embedded systems and Erasmus+ KA2 projects was extended with USN research competence focused on sensors, smart cities, smart agriculture, business, and management. In this project, the donor state partner participated in all project actions. During the second summer school (2023), together with students and staff from the donor state, Romanian students and staff visited several companies and farms from Romania. Some Romanian former students have done their bachelor thesis work at partner companies recalled in our project (Solina Romania, Albacher, and DNAgrar, Mediaș Wastewater Treatment Plant in Romania, respectively). A Romanian graduate engineer from the food industry taught at the factory plant a lecture about process control in brewing technology, quality assurance, how to manage an industrial brewery and the business plan of a brewery. This fulfilled the criteria of “cooperation and partnerships between education and the world of work” of our project leading to improved knowledge transfer and understanding between donor state and ULBS. Both USN and ULBS plan to continue the collaboration. Actually, the coordinators from both parties, have proposed in 2022 an application for Innovation Norway fund, entitled “Introducing Design Thinking to SMBs in Romania”. Unfortunately, their application was not selected but, their collaboration will continue both from academic and scientific perspectives.