Description
The project supports the development of the field of environmental sciences in the Nordic-Baltic region through Estonian-Norwegian collaboration. It is in accordance with the priority fields of the EMU - environmental, biotechnological and veterinary sciences. Environmental sciences could use more sharing of the best practices, practical know-how and experiences. During the previous cooperation between partner organisations, the need for common interdisciplinary collaboration and learning platform has been revealed. The platform would help partners to learn from each other’s experiences, to see working methods, find common solutions and share visions. The expected outcome of the project is improvement of the quality of clinical teaching and research in partner institutions by sharing contemporary teaching and research methods, ideas and experience. To reach the outcome, the project aims to enhance contacts between partner organisations, bringing researchers, young academic staff, clinical teaching staff and final year students to share their experiences, ideas and visions on a common collaboration platform. The project includes site visits and research seminars.
Summary of project results
We wished to participate in the project because we wanted to develop cooperation between our universities and research institutions and this sense, the project fulfilled its goals. Students were very pleased with their study and traineeship conditions. In academic staff mobility, new partnerships were made and some publications are about to come out of these cooperations. Some of the projects will be continued, there are some funding proposals made in other projects. Lectures were held which were very popular among students. The field trip for study advisors gave us great ideas on how to manage our own students. It was really beneficiary for our university that almost all the study advisors have been in study visits (we had one last year and one this year).Student exchange from Estonia to Norway worked rather well (19 students participated; last year the number was 8). Thanks to the programme, Norway as a study and research destination has been popularised among both students and staff and the cooperation will continue after the programme is over. Knowledge that was gained from Norway has been very inspiring and given us ideas for developing our own work. We would like very much the program to continue - it's most important for students as the other grants are not big enough to support their mobility in Norway. The most important part was student mobility. Thanks to a bigger scholarships (than in Erasmus for example) the interest of the students was higher than for the other programmes. We hope that thanks to the fact that some students participated in the programme for studies and traineeships, more students will do the same in the future. Thats why it would be really great if the programme would continue. We already have very good coopareation with Norwegian schools and it would be a pity to lose those contacts if the project will not continue. We especially appreciate the fact that traineeships were supported. In staff mobility, expectations were also met. There was cooperation in both teaching and science. We would like to stress the opportunity for carrying out a field trip for study advisors which was extremely successful.
Summary of bilateral results
Our Norwegian partners are very cooperative and helpful. Twe'd especially like to point out the coordinators in universities - the help we got reagding the student mobilities was big and it wuld be really hard to rganise everything ourselves. Meeting people in person is very important because communication through the Internet is not enough for a fruitful cooperation. Visiting a partner institution gives a chance to think about one's own work and possible changes that can be made. It is most seen in the science projects which also have some new projects going on (there was mentioned that without EEA Norway program these projects were not started). For our university the study visits for study advisors were really important - the study advisors in Estonia and in Norway have met and now it's much easier for them to communicate regarding the learning agreements, transferring the credit points etc. It's much easier for students to find the subjects after the study advisors have met. Also - our study advisors know much better what to suggest to our students.