Partnership
University of Groningen (RUG) The Netherlands
The University of Groningen has a rich academic tradition dating back to 1614. Nowadays, the University has 34.000 students, 5.500 members of staff, among which 480 professors. Worldwide the University of Groningen belongs to the top 100. Furthermore, the University of Groningen belongs to the top 25 of European universities. The University of Groningen has eleven faculties, nine graduate schools, 27 research centres and institutes, and more than 175-degree programmes. The university’s alumni and faculty include Johann Bernoulli, Aletta Jacobs, four Nobel Prize winners, nine Spinoza Prize winners, one Stevin Prize winner, royalty, multiple mayors, the first president of the European Central Bank, and a secretary general of NATO. The Center for STEM Learning and Teaching (CLT) aims to enhance the quality of education at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) by promoting innovative education and professionalization. The Center has a primary mission to provide leadership and support for the FSE staff community to promote student engagement and learning. Through the Center, we strive to foster an inclusive community of students and staff that utilizes contemporary learning theories, evidence-based education, teaching innovations, design-based methods, and interdisciplinarity. CLT is currently serves as a partner on 3 EU-H2020 projects and 6 E+ projects.
Inquiry Fuse – Cyprus
Inquiry Fuse is a multidisciplinary development, research, and outreach center, that aims to engage student population and the public in meaningful formal, non-formal and informal learning experiences, through innovative educational solutions and actions, capitalizing on research outcomes. At Inquiry Fuse, we specialize in Science and STEAM Education, Sport and Exercise Science, Sport Sociology, Physical Education, and Educational Technologies. We envision the cultivation of multiliteracies, in particular the cultivation of scientific, physical, digital and environmental literacy for the next generation and the development of 21st-century skills, for a democratic, inclusive, and healthy society. We aim for synergies that bring novelty and an authentic footprint in society, a signature for humanity through body and mind, driving societal and educational change. We are committed to the enhancement of our future citizens’ scientific way of thinking and living, their well-being, their holistic cognitive, physical, and social development, their impulse to discover, inquire and innovate. To achieve this, we aim to contribute to current efforts for the improvement of the quality and efficiency of education and training, enhancing creativity, innovation, and digitalization, promoting equity, social cohesion, and active citizenship, and continuously trying to make lifelong learning a reality. In this effort, we also aspire to upskill the future workforce, empower future citizens to make informed decisions and enable their creativity for problem solving with direct impact on their daily lives.
Stimmuli for social change - Greece
STIMMULI is a Greek-based SME, working on projects focused on social impact envisioning to inspire future education and ignite positive change in society. To achieve our mission, we design and deliver educational and empowerment projects that cultivate changemaking attitudes, inject entrepreneurial thinking and nudge behavioural shifts for more sustainable lifestyles. STIMMULI bears extensive experience in different fields of activity, including that of Social Innovation Education, Entrepreneurship Education, Active Citizenship Education, Inclusive Education and sustainable development as well as gender focused projects aiming at empowering women, whereby new approaches and effective practices and tools are being developed and designed. Our work aims at harnessing the power of collaboration between universities, nonprofits, social enterprises, businesses and governments, to address pressing societal challenges more effectively and on a wider scale. The projects and practices delivered by Stimmuli are underlined by creative and participatory methodologies and aim at fostering the adoption and incorporation of 21st century pedagogies in formal and non-formal educational settings.
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) - Spain
The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), founded in 1968, is a young university located near Barcelona. UAB is one of the major public universities in Spain, with over 40,000 students, almost 6,000 researchers and teaching staff, and more than 5,000 foreign students. Currently, the university offers more than 100 bachelor’s degrees, 140 master’s degrees, 8 Erasmus Mundus master’s degrees and 67 doctoral programs covering a wide range of fields in humanities and arts, social sciences, health sciences, technology and physical sciences.
Within UAB the Departament of Mathematics and Science Education promotes high quality teacher preparation and research in STEM education thanks to close international collaborations, an active local participation in the educational community and commitment to the idea of STEM education for all.
University of Nicosia (UNIC) – Cyprus
The University of Nicosia (UNIC) is the largest university in Cyprus, with over 11,000 students, from over 70 countries across the globe. UNIC is an independent, co-educational, equal opportunity institution of higher education, which offers a wide range of programmes to students from around the world. The University pursues excellence in education through research and high teaching standards, in a continually improving academic environment. Research at the University of Nicosia focuses on a variety of global and local issues, including health, complex networks, social organisation, education, ICT, engineering, and environmental sustainability. Our researchers examine contemporary challenges from a wide range of perspectives, including technological and scientific advances, and modern culture and thought. They apply their expertise, derived from addressing local, regional and national concerns, to key issues with global impact; and develop teams to bring disciplinary strengths together to approach such issues. Cutting edge research is carried out in the areas of Educational Technology, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The Department of Education at UNIC employs 13 full-time faculty and offers degrees in Primary and Preprimary Education, Masters’ degrees in Education (with 8 specializations), and PhD in Education. It has links with several pre-primary and primary schools with which it collaborates on several projects. The Department of Education currently has over 5500 students enrolled and around 28% of its student population are non-Cypriots, something which makes it a multicultural institution where diversity and pluralism are valued. UNIC participates in this proposal through the InSSTER (Innovative Science Society Technology and Education Research) Center of the Department of Education. InSSTER has extensive research experience on issues related to STEM education, sustainability, environmental socio-scientific issues, teacher training and development of teacher training materials with an emphasis on primary and pre-primary school teachers. InSSTER is participating in multiple EU funded projects (Erasmus+ KA2, FP6, FP7, Horizon2020, WIDERA, Teacher Academy). Our team has coordinated projects on environmental socioscientific issues (PreSEES/Comenius), and has participated in projects related to teacher professional development and socio-scientific issues (Engage/FP7; ENSITE, KA2). We have lead the teacher professional development WP in DIALLS project (Horizon2020) that focused on using dialogue and argumentation as tools for cultural literacy learning (including sustainability), and we are currently participating in STEMKey (KA2), ProSTEM (Teacher Academy), ICSEFactory (WIDERA) all of which place an emphasis on STEM teacher professional development or teacher education. Additionally, we participated in the GEM project which placed an emphasis on empowering girls to follow STEM carreers and placed an emphasis on the design and implementation of two STEM summer schools in partner countries.