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Unite! Seed Fund 2024 awards funding to three collaborative teaching projects involving Aalto

The application call for the Unite! Seed Fund for Teaching and Learning was open from June 15 to August 31, 2024. Its purpose was to support the development of joint or collaborative teaching formats within the focus areas of the Unite! university alliance, with a particular emphasis on exchange modules at the Master's level.

These modules enable students to study at one or more Unite! universities for a set period, promoting sustainable student mobility. Unlike longer exchanges, the shorter modules are more accessible to a broader range of students and are expected to attract greater participation. Through this call, Unite! will fund six proposals, with Aalto University participating in three and coordinating one of them.

Approved projects with Aalto's involvement

Quest for Urban Obdurate Resilience in Uncertain Milieus (QUORUM)

Increasing frequency of natural disasters, especially in relation to water and climate change, emphasises the need to consolidate interdisciplinary collaboration towards transformative sustainable solutions. This project explores a case-study module to address water-related complex urban challenges, which focuses on urban rivers as ecosystem service providers. It develops student’s skillsets for interdisciplinary, multicultural learning experiences, enabling them to better address water-related challenges amidst climate change within uncertain milieus. 

Experts from five Unite! partner universities - Aalto University, Universidade de Lisboa, Politecnico di Torino, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya ja Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan - will engage in the co-design of a student module for the Unite! universities. Aalto coordinates the project. 

Aalto contacts 

Christine Mady, Department of Architecture, coordinator of the project 
Paulo Pinho, Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation   
Andrea Botero, Department of Design

Collaborative Learning Environments for Research-based Teaching on Industry 4.0 (CLERT-I4.0)

The Unite! universities have expertise in Industry 4.0 technologies in compartmented silos and convey teaching across different Master's Programmes. The aim of CLERT-I4.0 is to leverage the potential of such diverse approaches and to open our Research Labs to enable Collaborative Research-based Learning through the creation of exchange modules, that allow students to study at another Unite! university. 

To achieve this, CLERT-I4.0 will deploy international learning formats, co-created by the partners, with strong laboratory roots, and assisted by on-line tools, which will be bolstered through short research stays of 2 months in a host institution, plus other at the home institution. When physical mobility might not fit, virtual mobility will be possible.

The entire group of students will have a common course with hybrid-on-distance material, taught in collaboration by the teachers involved, each one with his/her expertise. Also, each student will receive a research-based assignment, which will perform partly at the original institution, and partly at the host institution. 

Universities involved in the project are Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, TU Darmstadt, Instituto Superior Técnico at Universidade de Lisbon and Aalto University. See more about CLERT-14.0 here.

Aalto contact 

Ville Eloranta, Department of Management Studies

Digital solutions for sustainable water management

Digital technologies and the need of sustainable use of water have been causing a revolution in the water industry. There is an urgent need to train and prepare a new generation of professionals in the water sector. Our aim is to create a novel training programme on "Digital solutions for sustainable water management". The expected outcome is a 18 ECTS minor on the topic. 

The participating universities are Aalto University, Politecnico di Torino (coordinator), Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya and Instituto Superior Técnico at Universidade de Lisbon. 

Aalto contact 

Teemu Kokkonen, Department of Built Environment 

See also

People with luggage wait by a campus road near a Unite! university banner and autumn trees.

Unite! University Alliance

Aalto University is a member of Unite! alliance together with eight other European universities.

Collaboration
Jar full of coins representing Unite! Seed Fund.

Call for proposals: Unite! Seed Fund to foster collaborative teaching

This call is for setting up joint/collaborative teaching formats in Unite! focus areas. Apply by end of August 2024.

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