European Information Science Education: encouraging mobility and learning outcomes harmonization

Unipi Team Leader: Salvatore Ruggieri, Department of Computer Science

Information Science (IS) education at HEIs in Europe is characterized by various traditions and approaches. The partners worked jointly on a) detecting the main reasons for such a situation, and b) finding ways which might allow the overcoming of existing barriers. EINFOSE partners managed to successfully address large portion of the IS community across Europe in order to strengthen cooperation between IS HEIs which was not as strong as in some other academic disciplines. Since 2005 there were no other EU based initiatives to bring to public eye the importance of IS as an academic discipline and research field that is getting more value in regards to many new profiles of information specialists. We wanted to increase international cooperation in IS education, explore ways to attract students from other disciplines and foster international student exchange. EINFOSE managed to bring together various stakeholders such as representatives from ASIST/EC, ENWI, EADH, IFLA, as well as from STEM, humanities and other fields. EINFOSE focused on the following goals: to strengthen partnership between HEIs involved in the project; to present EINFOSE’s IOs through Multiplier events (ME); to organize summer schools (ESSIS 2017, 2018); to design and deliver EINFOSE platform; to design, deliver and translate OERs in several languages; to bring in intellectual activities for the preparation of the international symposium FEIS 2018 which offered the arena for discussions about recommendations on how to improve the process of recognition and strengthen the purposeful mobility at the European level. Two ESSIS had 40 students (36 with scholarship). Most of the presentations were recorded and are included in appropriate OERs. The ESSIS resulted in a unique networking opportunity, which is understood to be crucial for success in future international initiatives. In EINFOSE project there were 8 partners – all of them reaching some 1000 students in (L)IS; 38 teachers and trainers were involved in all activities based upon distribution of main responsibilities for each partner HEI. Five planned MEs were organized with a goal to share and discuss draft versions of five Intellectual Outputs among ME participants and partners’ teams. Four MEs managed to attract some 100 active participants from European countries, and the fifth ME, FEIS 20018 in Pisa, had over 100 participants from 26 countries (Europe, US, Asia and Australia). Participants came from different organizations: educational institutions, governmental agencies, private business companies, ICT sector, libraries, information institutions, and professional associations.
The Project Management Team (PMT) had regular meetings supported by the TPM funding, as well as three other meetings. Several plans were prepared: Management Plan, Risk Management Plan, Dissemination Plan, Quality Assurance Plan, Summer Schools Learning Outcomes
(http://einfose.ffos.hr/documents/). The Risk Management Plan proved very useful as several situations with partners’ internal problems had to be solved through the extra efforts. The sustainability of the project’s outcomes is based on an agreement to continue summer schools with a support of internal funding resources and willingness of the project’s leading institution to continue to maintain EINFOSE Platform after the official project ending. Students at the partner HEIs benefited from the high quality lessons and the OERs. Any other interested party can benefit from the experience in designing the EINFOSE Platform that allows the use all of the OERs whenever needed, in further education, in working environment, in teaching and research, etc. OERs can help the individuals, but also contribute to the international perspective in teaching at the IS graduate online or classroom based programs.
Members of partners’ teams were active in presenting the EINFOSE goals and disseminating its results at domestic and international workshops and conferences such as ASIST 2016 and 2017, Digital Humanities Conference 2016, BOBCATSSS 2017 and 2019 (in preparation), ICI 2017, ECIL 2017, ALISE 2018, LIDA 2018, IFLA 2017 and 2018, i-Schools 2018 and 2019, COBISS, 2018. Information about EINFOSE was published in a number of professional journals and newsletters, on web sites of partners’ universities, local newspapers, radio and TV, as well as through a number of social networks such as ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The FEIS 2018 conference was recorded: (http://mediaeventi.unipi.it/category/feis-einfose-2018/160).
In the context of EU initiatives, EINFOSE contributed to the exchange of ideas and results that are fruit of discussions elaborated in the document Policy Recommendations on Entry Requirements and Harmonization of Learning Outcomes in IS. Some general remarks on the changing environment in HE in Europe, and the need to focus on flexible system of design and recognition of new profiles, relate to other fields not exclusively to IS field.

Coordinator: SVEUCILISTE JOSIPA JURJA STROSSMAYERA U OSIJEKU (Croatia)

Other participants:

STIFTUNG UNIVERSITAT HILDESHEIM (Germany)
UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI (Slovenia)
UNIVERSITA DI PISA (Italy)
UNIVERSITAET GRAZ (Austria)
HOEGSKOLAN I BORAS (Sweden)
HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI (Turkey)
UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA (Spain)

Start date: 01-10-2016

End date: 30-09-2018

EU Grant: 197.410 €

Project website: https://einfose.ffos.hr