Project title: “Boosting relevant and applicable continuing education in the food sector – BoostEdu” The European food sector faces a number of societal challenges. These on one hand cast doubts on long term international competitiveness, while on the other hand provide an opportunity for developing and strengthening the sector by transforming it into an integrated food system that provides sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious food in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner. Furthermore, a growing need for innovative solutions and start-ups has shifted innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) management from a mere business school agenda to career options and demanded competencies across academic disciplines. A key to transition is continuing learning throughout the food system. A critical starting point is the food industry and meeting its needs for continuing education. Higher education institutions should provide continuing education to the food labour market and transfer knowledge needed to support and achieve the goals of this important sector. Furthermore, by addressing real life problems and co-creation of knowledge responding to a precise need from the practice, not only the food industry achieves knowledge transfer, but a closer, more creative and profitable cooperation with universities is achieved. Therefore, the objective of the proposed strategic partnership between six universities, BoostEdu, is to establish a 3-staged online and blended learning platform for co-creating and implementing flexible continuing learning for -and with- food professionals across Europe, with a programme teaching Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) in the Food Sector as the first, concrete output. The three stages are a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), an e-learning course and an on-site course on the subject, respectively. The three stages are interdependent, representing increasing levels of progression, and engaging with I&E in the food sector at European, national and regional/local levels, respectively. This gives promise for significant EU added value, rapid transfer of research to practice from six leading universities in Europe and a boost to the industry in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. The partnership project is designed as a co-creation process, where food industry representatives will be engaged in the development of the curricula for the three stages of course activitites, so as to enable a close fit to the needs of practice. Practically, the partnership project will begin with an in-depth survey analysis of the European industrial understanding of I&E in the food system and industrial expectations towards continuing education within this subject area. This provides a foundation for designing and conducting two rounds of co-creation workshops in each of five countries, where the draft curricula will be presented and qualified in a learner centred approach. The survey and the co-creation workshops will be vital input that will enable BoostEdu to develop curriculum for the 3-staged programme containing the MOOC, e-learning and an on-site courses on the subject. Having designed all course modules, they will be announced partly through the co-creation workshops, through the BoostEdu webpage, through social media, through EPALE, through Coursera/edX and through business news from each of the six universities. Finally, a best practices booklet on how to build a pan-European continuing education programme based on co-creation between companies and six European universities will be produced and disseminated broadly.
To provide sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious food in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner, stakeholders in the European food sector need to be upgraded to become even more innovative. The Erasmus+ strategic partnership BoostEdu between six universities used innovative learning methods to create a platform for the joint development and implementation of flexible training in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) for food professionals. The objective of BoostEdu was to establish a 3-staged online and blended learning platform for co-creating and implementing flexible continuing learning, specifically in the field of I&E in the European food sector. This knowledge path had three successive stages of complementary learning: a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), an e-learning course and an on-site course. The knowledge path intended to first disentangle what the needs for the sector were in this area for the different countries involved. For this aim, a survey was circulated among selected food European companies. By holding national co-creation workshops with participants from higher education institutions and companies, the needs for capacity building were identified. Along the way, some changes to the knowledge path needed to be adopted. Participants to the various co-creation workshops manifested a preference to save time and dedicate resources to few but well structured learning opportunities, and the MOOC was therefore skipped. Instead, more energy was dedicated to the e-learning course and the production of short stand-alone appetizer videos for each of the 19 e-learning subthemes. The I&E e-learning course was the main result of BoostEdu. Moreover, the pandemic COVID-19 clearly disrupted the in-person process of co-creation, and the opportunities to follow up with national on-site courses, which all had to be cancelled. However, the I&E e-learning course will have impact for companies and employees in the European food sector having interest in I&E, since participants will benefit by means of learning entrepreneurial skills and principles, acquiring the necessary entrepreneurial competences to innovate, and feeling empowered of being more skilled employees or to start their own business. The course will continuously be available at the EdX platform.