Soils are the basis for plant production and provide numerous ecosystem services like water storage, water purification and carbon sequestration. Teaching of soil and plant sciences is demanding and thus needs improvement. It is hard for students and enterprises to get in touch and get essential information thus it needs a tool for knowledge transfer. Employability has to be facilitated and improved. The main aim of our project is to bring together the expertise of different partners to provide an interface between teaching, research and employability for students in the field of soil and plant sciences. In more detail, the objectives are: - To develop a soil and plant ecology learning/teaching toolbox, practical training module and virtual career day; - To give transnational view of use and protection of soil and plant resources from different European perspectives; - To Improve practical skills of students and connecting their education to employers expectations thus improving the employability of the participants on national and international level; - To improve teaching abilities of the participating teachers from higher education institutions with the help of evaluations. The IntASEK project will bring together 5 partners from 4 counties across the Europe. During the creation of the outputs the strength of Estonian University of Life Sciences is the area of soil management, as well plant physiology. University of South Bohemia strengths are wetland ecology, soil microbiology, Aix-Marseille University strength is soil organic matter turn-over and CNRS strength is plant ecophysiology (especially drought). University of Ulm expertise is in the area of wetlands, plants and soils under limited oxygen supply and in general plant ecophysiology. IO1 includes the toolbox and provides outputs regarding mainly teaching and didactic topics. IO2 includes the platform of “Triangular Bridging” (Internationality, Practical Application, and Knowledge). The aim of this output is to improve the flow of information; give students guidelines for successfully performing a Master Thesis, which is provided on a simple IT-Platform with further guidelines/rules. IO3 with the Virtual Career Day is the applied part of the project. This ensures the improvement in the students’ employability. Students get job opportunities, it will include webinars etc. It is not only helping students but also works the other way round as companies can approach students (broader target groups). All together we have connected Teaching, Research and Application with these three IOs and every Output itself is supporting the other two outputs. The activities to support the outputs will be the project meetings and intensive summer schools. Project meetings are meant to discuss the substantive issues and to visit enterprises. During the summer schools the learning and teaching tools will be tested. Expected impact: We want to bring together expertise and entrepreneurs from different geographical and climatic locations in Europe to increase and disseminate the education of soil and plant sciences as well as the students’ employability. This will include teaching of different land-use and land-history patterns as well as societal structures. The establishment of such broad international cooperation will promote general academic competences, practical skills and has substantial value for subsequent teaching activities on all sides. Moreover, research activities will also profit from contacts between universities and companies. Development of new methods and technologies increases the need of specialization; thus supervisors cannot be aware in all fields by themselves. In that reason good cooperation between universities, especially internationally is important.
Soils are the basis for plant production and provide numerous ecosystem services like water storage, water purification and carbon sequestration. Interactions of soil and plant ecology with economy must consider wide bio-geographic differences and global challenges. At the same time, resource management decisions must be fitted to regional specifics and local needs. It is therefore important to transport the knowledge on these issues trans-nationally and -regionally to various fields of higher education and to establish links to potential users in agriculture, food processing, industries based on natural products but also to nature protection and environmental management. The teaching of soil and plant sciences is demanding and thus needs improving. It is hard for students and enterprises to get in touch and get essential information thus it needs a tool for knowledge transfer. Employability has to be facilitated and improved. The main aim of the project was to bring together the expertise of different partners to provide an interface between teaching, research and employability for students in the field of soil and plant sciences. Our aim was to improve students education, to open up employment opportunities for the graduates of the partner universities and to increase graduates’ employability. The goals of the project were reached by establishing the learning/teaching toolbox titled „Carbon in Terrestrial Ecosystems“ and organizing the Virtual Career Day. The IntASEK project brought together 5 partners from 4 counties across Europe. During the creation of the outputs, the strength of Estonian University of Life Sciences was in the area of soil management, as well as plant physiology. The University of South Bohemia strengths were wetland ecology and soil microbiology. Aix-Marseille University strength was soil organic matter turnover and CNRS strength plant ecophysiology (especially drought). University of Ulm expertise was in the area of wetlands, plants and soils under limited oxygen supply and in general plant ecophysiology. First intellectual output includes the toolbox and provides outputs regarding mainly teaching and didactic topics and is available https://intasek.thescholr.com/ Toolbox consists of database of existing materials, lecture materials, short manuals of practical exercises, tests and videos. The materials were tested during intensive summer schools and during regular teaching of Erasmus exchange students (not as a official part of the project). More than 500 students from partner and other countries were involved during the project period. Second intellectual output was to create a Virtual Career Day as the applied part of the project. This ensured the improvement in the students’ employability. Students got job and internship possibilities which were introduced via webinars and web-page https://www.uni-ulm.de/nawi/nawi-intasek/virtual-career-day/ It was created database of the companies willing to employ internationally. Virtual Career Day itself was hold as webinar with possibility to join from different parts of the World. On three career days more than 140 participants from different countries participated with improving number on each time. Projects aims and outcomes were introduced during several conferences, seminars and webinars reaching to the wide audience. 80% from the participants of multiplier event would use the toolbox in their work or studies in the future. Virtual seminars and teaching is the new reality now. Short feedback survey inside of project partners revealed that people (both teachers and students) who participated in the virtual career day, were more open and ready to teach and work via virtual platforms and didn't afraid these digital challenges.