Project title: ‘Transformation of European Food Systems towards Sustainability by Transnational, Innovative Teaching’ A food system is defined as a system that includes all the actors and activities related to the production, processing, distribution, marketing, packaging and consumption of food, as well as the outputs such as socio-economic and environmental aspects. With the projected human population growth, in the next 30 years food systems need to boost the production of nutritious and safe food while drastically reducing the environmental footprint, and Europe is at the forefront of this massive challenge. At the same time, there are still hardly any study programmes and modules targeting this important subject in Europe, and the sustainable food is still a niche market in many EU countries, hardly supported by well-educated and skilled university graduates. Moreover, while there is clearly a strong need for flexible, innovative, IT-based, multidisciplinary and labour-market oriented teaching approaches in the EU, many of the European Universities are still far behind. Therefore, the TEFSI project will support cooperation between 9 European universities to develop, implement and widely disseminate innovative teaching approaches, materials, methods and tools, thus increase university teachers’ competences and innovation, and in a consequence, improve the quality and effectiveness of university teaching. Usage of innovative teaching methods in TEFSI project will be illustrated for the subjects covering various aspects of sustainable food systems, thus will increase teachers’ awareness about the importance of including sustainability issues into their everyday lecturing, and therefore will be a step of food science, human nutrition, agriculture, and related life science education towards sustainability. The project will begin with an in-depth analysis of (a) the level of inclusion of food system sustainability issues in higher education by European University lecturers, (b) the lecturing tools being used & (c) perspectives for innovation in this area (O1), followed by the development of quality training materials on the innovative teaching tools & concepts and by sharing them during 5 international staff training events, implementing them in everyday teaching activities at participating universities, and finally disseminating during project Multiplier Events and other ambitious dissemination activities. Transnationality of the project will allow the biggest strengths of teaching approaches and strategies of participating Universities to be extracted, analysed & put together in the project activities and outputs.
The TEFSI project supported cooperation between 9 European universities to develop, implement and widely disseminate innovative teaching approaches, materials, methods and tools, and thus to increase university teachers’competences and innovation, and to improve the quality and effectiveness of university teaching. Usage of innovative teaching methods in TEFSI was illustrated for the subjects covering various aspects of sustainable food systems, in order to increase teachers awareness about the importance of including sustainability issues into their everyday lecturing, and therefore could be seen as a step of food science, human nutrition, agriculture, and related life science education towards sustainability. The project began with an in-depth analysis of the level of inclusion of food system sustainability issues in higher education by European University lecturers, the lecturing tools being used and perspectives for innovation in this area, followed by the development of quality training materials on the innovative teaching tools & concepts (presentations, handbook, short video lectures) and by sharing them during 5 international staff training events, implementing them in everyday teaching activities at participating universities, and finally disseminating during project Multiplier Events and other dissemination activities. Transnationality of the project allowed the biggest strengths of teaching approaches and strategies of all participating Universities to be extracted, analysed & put together in the project activities and outputs.