Europe's Food and Drink Industry represents 4.57 million people employed throughout the EU, a turnover of €1.1 trillion and €230 billion in value added, which make it the largest manufacturing industry in the EU. There is a strong innovation dynamic in this sector to answer consumer’s expectations, which has been leading to the development of R&D departments and to the increase in agri-food start-ups European-wide. Although students demonstrate will for the development of innovative food products, as comproved by the national and European ECOTROPHELIA competitions, it seems that it is not enough for them to launch their products on the market. European students in food-related courses, i.e. the future professionals of the sector, show skills gaps when it comes to areas such as project management, entrepreneurial mind-set, communication, marketing, finances and business plan, because the HEIs’ curriculum is, in most cases, focused on food sciences and process. These skills gaps limit their potential to create their own company and even to better succeed in the professional world. In this context, FEEDtheMIND project intends to demonstrate that the European food education requires a systemic, interdisciplinary approach based on a food innovation education of excellence and a project-based approach. Thus, the objectives of this project are to adapt, test and implement a digital pedagogical platform focusing on the development of an innovative food product; facilitate the exchange of pedagogical methods between the different European HEIs partner organisations; contribute to the rethink of the curriculum design by enabling HEIs to provide online courses. Ultimately, this project aims to foster entrepreneurship among students attending food-related degrees. The FEEDtheMIND project is supported by a set of seven complementary partners, who bring to the project their skills, expertise, and fields of application necessary to meet the project's ambitions, namely: six HEIs of excellence, among the ten leader HEIs in their domain European-wide, and one federative structure, the EEIG ECOTROPHELIA EUROPE that brings together 8 national food federations i.e. 70% of the European agribusiness, and the CCI Vaucluse the founder of the ECOTROPHELIA food Innovation Laboratory. FEEDtheMIND targets three groups of participants: 1) higher education students that will directly benefit from the digital pedagogical platform developed to tackle their skills gap and to promote their creativity and entrepreneurship; 2) higher education professors/researchers/pedagogical staff that will benefit from the exchange of good practices and the innovative pedagogical methods; and 3) professionals from the food sector that will share their expectations regarding the industry’s future professionals. The major activity of this project will be the development of a digital pedagogical platform that will allow the students to acquire transversal skills and competences by following their individual path. During the last year of the project, the partner HEIs will encourage their students to be part of transnational teams, through a mobility activity and/or virtually, and develop innovative food products supported by the FEEDtheMIND multidisciplinary digital learning tool. This project will link education with research and innovation, by supporting students in the development of innovative food products both by monitoring in person (pedagogical staff) and by providing an online multi-disciplinary course that will address the topics (knowledge or skills) identified as underdeveloped in the participating countries. In the long term, this project will have an impact at three different levels: 1) at an individual level (the students), by proposing a pedagogical approach that delivers knowledge and transversal competences, promotes an entrepreneurial mind-set and creative thinking; 2) at an organisational level, by training professors/researchers and staff and consequently improving the quality of education, and by strengthening the cooperation and network between leader HEIs in five different countries; and 3) at a system level, by contributing to a more innovative food sector through the training of the future professionals of this sector and the connection between HEIs and the industry.
The objectives of this project were to:adapt, test and implement a digital pedagogical platform focusing on three areas of expertise related to the development of an innovative food product ; facilitate the exchange of pedagogical methods between the different European HEIs partner organisations and to set-up shared guidelines;contribute to rethink the curriculum design by enabling HEIs to provide online courses. Ultimately, this project aimed to foster entrepreneurship among students attending food-related degrees by providing them with a multidisciplinary learning tool and encouraging their professors to exchange good practices and pedagogical methods. Through non-formal learning, we wanted to propose to develop/adapt an innovative digital pedagogical set of tools that can help students on the development of their eco-innovative food projects. By carrying out this project transnationally, we wanted to be able to: identify the intrinsic needs to each national labour market and work on a virtual learning platform that could address them; train the teachers and staff through transnational peer-learning activities; and foster entrepreneurship and innovation both in the higher education and the agri-food sectors.
The agri-food sector is mainly composed of SMEs (99%) and an impressive dynamic is developing on a European scale with the creation of many start-ups to propose new products or services. Despite the strong dynamics of innovation (3000 products per year), there are few methods, many failures, and intellectual property works differently from other sectors. More and more, higher education institutions (HEIs) are accompanying students in ambitious projects that require dedicated tools and pedagogical methods, but there are gaps among agri-food students in areas such as project management, entrepreneurial approach, etc., because the HEI curriculum is generally only focused on the first phase of new product development. Project-based learning is a pedagogical approach that allows for the implementation of cross-cutting and interdisciplinary skills, and interest in developing tools to support these students to face the market with the right set of skills to support their creativity and entrepreneurship has emerged.