December 2022

The International Cooperation Framework for Next Generation Engineering Students (NextGEng) is a three-year Cooperation Partnership project, co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ KA2 programme, which started at the beginning of October 2022 and will end in September 2025. The aim of NextGEng is to develop an international cooperation framework between consortium partners that promote international team-teaching with the support of new learning material and teaching methods that are aligned with the European Education Area 2025 and are in accordance with labor market needs.

The official kick-off meeting of the NextGEng project was organized at the University of Jaen (P2 – UJA) in Jaen, Spain from Monday to Tuesday, November 28-29, 2022. This meeting was the official start of the project and there were present all project managers from all HEIs and companies, work package (WP) leaders, Erasmus+ Agency representative (online) and all UJA teachers who take in this project. The meeting program consisted of WP presentations, three workshops, visits to UJA laboratories and social events, e.g. visit to the Iberian Museum and dinners. During the meeting, all six WP leaders presented their WP’s objectives, activities and tasks that are planned for the next 6 months.

The topics of the 1st workshop were “Teaching methods applied in the upgrading process” and “Virtual platforms used in the teaching process”, the 2nd workshop “Involvement of company partners in the development of the laboratory activities” and the 3rd workshop “Quantitative and qualitative indicators of the project outputs as part of the reporting process”. In these workshops, also Finnish and Romanian teachers participated online.

During these two days, all partners had the possibility to meet each other, discuss and share their thoughts and ideas. All arrangements were excellent big thanks to UJA partners.

The next planned face to face meeting for the project members will be during the Tailored Training Seminar of WP2 that is organized at Jamk University of Applied Sciences in Jyväskylä in the end of January 2023.