Abstract:

Recent research argues that real cooperation between academia and industry is key to build employability and for exchanging knowledge between stakeholders in the learning network. There is maybe less practical advice about how to make it happen in practice for smaller programmes, as seen at the ICERI conferences where this is a continuing theme. In this paper, we want to share some of our lessons from the last ten years of building a series of training arenas for our bachelor students in partnership with the regional and international industry and public sector.

Creating arenas for real cooperation is complicated by elements like written agreements between the university and industry at top level between dean and industry directors, that were not well known down in the organisations where the operational cooperation could take place. Also, professors whose teaching was mostly theoretical feared that industry managers were more skilled than themselves and avoided collaboration. This was mirrored in industry employees afraid of losing face in front of the big university. Further, it takes initiative and time to build relationships.

The Innovation and Project Leadership programme was created by a common demand from the regional Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, due to the lack of entrepreneurship in Norwegian education programmes and the need for creating new opportunities in traditional industry.

The academic profile of the study program is based on key organisational, innovation and project topics required to create a competent innovator and project leader. This goes beyond mere theoretical competences and require competences for mastering innovation and projects in practice through several external projects. In a triple helix understanding, the partners in this work is both companies and organisations, as well as trade associations, clusters and municipalities, and also through international research projects.

The programme has for several years cultivated a student-centred approach focussing on environments that provides opportunities for learning and enables students to engage complex, open ended problems in real life situations, i. e. projects with external clients. This approach of industry-based student training now aligns with newer government strategies in Norway for tighter university-industry cooperation for increased working life relevance. There is written much about the need for more university-industry cooperation and working life relevance, and of frameworks for designing different modes of learning environments, such as technology-based, blended, online or virtual, et cetera.

Breaking down barriers and creating a culture for real collaboration took several years and demanded a new way of teaching, combined with an outreach strategy implemented and embraced down in the organisations. We experienced the gamechanger for this to happen was the EXPO event, where all the graduating students displayed their thesis work openly for the community during a three-day long “open university” programme, where industry, organisations, friends, family and politicians was invited. This created confidence among students and professors for extended collaboration with industry/partners and gave the industry/partners an arena to bond with the university. From there new forms of cooperation for joint training arenas developed.

Keywords:

University-industry cooperation, training arenas, engineering students, solving complex problems.