The EDUC Alliance is a mission to transform all participating institutions and establishing jointly developed European standards. We bring about new forms of collaboration for administrative staff, innovative short-term mobilities for students, research collaboration schemes and much more. Our teams – scattered over 8 campuses and united in many online meetings – always test the limits of what’s possible to establish, change and enhance. Our goal is ambitious: Creating a European University, one test-bed at a time.
Such a new quality and intensity of cooperation requires tools. We need to keep our teams resilient and all our team members engaged. With a deeply innovative work plan to bring about change, the tip of the iceberg shows great steps forward. But beneath lie numerous and long meetings, challenging discussions and negotiations, and a lot of pressure to make EDUC worth our while and a success for all our stakeholders. Our EDUC team members need a key skill: resilience.
This is one reason why we have decided to make regular Alliance trainings part of our work. We hold them alongside our Steering Committee meetings so that members from all aspects of EDUC can participate. We exchange about our way of working, about cultural differences and preferences in collaboration. We also take these trainings as tools to sharpen our position and develop our work programme in such a way that all partners and all team members have a drive to contribute to our missions.
With this, we aim to future-proof our alliance, foster connections between our teams and develop ideas that make EDUC last.
Breaking Barriers
During these training sessions, participants are encouraged to reflect on the current state of communication and information flow within the alliance. By identifying and addressing key challenges, members can engage in meaningful discussions that lead to innovative solutions. Guided by experts like Arild Tjomsland from USN Sustainability, these sessions offer critical insights into both formal and informal communication dynamics. The structured approach of these sessions ensures that barriers are not only recognized but systematically broken down, improving the effectiveness of collaboration across the alliance.
Flexible, Tailored Partnerships
These alliance-building activities are not just about solving day-to-day challenges; they play a vital role in future-proofing the alliance. As each institution operates in its own local context, having a shared framework for communication ensures alignment of goals, smooth information flow, and fosters a culture of trust and mutual understanding. Moreover, the training sessions serve as a test-bed for new collaboration approaches, which can be replicated across other alliances.
In addition to these structured trainings, the local EDUC teams—comprising project managers, IT specialists, pedagogical engineers, and more—play a pivotal role in supporting and enhancing alliance-building efforts. However, the complexity of many EDUC tasks often necessitates external expertise. This is where flexible collaboration models come into play, allowing members with varying levels of involvement to contribute meaningfully to the alliance’s success based on their specific capacities and expertise.
Driving Local Collaboration
At its core, alliance-building in EDUC is about creating a resilient ecosystem of collaboration that can evolve and sustain itself over time. This requires constant engagement, open communication, and a shared vision that unites partner institutions. While coordinating between multiple universities and teams can be challenging, the long-term rewards far outweigh these obstacles. The EDUC Alliance offers a unique platform to reshape the way European universities work together, and the success of these collaborative efforts will serve as a model for other partnerships aiming to enhance cooperation in higher education.