Photo Caption: Presenters Caroline Cruaud and Kine Korsmo of the USN EDUC team struggling to hide their enthusiasm at their session during the USN Sustainability Seminar 2024. (Photo: Guro Danielsen / USN)
The USN EDUC team found its natural place at the annual USN Sustainability Seminar.
"Incorporating EDUC components into diverse events and forums is an intentional strategy from the USN EDUC team. It's not merely about promotion, but also about equipping with tools to surmount obstacles and fulfill USN's lofty institutional goals,” states Heidi T. Knutsen, the Institutional Coordinator for EDUC at USN.
Introductory and interactive
The annual USN Sustainability Seminar, held in April 2024, brought together 250 USN staff members. The event aimed to foster a sense of community, ignite innovative thoughts, celebrate sustainability accomplishments, and facilitate workshops to stimulate grass-root initiatives among participants.
The seminar prominently featured the integration of sustainability issues across the organization, including its strategic initiatives. The USN EDUC team effortlessly fit into the programme, presenting an introductory and interactive workshop on the EDUC Teacher’s Journey and the method of Collaborative Online Innovative Learning (COIL) aimed to endorse Virtual Exchange opportunities within the alliance.
The workshop provided participants an opportunity to learn a new methodology and get acquainted with EDUC and the potential it holds for developing collaborative courses with our alliance partners. Moreover, participants were prompted to conceive potential COIL modules centred around sustainability.
Low entry barriers
The consensus among participants was that COIL is ideally suited to enable students to tackle real-world sustainability challenges in an interdisciplinary and international context. Teachers expressed satisfaction in learning about the EDUC Teacher’s Journey as a facilitator for such cooperation projects and showed keen interest in connecting with their counterparts at other EDUC institutions.
"I found it gratifying to gain a deeper insight in the EDUC alliance, appreciating the low entry barriers and easy access to available opportunities. I also found the encounter with COIL fascinating, as it allowed me to discover the value of this methodology as an effective conduit for integrating international experiences for the students within our classrooms,” says Professor Heidi Stavrum, Program Coordinator for Master of Sustainability Management at USN.