Wittenborg Joins Local Scientific Educators and Innovators for Eco-OSS Project Multiplier Event

Successful Project Results Shared with Community

On 26 September 2022, Wittenborg welcomed its students and staff along with members of the local education, innovation and scientific community, to the Eco-OSS Project Multiplier Event, a public event funded by the Erasmus+ project "Eco-systems of open science schooling: Making open science schooling a reality for secondary school students". The Eco-OSS Project commenced in October 2020 and is led and co-ordinated by Wittenborg as one of the project’s Knowledge Partners. This project aims to help secondary schools and science teachers change traditional science teaching into science learning through science missions in collaboration with permanent eco-systems of open science schooling resources. More information about the project is available on the official project website.

This Eco-OSS Project Multiplier Event was held at NewTechPark, Apeldoorn, an education and innovation hotspot on the Zwitsal site, where technical companies work together with education and government to bring children, young people and adults into contact with technology. The aim of this public event was to increase the awareness of the Eco-OSS Project and to share the project progression by promoting and disseminating the resulting Intellectual Outputs (IOs) of the project to a wider audience. There are four IOs, which will be disseminated as outcomes from the project, namely a Guidance Pack (IO1), a Student Video (IO2), a Policy Paper (IO3), and a Research Paper (IO4). The event audience ranged from local school teachers/managers/directors, local educators/policy makers in education, parents, education-innovation driven citizens, researchers in the education field, local science & research centres/labs/museums, universities, and local companies, social entrepreneurs and organisations.

At the beginning of the event, all participants were warmly welcomed by Jacob Brobbel, the manager of NewTechPark and co-host of the Eco-OSS Multiplier Event. The presentations then began with an introduction in English from Aydan Ismayilova on behalf of Wittenborg’s Research Centre. Ismayilova outlined how the project started and its development and inspiration from a previous Erasmus+ project completed by some of the partners. She also described what eco-systems of open science schooling are and how such eco-systems can be built. She described how  the schools themselves can be the drivers of change. This was illustrated through the science mission activities of the four Practice Partner Schools from Lithuania (Pasvalio Levens Primary School), Poland (Liceum Ogólnokształcące z Oddziałami Dwujęzycznymi im, Adama Mickiewicza), Turkey (ITU ETA Foundation College) and Romania (Gheorghe Titeica School), showcasing the knowledge, skills and experience gained by the students in conjunction with their local communities. Finally, the resulting IOs of the project were illustrated, ultimately showing how schools and communities can collaborate together to support science missions and develop eco-systems of open science schooling in education in the future.

Following this, there were two presentations offered in Dutch by representatives of Oost NL, the East Netherlands Development Agency, which works closely with its network of business partners to support international entrepreneurs in establishing businesses and fostering growth in the region.

Erwin Altena, Tech Project Manager and Digipro Project Leader from Oost NL, gave a helpful presentation about the application process for grants/subsidies and addressed some important points to be evaluated when applying, such as who can apply, the contribution and budget considerations, the purpose of the grant/subsidy, any policy documentation or geographical requirements and the assessment process. He emphasised the importance of ‘’choosing the right match’’, i.e. scoping a project/funding opportunity that is at the right scale for an applicant’s needs and weighing the contributions against the complexity and other requirements. He also presented a useful infographic on the difference between successful and unsuccessful applications and the common pitfalls in relation to project funding applications and proposals.

Henri Janssens, Senior EU Project Manager with Oost NL, gave the next presentation on some examples of projects that Oost NL have engaged in, such as EFRO, Interreg NWE, Erasmus+, Horizon Europe. Janssens gave some additional tips and tricks for navigating project funding opportunities, such as checking project availability, getting detailed information about project conditions and finding supporters to collaborate with, either external partners or an applicant party.

All of the presentations were well received by the participants, with lots of engaging questions raised by them and answered by the speakers. The Eco-OSS Project multiplier event successfully concluded with some open discussion and a networking session between the speakers and participants, where many connections for future partnerships and collaboration were fostered with the aim of supporting innovation in education and the creation of eco-systems of open science schooling.

WUP 8/10/2022
by Selina White
©WUAS Press