From 10th to 14th February 2020, students and lecturers from eight Euro-pean universities met in Hamburg to prepare their collaboration on inter-national and interdisciplinary study projects. Five students work on a case study to calculate the CO₂ balance of companies, provided by aconium GmbH.
These study projects are targeting real case studies by various companies, research institutions or public administrations. During the seminar, the students followed workshops on intercultural communication and team building activities. Furthermore, they had time to describe the problems of their case study and analyze its interdisciplinary character. During this process, they learned how to approach an interdisciplinary problem in a goal- and practice-oriented way. These are important soft skills, which will better prepare them for their professional life.
In EPIC, the teachers are also learners: thanks to teaching materials that the partner universities developed in the past years, teachers can imple-ment the problem-based method in an international context. A workshop for teachers focused on the cooperation between universities and com-panies, which is a vital part of problem-based learning. The teachers dis-cussed strategies and best-practice examples in a joint workshop with the companies represented in EPIC. As a company partner in EPIC, aconium GmbH helps to make teaching at European universities more practi-cal. With the “Carbon footprint of companies” case study, aconium GmbH enables five students to implement a joint project across national and subject borders.
Impressions from this year’s EPIC seminar
