European Commission’s major investment will boost education innovation in TU

Tallinn University will receive €2.4 million as an investment for scientific research on education innovation and ICT from the ERA Chair fund of the European Commission. A direct result of this investment is the establishment of an international research group in Tallinn University, which, in addition to scientific research, will help encourage education innovation on school, state and regional level and bring the experience of other countries to Estonia.

Mart Laanpere, the research coordinator of the project and a senior research fellow at the Tallinn University Institute of Informatics commented that while up to now education innovation has meant solving practical and political problems such as reorganizing the school network, this investment would impel research-based education innovation in Estonia.

“The work of the new research team will directly support creating a centre of excellence in education innovation in Tallinn University. It will simultaneously change the approach to learning as well as help execute the digital revolution in schools, both of which are targets of the Estonian Lifelong Learning strategy. With the help of this project, Tallinn University will start to develop its education innovation focus field,” said the director of the TU Institute of Educational Sciences, Kristi Vinter.

“This investment will bring the research and development of education innovation in Estonia to a new level,” said Mart Laanpere. “The research group will comprise of experts from educational sciences, informatics, nature and social sciences. Merging scientists from different fields and diverseresearch traditions and databases with the open data available in the e-state registries will help us define the patterns of these reforms and analyse the different aspects of education innovation on a completely new level.”

Within the next six months, an internationally acclaimed scientist will be recruited as the head of the project. This person will put together a team of six scientists. The research group will begin work by the end of this year; the project will last for five years.

According to Laanpere and Vinter, Tallinn University´s researchers are currently working mostly with partners from nearby countries. For example, Tallinn University has ongoing projects with Finland such as the project with the aim of creating an educational cloud system that would bridge Estonia and Finland; the “Learning Layers” project that researches and boosts the potential of learning at the office with smart devices and supporting the digital revolution at the school level. The new project will enhance cooperation with the Graz University of Technology in the field of knowledge management, the Open University of the Netherlands in the field of study analytics, the RWTH Aachen University in the field of cloud technologies and the CICERO centre of Helsinki University, with whom a modern research centre will be developed.

The project “Cross-Border Educational Innovation through Technology-Enhanced Research”, which received the €2,4 million grant, is cooperatively run by the Tallinn University Institutes of Informatics, Educational Sciences, Psychology, Information Sciences and the Baltic Film and Media School. Invent Baltics OÜ, a partner of the university from previous successful European Union research funding calls, consulted the application process.