Authors: Ásrún Matthíasdóttir, Assistant Professor; Lena Gumaelius, Associate Professor
Universities: University Reykjavik; KTH Royal Institute of Technology
NordEnHub history
NordEn hub was started as a project between five Nordic universities and the actors NORDTEK and ANE. The partners discussed the idea of creating a Nordic center for engineering education already in fall 2017 and after the Nordic Council of Ministers provided a start-up grant to enable us to get started, the idea became a reality.
With the project receiving funding from Erasmus+ through the KA2 partnership, the initial network was able to implement some of the ideas it had for strengthening engineering education first and foremost in the Nordic region, but in a longer perspective also in a European context.
An overall objective of NordEn hub is to establish a knowledge hub where Nordic actors can collaborate on engineering education issues. The idea is also for the knowledge hub to have an expert role so that societal stakeholders can ask the network about what engineering education looks like in the different Nordic countries.
The Knowledge hub started by collecting data from all the Nordic countries on the school system and on the system of tertiary education. Understanding the school system in the different countries is important in order to know how to compare and understand how education at lower levels actually affects engineering education. Information about which universities have engineering education etc. is important for us to be able to both learn and disseminate new knowledge about engineering education. The mapping will be continuously updated via the new platform for the project.
The idea was initially to build the knowledge hub through a broad collaboration with industry and the public sector. In the Erasmus+ project, an advisory board was initiated in 2019 with the mission to ensure that the studies and data collected would be useful to the surrounding community. Unfortunately, this idea has not yet been implemented as planned, mostly due to the pandemic which made it extremely difficult to gather new groupings.
Instead, the network has been working to find a stable location for the initiatives that have now been made and the knowledge hub that is now in place. A sustainable location for the hub will provide opportunities for spreading the mission also later on. NORDTEK offered this sustainable location for the network and today a new focus area within NORDTEK called Nordic engineering education has been launched. This will form the place the NordEn hub will continue to operate through. Since 2021 the hub has been expanded and actors also from the Baltic countries are participating. In June 2022, some 30 people from different Nordic higher education institutions will gather to build on the knowledge hub that was built through the NordEn hub and the Erasmus+ project teh Nordic STEM initiative.
Publications/Link to full reports:
Ásrún Matthíasdóttir, 2021. Engineering education in the Nordic countries. Report of the Nordic hub project: STEM skills and competes for the new generation of Nordic engineering
Engineering-education-newest-edition-Final-2021Engineering education in the Nordic countries, visit the website to be informed about the school system and higher engineering education in the Nordic Countries. Url: https://tneh-website-preview.webnode.page
NordEnHub project presentation and Engineering education in the Nordic countries in Icelandic Verkfræðinám á Norðurlöndunum by Ásrún Matthíasdóttir. Please follow the link: https://www.sky.is/index.php/toelvumal/item/2387-faerni-og-haefni-fyrir-nyja-kynslodh-verkfraedhinga
Nordic council of ministers’ contribution in NordEnHub project: presentation and files:
The project was financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership programme and additional funding from the involved universities.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
