Project content
Eduwood - a cross-border project for the development of education in timber construction and furniture industry
The project will be implemented in Austrian-Hungarian cooperation to create an experiential online educational system.
In May 2021, the "EDUWOOD" Hungarian-Austrian cross-border cooperation program was launched. The most important task of the project, which is realized within the framework of the Interreg V-A Austria-Hungary program with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), is the practical, project-oriented development of timber construction and furniture industry education on both sides of the border.
The basic idea of the project was born from the need for better connection between education and the labor market. In both countries, there is a lack of motivation among students in the field of timber construction and furniture industry education, resulting in school dropout or prolonged completion of (graduate) studies. Based on the experiences of professionals, education is not sufficiently practice-oriented and project-centered, and the number of involved practitioners is still low. On both sides of the border, talent management and development of competencies according to the needs of the industry pose challenges for educational institutions. Practice-oriented, long-term, educational collaborations between companies and educational institutions work well within each country (dual education), but there is no established system for cross-border cooperation in the field of timber construction and furniture industry, thus concrete, long-term cooperation agreements are necessary between companies and schools, linking the two sides of the border.
The comprehensive coordination of the project is carried out by the Sopron Wood Science Foundation (FATA) in partnership with the Institute for Innovation and Trend Research (IITF) in Graz and secondary and higher education institutions. However, the project goals can only be achieved if the maximum number of students, educators, and businesses are involved in the implementation.
In addition to the implementation of massive open online courses (MOOCs), the project plans to create a joint online educational platform aimed at sharing knowledge ("skill share"). The project achieves the increase in student motivation through community building, making learning experiential for them. Adding that online education has come to the fore due to the pandemic, but there is an increasing demand for online tools for teaching the younger generation regardless of this.
On the online platform, students, teachers, and related industrial players from the border region build a community who share knowledge, mainly through video sharing, but there will also be opportunities to share educational materials in different formats on various topics in the categories of timber construction and furniture industry. For primary school students, there will be workshops for career orientation.
