Written by Luis Pastor.
The EU-funded EdTech Talents project is getting close to its full start.
While it is becoming wholly operative from the administrative point of view, the first round of secondments is approaching fast.
In my case, I will be traveling to Tallinn, Budapest and Belgrade in less than a week.
It is still too early to come up with an objective analysis of the project and its methodology, because we will still have to sort out many issues that will be appearing along the way.
In cases like this, subjective perceptions rather than rational assessments might be useful for providing some insight.
So, I asked myself… What are my feelings about this project?
The first feeling that comes out is uniqueness: The EdTech Talents initiative is somehow exceptional with respect to my previous experience within EU programs.
In general, most of the projects within the EU framework have been conceived following a top-down approach, where the main goals are clearly and precisely established, and the work program is designed to facilitate reaching these goals. However, this is not the case for the EdTech Talents.
Sometimes I have also taken part in bottom-up designed initiatives, where groups of people working in related areas establish their goals together along the project lifetime.
However, the EdTech Talents project doesn’t follow this approach either.
Perhaps we could say that the EdTech Talents proposal follows a lateral approach, borrowing ideas from the top-down and bottom-up approaches.
The project then is based on letting people from different backgrounds and environments work together for common goals, with objectives that are clearly defined for just one of the collaborating parts, and for aims such as refining or testing some product or designing effective procedures.
In this framework, how can our goals be achieved?
In my opinion, there are some key aspects. First, there is a need for empathy among the start-ups, visiting researchers or officials, third parts and potential customers. One of the keys for success is therefore that each part fully understands the others.
Second, we will need to perform detailed analyses in each case about how our collaboration should be posed for it to be more effective, and which will be the goals sought during this collaboration.
Last, we will work towards achieving these goals, perhaps involving other people from our parent organizations.
We are getting to work within problems that might benefit from interdisciplinary approaches, and this might require additional collaborations, including people with other backgrounds.
I see two problems that might make things hard within the EdTech Talents project.
First, for seconded people, staying out of office for extended time periods is difficult, from many points of view (both professional and personal).
This might limit our availability during the four years lifespan of the project.
Plus, we might find problems of strong disciplinarity character rather than the interdisciplinarity idea that is buried within the project.
This might require very specific backgrounds in the seconded people or the institutions that receive them.
But… What kinds of benefits can the EdTech Talents bring?
I feel that joining people from diverse backgrounds and environments can enrich teamwork.
The countries involved are different; for example, I included here 2 pictures from Estonia and Spain.
The landscapes are very different, and they show features that have resulted in specific history, character and even leisure differences between both countries.
The same could be said from each of the participating countries.
This diversity might foster in turn the appearance of different perspectives in project participants.
In this sense, seconded researchers can help analyzing processes from different standpoints and cultural environments.
Plus, our university or previous work experience can also be useful for this purpose.
Lastly, the collaboration of people from different countries and environments might facilitate adapting products to other societies or markets.
If I had to summarize my feelings, I do feel that we are entering a very interesting project.
Time will tell us if this feeling was right…
