R&I Loop is rooted in the priority areas of the Renewed EU Agenda for Higher Education. The Agenda highlights that there is an unquestionable need to refocus efforts on bridging education, research, innovation and community interaction, asking for new “entrepreneurial” higher education profiles. This need stems from the realisation that higher education institutions need to develop new skills and competences as well as societal connections in order to respond early and prospectively to changing societal challenges. In this sense, higher education institutions need to develop their profile as "civic universities" based on embedding social engagement throughout the institution and providing opportunities for interaction between research, students, businesses and public institutions.
These are the concrete priorities of the renewed EU Agenda:
- Tackling future skills mismatches & promoting excellence in skills development
- Building inclusive and connected higher education systems,
- Ensuring higher education institutions contribute to innovation
- Supporting effective and efficient higher education systems.
The project partners have translated these priorities into the following concrete project objectives:
- Develop, test and mainstream a systemic and holistic approach that enhances the education, research, and innovation links of higher education institutions.
- Build, test, and scale-up of capacitation actions for higher education institutions’ teachers, researchers, and staff to be better equipped to respond to social challenges and needs.
- Design, test, and mainstream supporting tools that allow higher education institutions to adopt a systemic, holistic approach and improve their educational offer.
- Promote and enhance civic and social responsibility among relevant actors within the quadruple helix nodes.
Some central prerequisites for achieving these objectives are that the methodology and tools are developed together with the users and stakeholders, the model is tested at the partner universities, and the results of the R&I Loop are then presented to other universities and stakeholders in the four countries.
Target groups
The target groups to be involved are end-users, such as higher education institution representatives, leaders, teachers/researchers, students/alumni and staff from core units dedicated to research support, pedagogical innovation, cooperation and outreach as well as beneficiaries like representative individuals and organisations from the quadruple helix, including industry/business, public authorities and citizens/community.