This autumn, Lund University will offer its first three free open online courses, known as MOOCs. They will be in green economy, global health and European business law.
Despite this decision, opinions are still partially divided. Some see MOOCs as a motor for development that will rejuvenate and adapt higher education to new methods of learning. Others fear that the hype surrounding MOOCs will rob ordinary courses and programmes of resources.
Lund University has allocated almost SEK 500 000 of strategic education funding for a new course created in a collaboration between the faculties of Law and Medicine and Loyola Law School in the US. The course will be on how to ensure legal protection of innovations at the intersection of law and medical technology, and of European and American law. It will be offered as an online distance learning course at Master’s level.
Lund University offers over 100 Master’s programmes and a growing number of Bachelor’s programmes in English. In order to recruit more international, fee-paying students who have the prerequisites to complete their studies, the Education Board has decided to investigate the possibility of offering preparatory English language training.
Previous EU framework programmes have focused largely on engineering, medicine and science, but over the next seven years, the EU wants to see more interdisciplinary research and collaboration, as well as more social science and humanities. But will Horizon 2020 be the breakthrough that the humanities have hoped for?
“We are heading in the right direction, but we’re not there yet”, says Wim van den Doel. He heads the social science and humanities community in the LERU university network. LUM meets him at a lobbying event in Brussels.
Some people say it’s about time, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Eva Wiberg agrees that the time is now ripe. After an intensive week in South Africa and Botswana, with visits to seven universities, alumni events and official openings, it is time for Lund University to put its Africa strategy down on paper.
The children are poor, the problems are extensive and school resources are minimal. However, in the midst of the poverty, there is pride and a strong sense that it is possible to change the situation for these schoolchildren. LUM has met alumni in South Africa and Malawi from the Sida programme ‘Child Rights, Classroom and School Management’.
In the heart of the beautiful wine-producing region of Stellenbosch is the STIAS research institute. It welcomes researchers from around the world to spend a number of months working with a focus on Africa. LUM visited cognitive science researcher Peter Gärdenfors and his project team at Mostertsdrift farm.
“It’s a privilege to be here. You have peace and quiet to concentrate entirely on writing. The environment is also very relaxing”, he says.
Lund University is strong in terms of publications. Stellenbosch University has very good equipment. Doctoral student Ahmed Fawzy is part of a research group in Chemical Physics that is collaborating with South Africa to find efficient catalysts in chemical processes.
Political scientist Johannes Stripple sees major potential for research, development and innovation in Africa and welcomes the idea of an Africa strategy at LU. He recently attended the official opening of the Clean Tech Centre at Botswana Innovation Hub – a centre that he helped establish.
He began by renting out his sofa, then gave his blessing to a military tent on the LTH campus and later made it possible to transport and erect prefabricated housing from China.
Vice-Chancellor Per Eriksson has done a lot to highlight the shortage of student accommodation, and last year ended in a triumph for housing policy, when he, Akademiska hus and Lund Municipality presented a new construction solution that could remove the shortage once and for all!
