Increasing Collaborative Capacities (ICECAP)

Important results from the project

The purpose of the project was to increase the project partners´ understanding of and ability to enter into strategic cooperation, to develop their own education and research. The goals were to develop cooperation perspectives on the partners´ strategies for education and research, to identifiy the best practices for the establishment and long-term operation of cooperation arenas, and experience creation through implementation of seven cooperation arenas linked to education. The project has to a large extent achieved these goals.

Expected long term effects

The expected long-effects of the project were: - The development of the participating universities´ collaboration skills and an increased ability to form long-term relationships with strategic partners. - Natural integration of external perspectives on education and research. - Making cooperation to a more used tool for development, at all levels of the participating institutions. - Allowing evaluation of how successful collaboration is, with respect to the strategies and goals set by individual institutions. Evaluation proved harder to achiece than expected.

Approach and implementation

The project had three main work packages. WP1 focused on the development of collaboration perspectives on the strategies for education and research. The work in WP1 meant internal work at each project partner to develop the strategies but also close exchange between the participating partners. WP2 was focused on perspectives and practices to ensure long-term sustainability for collaboration arenas used to implement the strategies. In WP3 seven collaboration arenas for education were implemented. The main work and results were connected to WP1 and WP3.