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Our University of Ideas Competition 2022 has been extended to the 12th December! We have moved the deadline of the submission phase because we have to move our Award Ceremony to January next year. Based on that we keep the competition as stated above open for a longer time. We like to invite you to have a look and join the competition if you are a lecturer or staff member of a university in the Global South. You will find all relevant information below. If you wish to participate, please register through the form below!
We are integrating a second channel on submitting ideas! Beside the option of submitting the idea directly through our innovation platform, you can fill out and send us the submission template. You can download the submission template below!
What is new? The most important part is, that our University of Ideas Competition has grown. We scaled it up and took it under the wings of the Intelligence for Innovation Network (iN4iN), which allowed us to open our competition for the Global South.
Help us share the competition!
With the “University of Ideas”, the Intelligence for Innovation Network (IN4IN), together with the African Centre for Career Enhancement & Skill Support (ACCESS), is looking for innovative ideas, large and small, that can stimulate the development of the topics of digital tools/formats in education, university-business linkages, and career enhancement in the context of improving employability through universities in the Global South.
Our society is constantly changing. How we communicate with each other, learn, work, and evolve are all subject to permanent change and must constantly face future needs. Innovations from the university environment can meet these challenges as they contribute to the progress and the ability to transform and shape future activities and the adaptability of its students, graduates, lecturers, administration, etc. Innovations occur in all areas of a university. They can show up in teaching, methods and the tools we use, their services, or even the design of their organisational structure and its public presentation. They can be technology-induced, or they can arise independently of technologies. This change is often embedded in a specific environment, following the rules of its ecosystem.
How can service-learning be integrated or utilised at universities to enhance the employability of graduates?
In order to improve the employability of graduates, innovative teaching approaches are needed, especially if they enable students to apply their acquired theoretical input in a practice-oriented way outside the academic world. Service-Learning is an approach that combines cognitive learning objectives (learning) with taking responsibility (service), e.g. as community service, in order to provide a practical, progressive learning experience. Through service-learning students are involved in service projects to apply classroom learning for local agencies to effect positive change in the community.
Service-Learning can be utilized for all fields of study and learning environments. Though the interest in service learning at educational institutions has increased, these projects are often time-consuming and therefore costly to implement.
We invite you to contribute with an innovative idea to integrate service learning in your university.
Further information on the concept of Service-Learning is available in the link below. Take it as an inspiration, Service Learning can be more!
Here you can download our flyer for the competition. Please feel free to share it with your people.
If your registration for the competition was successful you will be able to login on our innovation/ competition platform. Please use the following guide if you have questions about the submission of an idea.
We have opened a second channel for the submission of ideas. If you cannot use our innovation platform directly, proceed to download the template, fill all the information and send it to us through the access-event@uni-leipzig.de e-mail address.
We want to highlight the possibility of implementing Service-Learning measures with businesses or the private sector. Here is a brief introductory write-up on Service-Learning in business (private sector) with further references.
Please enter all the information below and register to our competition. After we checked the entry and created your account on our innovation/ competition platform, you will receive an e-mail with your login information. You will receive no immediate response!
You can as well register directly via email. Please send an email to: access-event@uni-leipzig.de
Include the following information in your email.
First Name:
Last Name:
University:
Country:
Email:
Team members (If any):
The “University of Ideas” competition is being organised because we believe the expertise lies within the system. Lecturers are crucial for teaching and learning and preparing the next generation of employees and entrepreneurs for the labour market. However, due to high unemployment rates among graduates and the unfulfilled needs of private-sector employers, new concepts in the university regarding teaching and learning systems and infrastructure are needed to create or improve the chances of a successful future for graduates that impacts society. In the universities and their ecosystems, every lecturer faces change in shifting mindsets and new procedures, resulting in the necessity to adapt. With our concept of the “University of Ideas”, we strive not only toward the emergence of new ideas and concepts but also to identify people who have a strong interest in being part of this development. Developing a strong network to promote new approaches and topics within the scope of the universities’ Third Mission is equally important as our goal to identify and collect new ideas and concepts. We want to support a holistic development that assists in shaping an environment which facilitates good ideas to succeed.
For this purpose, we believe that lecturers or university staff members have the motivation, experience and creativity to develop innovative concepts that can improve the employability of graduates and assist in building stronger communities and economies.
We encourage any lecturer and staff member from a university in the global south to join the University of Ideas competition. People that are employed by the ACCESS project can not participate in the competition.
You can either develop your idea individually or within a group from your university. Each group can submit one idea but several ideas can be developed resulting from several groups at one university. If you join as a team a leader needs to be named. The leader is than invited as the representative of his or her team to our innovation/ competition platform, where the ideas need to be submitted.
The evaluation of all submitted ideas will be conducted in three steps. The formal and technical selection, which will guarentee that all submitted ideas follow the established form and rules will come first. A pre-selection phase for the most promising ten (10) ideas is the second step and coordinators from within the network will be responsible. The final selection step, which will identify the three (3) winners of the competition will be conducted by five (5) experts that reflect the main regions of the participating networks.
The best and most promising three ideas will be selected. Each winner/team will be awarded with 1000€.
Please be aware that you need to consider several deadlines: The end of submission phase and the award ceremony as the most important ones.
After your registration through the form on this homepage, we will invite you to our innovation/ competition platform. On this platform you will have the opportunity to create your idea. As soon as we have set up your account you will receive an e-mail with the login information. This e-mail will serve as a confirmation of your participation. Here you can find a guideline on how to submit your idea on our platform, after you received the login information.
We are integrating a second channel on submitting ideas! Beside the option of submitting the idea directly through our innovation platform, you can fill out and send us the submission template. You can download the submission template in our download section above this Q&A.
The main language during the competition and the award ceremony is English. You have to submit your idea in English. For this purpose we can recommend you to use google translate or deepl.
Leipzig University in Germany through it Intelligence for Innovation network (iN4iN).
The iN4iN Network, which where we are part of, allows us to tap into the knowledge and expertise of many other networks/ projects.
The ACCESS Wiki-Platform aims to share and exchange content (tools, methods, working papers) on the topic of employability in Africa.
For this purpose lecturers of African universities are invited to share proven methods, tools, working papers etc. that have been successfully implemented in their universities.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us and send an email. We will answer your request as soon as possible.