Foster community building: This was the overarching theme of the first Aurora BIP Staff Week, which took place at Universität Innsbruck from October 2-6, 2023. Participants from almost all Aurora partners – coming from both academia and administration – exchanged manifold ideas with colleagues from Universität Innsbruck to develop new activities and projects.
With more than 50 members of staff, the first Aurora Staff Week at Universität Innsbruck was a great success. In different formats and settings, the main topics of Transformative Education, Innovation Management, Societal Engagement, and Internationalization were explored in depth over several days. Best practices from Universität Innsbruck and the Aurora partner universities served as the basis for the exchange, stimulating a mutual dialogue in the sense of peer learning and opening space for creativity and new ideas.
“Personal encounters are incredibly important for a network like Aurora to be filled with life,” emphasises Rector Veronika Sexl, who is responsible for international affairs at Universität Innsbruck. “I am very pleased that so many colleagues, both in-house and from the Aurora partner universities, have actively taken up the invitation to exchange ideas and that new projects are already in the pipeline.” The “matchmaking sessions” were particularly fruitful, where concrete new activities, such as the development of joint courses, could be discussed in individual smaller settings.
First Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) hosted by Universität Innsbruck
The Aurora Staff Week, which was funded and organised as an Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP), took place in Innsbruck after a virtual exchange of participants in September. For the first time, the Universität Innsbruck served as a hosting institution for the event. The Aurora Staff Week will conclude with a virtual follow-up meeting at the end of October.
BIPs are teaching/learning formats jointly run by several universities and combine virtual components with physical short-term mobility (“blended”). BIPs are a new mobility format embedded in the Erasmus program, implemented as part of the Erasmus program generation 2021-2027. Within Aurora, the general goal is to develop more joint BIPs between Aurora partners in the coming years. These can be used for training as well as teaching purposes.
