For ‘Virtual Journey Week’ from 18 to 22 November, students and staff at Paderborn University and its COLOURS partner universities will have an opportunity to digitally explore nine countries over the course of five days. Language cafés, taster courses, quizzes, video clips and much more will invite participants to discover the Alliance’s various universities, countries and languages in a fun way – all in a relaxed atmosphere from their own desk. The events offer an opportunity to discuss interesting topics in English with other students or colleagues. Representatives of the student population will be on hand to answer questions and Erasmus students will be sharing their experiences. The digital platform used will be ‘BLOOM Hub’, specially developed for European university alliances, to which university attendees have direct access. Any non-university members interested in attending can register for the event free of charge by emailing zfs@upb.de no later than 10 November.
Paderborn University is coordinating the COLOURS European University Alliance, which has received around 14 million euros of funding from the European Commission. The aim is to strengthen cooperation in research, teaching and knowledge transfer for the long term, increase international visibility, and promote student and researcher mobility within Europe. COLOURS stands for ‘COLlaborative innOvative sUstainable Regional univerSities’. The name says it all: the core topics of ‘open innovation’, ‘challenge-based teaching’, ‘challenge-based learning’ and ‘impact-driven research’ are linked up with regional ‘smart specialisation objectives’. The initiative is thus seeking to get the ball rolling for social and technological initiatives for citizens across Europe and promote strategic cooperation.
Alongside Paderborn University as the coordinating institution, the alliance also includes Le Mans University (France), the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), the University of Ferrara (Italy), Kristianstad University (Sweden), Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa (Poland), Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek (Croatia), Ventspils University of Applied Sciences (Latvia) and the University St. Kliment Ohridski Bitola (Northern Macedonia). Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University (Ukraine) is an associate partner of the alliance.
Further information is available at: colours-alliance.eu/events/.
