Getting Out of Comfort Zone

GOOCZ objectives are to:

• Enhance academics’ understanding of industry work environment, challenges and unmet skill requirements
• Develop relevant learning and teaching to prepare graduates for current and future work
• Connect universities across borders, strengthening cooperation between academia and industry

By achieving these objectives, GOOCZ contributes to:

• Capacity building and competence
• Relevant, responsive, change-oriented higher education curricula
• Sustainable staff development programmes

GOOCZ achieves its objectives through high-quality, state-of-the-art pedagogical development:

• Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
  This is a unique 5 ECTS interdisciplinary pedagogical development company attachment programme (IO1). Working with industry partners in Finland, Germany, and Lithuania, academics get out of their comfort zone, to experience and reflect on the challenges of industry in a turbulent world as a basis for developing relevant learning.
• Get Your Curricula Out Of Comfort Zone
  This is a 3 ECTS interdisciplinary pedagogical development programme (IO2) to acquaint academic staff with advanced pedagogical practices and digital tools to help develop innovative learning and teaching curricular for contemporary and future industry and societal challenges. It builds on IO1’s learning.
• Getting Out Of Comfort Zone case-book
  An edited volume featuring industrial experience, case and reflective studies on contemporary curriculum development and academia-industry cooperation, co-authored by project participants and external contributors.

GOOCZ invites as participants to their activities:

• Junior and senior faculty
• Members of staff actively engaged in curriculum development and enhancement

GOOCZ is delivered by a dynamic international consortium consisting of:

• Aalborg University (Denmark) – Project Coordinator
• Halmstad University (Sweden)
• Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuania)
• University of Oulu (Finland)
• University of Siegen (Germany)

Contact information:

• Project Coordinator: Romeo V. Turcan
• Project Manager: Yimei Hu
• Project Financial Controller: Michael K. Simonsen

Local Project Leaders:

• Louise Brøns Kringelum (AAU)
• Petri Ahokangas (UOULU)
• Ralph Dreher (SIEGEN)
• Per Servais (HH)
• Birutė Mockevičienė (MRUNI)

The project is funded through the Danish Erasmus + National Agency with the budget of 400,000 euros. Follow our progress and stay engaged via www.goocz.aau.dk.