We report on the progress of an effort to increase the opportunities for students to advance their knowledge and skills in nanotechnology within Europe by extended collaboration between university partners within the Frontiers network-of-excellence. The first step has been to find a format to carry out joint master thesis projects and the general aim is to establish a European Joint Curriculum in nanotechnology for life science applications at master level.
The master thesis can function as a way to assess a student's education, and it offers a bridge between education and the commencing professional life. By collaborating within the frames of master thesis projects universities and companies can exchange information on educational content and professional demands.
The principle for student exchange within Frontiers Joint Curriculum is that the students receive their degree from their original home university. This implies that the university that gives the degree somehow needs to ascertain that the studies performed abroad live up to required standards. In the case of master theses there needs to be an examiner at the home university who first agrees to a suggested project/student match and in the end approves of the project outcome with regards to local standards.
By active cooperation information on the curricula of the partners will be shared. The incentive for each partner is presumably to offer a compatible education that makes their students attractive for continuation elsewhere, at the same time as offering a niche profile that exploits the local expertise.
At present visiting students are reimbursed for their extra costs through the Frontiers project. In the long run there needs to be an obvious added value in the exchange so that these extra costs can be funded by a party that gains from the exchange (e. g. the student herself).
The use of the internet for live interaction with sound, video and shared documents can be employed to increase the surface of interaction e. g. when conducting a joint master thesis project. The possibility to fairly easily conduct distance education using internet resources put interesting issues on the agenda: it is possible to set up a common course for students all over Europe. Do we want to do it?
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