SANORD Support for Southern African–Nordic Co-operation
The Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) is a partnership of higher education institutions from the Nordic countries and southern Africa. Its primary aim is to promote multilateral research co-operation on matters of importance to the development of both regions. The University of Turku was one of the founders of the network, which currently includes 42 members.
With the purpose to support North–South research collaborations between its partners, SANORD makes seed funding available for Research theme groups for activities related to North-South multilateral co-operation and to build networks that have the potential to significantly contribute to realising the objectives of the organisation.
Finland Futures Research Centre has received 50,000 ZAR (around 4,000 EUR) for the project “Simulation for sustainability education (SISU-EDU)”, which is a joint project between the University of Turku and two South-African partners, Rhodes University (RU) and the University of Cape Town (UPC). The partner institutions bring together their expertise in research and development of new educational methods and tools in the field of sustainability and development education and training. The ultimate goal is to develop a tool for sustainability teaching that can be easily used by different Higher Education institutions at different levels of university education in southern Africa.
The implementation of the project is starting with the planning and tailoring of a simulation and game through a piloting session in February 2015 at Rhodes University.
– We plan to work with RU students to gather material for the sustainability simulation game. The aim is to work with students at all stages of the development of the simulation to ensure that we build an educational game that answers the needs of students as well as education institutions, explains Project Manager Johanna Ollila from Finland Futures Research Centre.
The results of the SISU-EDU project will be presented at the 2015 SANORD Conference and the idea is to continue with a larger scale research and development project after that and seek funding from other funding programmes.
Long History of Collaboration
The collaboration between FFRC and RU started 10 years ago and the partners have already cooperated in developing simulation tools, such as the African Catchment Game, a multi-player Role Playing Simulation, which is a learning method used in understanding land degradation and relevant to water management in southern African countries.
This co-operation was also the foundation for the technical and pedagogical development of the Get a Life simulation tool, which is an open online simulation tool created at FFRC in 2009–2013 for career planning. With the help of this tool it is possible for students, graduates and counselling personnel to anticipate and assess the future directions of work life and society.
Supporting Student Exchanges: the Brian O’Connell Scholarship Programme
The new scholarship programme of SANORD has received its name in honour of the major contributions that Professor Brian O’Connell, the Rector and Vice Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape, founder of SANORD and former Chair of the SANORD Board, has made to SANORD over the years.
The first call of the BOC Scholarship Programme took place in the autumn 2014 and targeted Master’s students enrolled at southern African SANORD member institutions. Of the seven scholarships granted in total for a study period at a Nordic partner university, the University of Turku is looking forward to hosting two students in the autumn semester 2015 – one from the University of the Western Cape and one from the University of Namibia.
Links
>>SANORD webpages
>>SANORD on Facebook
>>Finland Futures Research Centre