MEET-CINCH Project

A Modular European Education and Training Concept In Nuclear and RadioCHemistry

The MEET-CINCH Project

This project receives funding from the EURATOM Research and Training programme H2020, 3 years under grant agreement N° 754972.

In order to maintain European nuclear operations, expertise in nuclear and radiochemistry (NRC) is of strategic relevance. Besides the obvious needs of NRC skills in the context of nuclear power and assessment of disposal options for nuclearwaste there are many other applications. This includes radiologic diagnostics and therapy, unthinkable without radiopharmaceutical chemistry, dating in geology and archaeology, (nuclear) forensics and safeguard operations, radiationprotection including radioecological assessments of releases and legacies and last but not least basic research e.g. on superheavy elements.

The MEET-CINCH project will counteract the massive lack of NRC expertise by three actions. A teaching package for high schools and a MOOC on NRC for general public are built in order to attract young persons to the NRC field and convey them its fascination and relevance. Two additional actions focus on vocational training and (university) education. MEET-CINCH will develop completely new education and training approaches based on remote teaching and the flipped classroom concept including and further developing material generated in the CINCH I and CINCH II projects, such as the NucWik platform and the remote controlled RoboLab experiments.

MEET-CINCH will provide ECVET course modules in an e-Shop adapted to the needs of end-users which have been surveyed in the previous projects. After the end of MEET-CINCH the e-shop will be continuously operated by the NRC-network as part of a sustainable European Fission Training Scheme (EFTS).

The consortium includes 13 partners from ten European member states; both academia and nuclear laboratories are represented. All partners are experienced in conducting training and education. Networking on national and European level will be an important part of the project, facilitated by having ENEN as one of the partners and by having structural links with other Euratom projects, the EuCheMS DNRC and the NRC-network.

Download the MEET-CINCH Travel handbook

Main Online Educational Tools resulting from this initiative

Among the main outcomes of the Project, in addition to a list of delivered training events and workshops around Europe throughout its duration, you can find the following Nuclear and Radiochemistry (NRC) learning opportunities:

  • High School NRC Training package: which consists of a training package designed to be used by high school chemistry teachers in their classes allowing for their students to be introduced to nuclear and radiochemistry. The package includes e-learnings and the possibility to arrange remotely controlled experiments in a Lab. This package, put together by the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) can be found here.
  • MOOC Essential Radiochemistry for Society: consists of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that shows the student the relevant role which Nuclear & Radiochemistry play in society in areas such as: environmental,  health, industry, nuclear energy, and society progress. This extense course, is available to all interested students and is free of charge. It can be accessed from the PoliMi Open Knowledge Platform. (Link for the NEW version of the MOOC: https://www.pok.polimi.it/courses/course-v1:Polimi+ERS101+2020_M8/about)
  • CINCH Moodle Platform: shows a collection of learning materials (courses, lectures, summer schools, lab experiments). NucWik stores learning material aimed at teachers teaching at University.
  • Vocational Education and Training (VET) e-Shop: is a platform that aims to gather courses in the field of nuclear and radiochemistry by several providers. Further information in this link.

MEET-CINCH First Public Report

MEET-CINCH has released the First Public Report summarizing the project activities and goals reached in the first year of the project realization. We are delighted to introduce you the Report:

MEET-CINCH D4.4 First Public Report to download   

Meetings

  • The MEET-CINCH Project Kick-off Meeting was held in Hannover, Germany, on 22 June 2017.
  • The first MEET-CINCH Project Meeting will be held in Larnaca, Cyprus, on 15-17 November 2017.
  • The second MEET-CINCH Project Meeting will be held in Gothemburg, Sweden, on 7-9 May 2018.
  • The third MEET-CINCH Project Meeting will be held in Marcoule, France, on 28-30 November 2018. 

Description of the Work

Similarly to CINCH and CINCH-II, the proposed organisation of this project is built around three pillars:

  • Nuclear Awareness that aims particularly on general public and secondary school students
  • Sustainability and Evolutionary Developments that aims particularly at vocational education and training (VET) of NRC professionals
  • Novel Education and Training Approaches that aims both at university students and VET,supported by two cross-cutting activities:
  • Mobility
  • Management.
Euratom funding is sought namely for the coordination and networking aspects (95 % of the total costs of the project), specifically development of the MOOC and completion and implementation of the toolkit developed for education coordination and for distance learning, and further development and implementation of the instruments for the coordination of VET.

Even though the work on each of the three topics defined above is, from the formal point of view, carried on by a dedicated group of Partners, deep involvement of the entire Consortium in all the Project Tasks is expected. Thus, the project will require extensive discussions among all the partners, running both via email and personal discussions during the project meetings. This policy is also reflected in the efforts distribution in the individual work-packages where often even partners not directly responsible for any of the specific Tasks should contribute by a significant number of person-months.

This strategy will enable particularly the representatives of academia to profit from the views of ‘future employers’ and incorporate their identified needs into the curricula. Consequently, the WPs, even though formally “evolutionary development” or “novel approaches”, will always incorporate both these aspects – it will just be their ratio that will differ. Similarly, the toolkit developed in the MEET-CINCH project will be conceived as universal and applicable for both application areas and for both education and training at the same time.Even though the consortium is broader as compared to CINCH-II, it is still relatively limited, particularly because of the budgetary constraints. Therefore, all the participants will be expected to represent not only their personal/institutional opinions/positions but try to identify the general “European views”. This is especially valid for the “End-users” who should provide a general opinion from European countries stakeholders and not only the opinion of their institutions.

Gathering these broad views will be facilitated by the existence of two instruments:
  • MEET-CINCH End-users and Advisory Group (EAG) that will include and further develop the End-users and Advisory Group established in CINCH-II.
  • Close contact with the NRC Network that originated from the CINCH-II project and for which the MEET-CINCH is expected to provide the secretariat for its start-up period.

To meet the above defined objectives, the proposed activities have been organised into three technical and two managerial work-packages that closely copy the project pillars listed above. Each of the work-packages is further subdivided into several Tasks. The WPs are:

  • WP1: Nuclear Awareness and Dissemination
  • WP2: Sustainability and Evolutionary Development of VET tools
  • WP3: Novel Education and Training Approaches (Flipped Classroom)
  • WP4: Mobility, dissemination and exploitation
  • WP5: Project Management and Administration

All the work-packages will run in parallel from the start of the project. Strong interfaces and common guidance in these activities will exist to ensure that they do not produce divergent conclusions and to avoid non-useful duplication of work, particularly in the “education” and “training” work-packages.

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

1 GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ UNIVERSITAET HANNOVER Germany
2 CESKE VYSOKE UCENI TECHNICKE V PRAZE Czech Republic
3 CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLA AB Sweden
4 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO Finland
5 UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS Cyprus
6 UNIVERSITETET I OSLO Norway
7 UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS United Kingdom
8 NATIONAL NUCLEAR LABORATORY LIMITED United Kingdom
9 POLITECNICO DI MILANO Italy
10 EVALION SRO Czech Republic
11 COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES France
12 RESEAU EUROPEEN POUR L ENSEIGNEMENT DES SCIENCES NUCLEAIRES France
13 INSTITUT JOZEF STEFAN Slovenia

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