On April 28th, the Eur-Asian Border Lab organized a transferrable skills workshop at Tallinn University (TLU), led by Jussi Laine and Alicja Fajfer from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). An interested audience of the Lab members, project leaders and staff of the research office at TLU gathered for the workshop. The Lab’s UEF partners have extensive experience in leading and managing multi-partner EU funded consortiums at UEF. The first workshop in a series drew on their practical experience.
The first part of the workshop focused on the management of project workflow, where the following topics were discussed:
- Coordination of the project activities (administration, research, research development) for the implementation of the work plan
- Prompt delivery of all reports and deliverables to the EC
- Enforcement and monitoring the implementation of the scheduled activities, including the production of deliverables and achievement of milestones
- Supervision of the organization and implementation of the project meetings and conferences
A short coffee break then enabled our partners and Tallinn University members to mingle and network, before moving on to the second part of the workshop on keeping records and preparing reviews. This time, the discussion covered topics such as:
- Establishment and maintenance of a complete record of the material produced by the project
- Working documents and internal reports, workshop presentations and proceedings, deliverables, progress and management reports
- Project communication
- Preparations for EC review
Both sessions took place as a dynamic and informal exchange, whereby the workshop participants could ask questions from Jussi and Alicja, and relate their past concerns. Discussing ways of how to solve different tasks and problems that raise during project implementation, and the passing of useful insight and tips by Jussi and Alicja created a fruitful skill transfer.
Lastly, the arrangement of the next transferrable skills workshops and other activities to strengthen TLU’s research management and administration capacities were discussed.