Doc Enhance

DocEnhance project has received funding from the European Union's H2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 872483

Project summary

Enhancing skills intelligence and integration into existing PhD programmes by providing transferable skills training through an open online platform (DocEnhance). DocEnhance project aims to enhance transferable skills intelligence and integration into existing PhD programmes with 3 main goals:

  1. Involving the non-academic sector in developing a more employment and innovation-oriented curriculum for PhD programmes,
  2. Facilitating work-based learning and business-education partnerships through developing PhD courses, and 
  3. Tracking of PhD graduate career paths. 

The major outputs of the project are a recommended transferable skills curriculum for PhD programmes, a novel course concept and material, and an open access career-tracking survey. The project will focus on transferable skills, as these skills facilitate the transition into employment and are widely applicable, regardless of scientific field and chosen career path.

DocEnhance builds on a large, diverse and experienced consortium, several existing EU-projects and other initiatives to achieve these ambitious goals. The External Advisory Board and the Industry Reference Group represent the major stakeholders and end users of the project outputs, and their involvement is ensured through a co-creation approach that includes project evaluation and validation events. All project outputs will be piloted among several European partner universities during the project for proof-of-concept, and a project partner from Africa and member university of the World University Network represents the interests of non-European countries. 

PROJECT CONSORTIUM

DocEnhance is a large project built by 19 partners from 15 countries, the consortium being composed by:

Universities

  1. Arctic University of Norway Tromso, NO (UiT) - coordinator
  2. Tampere University, FI (TAU) 
  3. Maastricht University, NL (UM) 
  4. Technical University of Munich, DE (TUM) 
  5. University of Alcala, ES (UAH)
  6. University of Chemistry and Industry Prague, CZ (UCT) 
  7. Matej Bel University, SK (UMB)
  8. NOVA University Lisbon, PT (UNL)
  9. Arctic University of Norway, NO (UiT)
  10. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR (AUTh)
  11. Karlstands Universitet, SE (KAU)
  12. University of Ghana, GH (UoG)

Non-academic partners

  1. European Science Foundation, FR (ESF)
  2. European University Foundation, LU (EUF)
  3. Fondacion Universidad Empresa, ES (FUE)
  4. Inoexc Gmbh, CH (IEXC)
  5. Adecco Group AG, CH (TAG)
  6. All Digital, BE 

External Advisory entities

  1. Tree of Science, FR 
  2. Confederation of Norwegian Entreprise, NO Eurodoc, BE
  3. Aarresaari Network, FI 
     

Role of ESF

The European Science Foundation (ESF) leads the communication work package ensuring effective impact and dissemination of the project’s results. 

ESF will perform the career-tracking survey of PhD graduates and will involve the handling of contact data as well as the collection of personal data of the surveyed PhD graduates from the participating partner universities.

Career tracking has become increasingly recognised as a necessary monitoring tool in order to map PhD graduate career-paths and evaluate the PhD skills training. One of the major outputs of the DocEnhance project is an open access career-tracking survey that will be conducted among the project’s university partners. The DocEnhance career-tracking survey will build upon an existing PhD graduate tracking survey (2017) among nine higher education institutions, conducted by ESF. 

 

 

Timeline & Funding

DocEnhance is a 3-year project, starting on 1st January 2020. The total funding received from EC is € 990 558,16.

Project Portal

https://docenhance.eu/

 

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 872483