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The institutional competences of the Finnish and Nepalese HEIs

The consortium of this project has strong expertise and experience of working on the subject matters and to
successfully implement the project. The partners are strongly committed to collaborate and reach the set
results.
JAMK University of Applied Sciences (JAMK) is an internationally audited and accredited university of
applied sciences, esteemed by working life, generating value in global environments and responding to
lifelong learning challenges. JAMK is a multidisciplinary and awards degrees in the fields of business,
technology, and health sciences, as well as post-graduate qualifications in pedagogy. It also carries out RDI
work in the corresponding fields. JAMK has participated in hundreds of EU co-financed projects over the last
20 years. Acting as a coordinator or as a partner, JAMK has gained an extensive expertise in accessing,
managing, implementing and monitoring EU-funded projects in all of its focus areas. International
cooperation partners include universities, research centres and companies in 50 countries all over the world.
JAMK has experience in several EU funding programmes (e.g. ERDF, ESF, Life-long Learning Programme,
Erasmus+, FP7, Tempus, Interreg, Health Programme and IEE programme). The School of Professional
Teacher Education (SPTE) at JAMK is a recognized Centre of Pedagogy. It has conducted numerous HEI ICI
and EU-funded projects. Accordingly, it has strong experience in collaborating with developing countries like
Vietnam (2007-2002, 2011-2012, 2013-2014), Nepal (2013-2015, 2017-2020), Ethiopia (2017-2020) and
Mozambique (2019). Furthermore, JAMK SPTE has provided experts to TASS project (2016–2019) in Nepal.
JAMK’s role in the present project is to coordinate as well as to take the leading role especially in outcomes
focusing on guidance and counselling. In its strategy, JAMK SPTE is also committed to developing new
pedagogical methods and solutions as well as digital learning environments at national and global levels.
HAMK School of Professional Teacher Education (HAMK SPTE) emphasizes national presence in its
operations and plays a key role by developing the national education structure, teacher education
development and training higher education and vocational education teachers. HAMK SPTE offers training
programs for initial and continuing teacher education, guidance counsellors and special needs teachers. As a
teacher trainer organization HAMK SPTE is an active to develop new methods and approaches on
competence-based education, curriculum development work and student-centred approaches. Within
HAMK, the Edu Research Unit is responsible for national and international research, development and
innovation projects and contributes to the development of SPTE. HAMK Edu has expertise in pedagogically
designed learning solutions, digital pedagogy, professional competence for future as well as guidance and
counselling. HAMK’s role in the project is to take the leading role especially in sections focusing on open and
distance learning.
Tribhuvan University, Faculty of Education (TU-FoE) and Open and Distance Education Centre (ODEC) has
implemented online Master’s programmes in English and Mathematics education since 2015. ODEC’s sole
purpose is to run TU’s academic programmes through open and distance mode of learning and efforts are
being made to run other subjects as well. ODEC has its office space with ICT facilities and uses Moodle as a
learning management system. The educational programmes are conducted in a blended mode. Students
attend two-day face-to-face session in the beginning of the semester followed by online learning through the
Moodle and self-study materials prepared by the respective teachers. ODEC also runs short term professional
development programmes such as Academic Writing for Publication and Exploratory Action Research (EAP)
for TU’s faculty members. ODEC collaborates with the government to conduct short-term programmes for
the security officials and the civil servants working in different levels of government. ODEC has also worked
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with Norwegian and Danish partners in the past to develop the capacity of the faculty members of Tribhuvan
University.
Nepal Open University (NOU) is a public university established in 2016. The university has three faculties:
Faculty of Social Science and Education, Faculty of Management and Law, and Faculty of Science, Health and
Technology. Under these faculties, altogether there will be 12 schools (in the process of establishment,
University Senate has given approval). With such a short history, NOU has made good progress in offering
educational programmes and it has become popular in the market for making the educational programmes
relevant for the market needs. There are altogether 22 programmes are running at present and 7 more are
in pipeline for this academic year. The university has been running research level, master, bachelor, diploma
and certification programmes. It has set up its own data centre for hosting and running its Learning
Management System, education information management system (EMIS), e-library and office management.
NOU is the institution attempting to offer a fully digital library from which students and faculty members can
get access to books and journals at their location using their personal username and password. MOODLE is
the official learning management system and Microsoft TEAMS is used for video conferencing and real-time
online classes. NOU has enough office space, workshop and meeting halls. From 2020, under the MOU
between MOEST Nepal and NOU, a one-year profession development programme for in-service teachers has
been running. Faculty members are qualified and have graduated from different universities around the
globe, thus a multi-academic culture prevails in the institution. The main aim of the university is to increase
access and participation of those youths who are deprived from the access of higher education due to the
limitations associated with traditional education programmes. The university act has given a mandate to use
cutting-edge technology and provide access to higher education to diverse group of learners who are
dissociated from the conventional system of higher/ tertiary education. University policy provides
scholarships to 10% of the total students with two provisions: intelligence and inclusive scholarship under its
own internal source, even in the case of limited resources. NOU does not have much experience of running
collaborative projects although as they are currently working in the EATHEN Project funded by Erasmus+, the
leadership and the faculty members have experience in successfully working in international collaborative
projects.