Kick-Off Meeting in Bergen Launches FPD-Include Project
FPD-Include team during the kick-off meeting on January 30th, 2024
The beautiful and rainy Norwegian city of Bergen welcomed international guests in late January, as the collaborators for FPD-Include launched their three-year project with a kick-off meeting. Led by the University of Bergen, FPD-Include (Faculty Professional Development for Inclusion in Pharmacy Education) has brought together teams from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, CEU San Pablo in Spain, and University of Helsinki in Finland. The aim of the project? To improve pharmacy education by enhancing inclusiveness and cultural responsiveness.
The meeting’s goals were to help the teams from different universities get better acquainted with each other, introduce the different work packages within FPD-Include, and start planning the next steps for the project. The agenda for day 1 was filled with an introduction to the project, followed by presentations from participating universities and the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, which manages the Erasmus+ funding the project received. The day was finished with a lovely dinner of Norwegian cuisine in a local restaurant. On day 2, we started working with the communication strategy and outlining the next steps for the project.
The first major part of the project will be a needs assessment and analysis, carried out by the Utrecht University team, which already has strong background in EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) in university education. Following that, a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) for pharmacy educators will be run by the team at CEU San Pablo, who have experience in organising several COILs. In the last part of the program, coordinated by the University of Helsinki team with strong digitalisation skills, the outcomes of the earlier stages will be used to build a Toolkit of resources to aid educators in bringing inclusion into their teaching.
As students are key partners when it comes to all educational matters, they are naturally also included (pun not intended) in the project. Local students in the five year master’s program in pharmacy spoke of their studies and their hopes for the next three years of working together. Students will also be participating in the project moving forward, both working on the project and providing their insight in the form of questionnaires used to map out current viewpoints and needs regarding inclusion.
While Bergen’s unpredictable weather was not fully on our side this time - the storm Ingunn battered Norway on the second day of the meeting, and a sightseeing walk had to be cancelled due to heavy rain - the kick-off was considered a success and the participants enjoyed the warm atmosphere. Perhaps the sightseeing can be re-scheduled for May, when many of the participants return to Bergen for the EAFP (European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy) annual conference and FPD-Include’s next in-person meeting.
For more information about the FPD-Include Project, please contact the project leader:
Mirey Alfarah
mirey.alfarah@uib.no
