About
The IPEDU Project
IPEDU is a project aimed at introducing education in the field of Intellectual Property, in the curriculum of technical Universities, through training the teaching, support staff and librarians in IP. There is much that Europe can do to promote IP education in younger generations. IP education should not only mean awareness of the IP rights themselves, but also better knowledge of managing them in contracts and agreements. Better education regarding knowledge-based assets and better knowledge of the innovation support system are vital for lifelong learning and the Knowledge Economy.
The objectives of the IPEDU Project are to set out and forecast the needs of the labour market in the field of Intellectual Property and to develop relevant learning methodologies, to identify the gap between skills acquired in higher education and the demands of the real labour market, to identify and implement best practices and to design methods for the protection of Industrial Property.
The main objectives of the IPEDU Project are:
1. To improve the current state of education in the field of Intellectual Property;
2. To strengthen the cooperation between universities and the business environment, to facilitate the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge in the field of Industrial Property protection;
3. To correlate the curricula in the field of Industrial Property Law with the concrete needs of the labour market;
4. To reduce the significant differences in the curricula of the Industrial Property courses, both at national and European level;
5. To introduce education in the field of Industrial Property Law to technical faculties;
6. To contribute to the professional development of teaching staff and support staff (librarians), in the field of Industrial Property Law, through Short-term joint staff training events.
The IPEDU project will develop innovative teaching tools, which will help the staff to acquire the skills and competencies needed to deliver courses, in the field of Intellectual Property, to students at technical universities. Moreover, the role of university libraries will be crucial in this project, as they will host Resource Centres for Intellectual Property, and the partners involved will draft a Guide for setting up and equipping these centres. The support staff will be trained so that to organize resource centres in the field of Intellectual Property in libraries, to source bibliographic resources and to train library users in the essential components of IP.
Project Leader
Jerald Cavanagh
Jerald Cavanagh BSc Econ, MSc, MA is Director of Library Services at Limerick Institute of Technology, Limerick, Ireland and Project Leader of the IPEDU project.
Jerald is a librarian by profession and has qualifications to Master's Level, including MA in Educational Planning and Management (Honours) from the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) UNESCO, Paris as well as MSc in Learning Technologies (Honours) (2005) from the National College of Ireland (NCI) and a Post graduate qualification in e-Learning. He has a BSc Econ in Information and Library studies from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
He is Project Leader of several large-scale European Union funded projects. These include major international projects involving the capacity building and modernisation of libraries and the development of Information Literacy in regions such as the EU, Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, China, Russia, and Central Asia, among others.
Jerald is currently finalising his Doctorate with City University of London UK, which explores the long-term impact of EU funded projects. His interest in impact evaluation and the importance of measuring impact contribution stems from his long association with managing projects.