CHARM-EU (Challenge-driven, Accessible, Research-Based and Mobile European University) is an alliance of nine European universities providing an innovative model for European higher education in line with European Values, the European Green Deal and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  The alliance offers a unique Master program in sustainability, accredited simultaneously by multiple European universities under the framework of European University Alliances and jointly managed by the member universities addressing transdisciplinary real-world problems and collaborating with business, industry, and policymakers.  (CHARM-EU n.d.)

The CHARM-EU Master program is tailored for a diverse range of students, from various academic and professional backgrounds.  Using inclusive teaching practices, CHARM-EU Master fosters collaboration between staff and students from diverse backgrounds to strengthen the links between education, research, and innovation.

During Master program students have the opportunity to study at up to three of our partner universities, enhancing their international profile, intercultural competence, and global skills. The closing semester of Master program is the Capstone phase when teams of three to five students collaborate with external stakeholders—including local businesses, international organizations, NGOs, and research centers— to enhance their professional development and employability in the different fields of sustainability.

Both external stakeholders and academics can submit a challenge for the Capstone phase that they would like to collaborate on with students.  Outputs from the Capstone can include scientific analyses; business models; policy briefs or recommendations; media campaigns; communication materials; and software, methods, tools or prototypes.  (CHARM-EU 2023). Proposals for Capstone projects are presented to students by supervisors and external stakeholders. The students make a pre-selection of three topics that aroused their interest and the colleagues responsible for the Capstone phase organise the teams of students who will work on each project.

A Capstone project lasts six months when student teams collaborate with academics and external stakeholders to identify, analyse and address sustainability challenges. In doing so, they creatively devise robust, adaptable, ethical and sustainable solutions for these challenges.

In our research, we have investigated two Capstone teams’ experiences. The teams have worked on two groundwater-related projects offered by the ELTE- Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The rationale behind these projects is that one of the most obvious signs of climate change can be traced down to the changing water cycle. The growing frequency and volume of floods, droughts and torrential rains and their consequences made it obvious that we need to change both the water-handling strategies and civilian attitudes to water supply, and waste-water management. In the case of globalised cities, built on rivers, like Budapest, these water events are not only an issue of hydrogeology, but also a sustainable management issue (Czauner et al 2022.), including creative solutions and innovations like the Hungarian/ELTE patented nature-based managed aquifer recharge (NB-MAR) solution and their education-promotion, raising academic and public awareness of the innovative technologies. 

Two Capstone teams, each consisting of four students worked on two different aspects of the groundwater management of Budapest. One team focused on the thermal waters of Budapest. The other team focused on the river bank filtration as an NB-MAR solution for drinking water production. 

In our presented research we investigated the following main research questions:

How could natural and social sciences cooperate to tackle groundwater issues? What could be the master students’ role in this process?

How could intercultural differences be bridged during a Capstone project?

What are the advantages and challenges of an international, interdisciplinary challenge-based student team working on groundwater issues?

In order to answer our research questions, we have chosen a qualitative method as our main aim is to reveal the patterns and the emerging connections and interactions between the different aspects and stakeholders of our very complex research subject and to collect illustrative examples for the some of the most prominent outcomes. To this end we have conduct document analyses based on General Inductive Approach (Thomas, 2006) on students assignments, evaluation documents, documentations of communications. The analysed student’s assignments documents included: individual and team level written assignments, including self-reflection from Capstone students’ teams. Students’ assignments included project proposals, self-reflection reports, individual and team research reports and final reports including the description of final product of the team. The research team also analysed the following evaluation documents: written feedbacks from scientific supervisors, second readers, peers and external stakeholders. Feedback was provided in structural way using Scorion system which is widely used in different education setting (Van Helden et al. 2023). Finally, the documents of communication included the analyses involved: e-mails, Teams chats between the external stakeholders and the Capstone teams, meeting invitations, meeting transcripts and meeting minutes. To analyse the document main categories were defined regarding the above presented research questions and. Further steps of the analyses will be based on Thomas’ (2006) methods. Frist category labels, short category descriptions will be developed and texts associated with the category will be selected to illustrate the main meanings, associations, and perspectives associated with the category. Finally by describing links between the categories a model will be developed to summarize the findings of the research.

The main categories of the analyses were defined according to the three research questions as presented below: How could natural and social sciences co-operate to tackle groundwater issues? What could be master students’ role in this process? Theme: Catalysator Capstone projects catalysed the complexity of stakeholders’ work Theme: Integrator The projects led to the better integration of work of different departments (e.g technical and marketing) of stakeholders How could intercultural differences be bridged during a Capstone project? Theme: preconceptions The role of cultural preconceptions and the ways to tackle them were frequent elements of students’ self-reflections. Theme: Ethical issues Navigating through the diverse ethical procedures of different universities and external stakeholders increased the complexity of the challenges significantly. What are the advantages and challenges of an international, interdisciplinary challenge-based student team work on groundwater issues? Theme: Interculturality Students, stakeholders and instructors also expressed the advantages of the intercultural environment which is an immanent feature of the Capstone project. Fresh insights from different cultures lead to new innovative ideas related to the projects. Theme: Synergies The different disciplinary backgrounds of students within a project group allowed us to run research and develop products using complex approaches based on social and natural science methods at the same time. Theme: time constraint: The relatively short timeframe (six months) led to the contradiction between the tight schedule and the intended complexity of the feedback, in some cases the lack of time prevented to use of all feedback to improve the next phase of the work. Theme: Assessment challenges The main challenge of the assessment system was the search for a balance between detailed academic feedback and targeted professional advice.

CHARM-EU. (n.d). Master’s in Global Challenges for Sustainability https://charm-eu.eu/learning/educational-offer/master-programme/ CHARM-EU. (2023). Become part of the Capstone! https://charm-eu.eu/become-part-capstone-1/ Czauner, B., Erőss, A., Szkolnikovics-Simon, S., Markó, Á., Baják, P., Trásy-Havril, T., ... & Mádl-Szőnyi, J. (2022). From basin-scale groundwater flow to integrated geofluid research in the hydrogeology research group of Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary. Journal of Hydrology X, 17, 100142. Thomas, D. R. (2006). A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. American journal of evaluation, 27(2), 237-246. Van Helden, G., Van Der Werf, V., Saunders-Smits, G. N., & Specht, M. M. (2023). The Use of Digital Peer Assessment in Higher Education—An Umbrella Review of Literature. IEEE Access, 11, 22948-22960.