Research and Innovation Centre
At Dania, we integrate knowledge and the most current trends in our educational programmes. Also, we include new and relevant knowledge that comes from in-depth research.
Lecturers play an important role in the Academy's research and development practices. In cooperation with our students, our lecturers participate in development projects and work closely with businesses.
Dania's research centres
The research center cooperates with external stakeholders, companies, and organisations while simultaneously involving our educational programmes, in order to link newly acquired knowledge with practice. The end result: providing the business world with highly-trained graduates, who can confidently apply their theoretical knowledge into practice.
Academic Environments
Dania Academy's academic environment has a specific academic focus, providing our institution with particular qualifications. Our focus lies in using recent knowledge and maintaining high academic standards.
The Optometry Research Programme
There is ongoing research and project work in our professional bachelor's degree in Optometry. The academic environment connected to the Optometry education covers research and development projects, as well as cooperation with partner universities. For instance, Dania and Aarhus University Hospital cooperate on a project concerning the sight checking of schoolchildren. Since 2008, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th graders have been offered a sight check every year, performed by our optometry graduates. Should the sight check show any problems, the child is offered an extensive sight check at the school of optometry with a subsequent recommendation of treatment. The Department of Ophthalmology at Aarhus University Hospital is involved in the project and, today, lecturers at the school of Optometry describe a long-running research project in which the main research topics are:
- the occurrence of sight complications
- to what degree do schoolchildren grow out-of-sight complications at different ages
- if the occurrence of sight complications is statistically significant among schoolchildren with reading disabilities compared to schoolchildren without reading disabilities
- the effect of treatment of sight complications in clinical trials, if the sight complications are statistically associated with reading disabilities
The School of Optometry helps the visually impaired in Norddjurs-, Syddjurs-, Favreskov- and Randers council.
Help for disabled people, including people who are visually impaired, is a job for the council. In 2010 the four councils; Norddjurs, Syddjurs, Favreskov, and Randers created a community called Synssamarbejde Midt, with the purpose of handling patient care for the visually impaired, instead of having to buy treatments and solutions in other councils. As the clinical collaborator, the clinic for the visually impaired at the School of Optometry was chosen to perform patient care. This means that people no longer have to travel to Aarhus or Glostrup in order to get help, but have the opportunity to be treated at Dania Academy in Randers.
The clinic for the visually impaired will perform other tasks too. Through the work done with patients, a vast amount of knowledge is gathered. This is then implemented into the lectures at the Academy, and used in academic articles on the subject. Therefore, the knowledge and experience gathered will help future patients. In addition, the clinic researches new ways to help the visually impaired, the late brain damaged, and mentally challenged.