Financial Agreement no. 2018-1-RO01-KA203-049309
The ENGAGE STUDENTS project focuses on social responsibility of higher education institutions at student and teacher level. Strengthening the social dimension in education has been an important European priority (COM(2006) 208 final, 2013/C 168/02), that has been accentuated even further by the Commission in the renewed EU agenda for Higher Education. Innovative curricula and teaching approaches are seen to contribute to reducing the current high-level skills gap between students and labour market needs. Especially the integration of extra-curricular experience into study programmes is identified as solution for enhancing students’ transversal skills, better preparing them for finding a job (COM(2017) 247 final).
The project general objective is to empower the social dimension of higher education by increasing its relevance for society through embedding service-learning as a common pedagogical approach within education and research practice. The project specific objectives are as follows:
- to explore the existing methodology of service-learning and other forms of community-related learning and research
- to develop a methodological toolkit and a pedagogical workbook to be used by teachers
- to build the critical mass of knowledge and resources in partner HEIs in order to foster the use of service learning and other community-related learning methodologies.
The methodology of the project follows a pedagogical approach with the main aim to strengthen didactic skills of educators to work with innovative teaching methods and to involve students into more practice-based projects:
IO1: Needs Analysis in local communities and web-tool (8 months) – including STAKEHOLDERS PHASE with E1-E6 National matching workshops with community stakeholders;
IO2: Service learning methodology toolkit (7 months)
IO3: Workbook “How to do service learning” (21 months) – including TEACHER TRAINING PHASE with C1: Teachers’ training week;
IO4: Study on students’ experiences with service learning (16 months) – SERVICE LEARNING PHASE, implementation of the service learning projects with students and teachers with C2: Summer School.
The ENGAGE STUDENTS Consortium integrates six partners with relevant expertise in university social responsibility, community engagement and service learning: University Politehnica of Bucharest (RO)- coordinator, University of Vienna (AT), Dublin City University (IRL), Kaunas University of Technology (LT), Universita degli studi di Roma La Sapienza (IT) and University of Porto (PT).
For more details, see http://engagestudents.eu/