Scientific innovation and research of GLOBAL HEALTH CHALLENGES Erasmus Project

Project Title

Scientific innovation and research of GLOBAL HEALTH CHALLENGES

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

This partnership between schools was aimed at combining several of the GOALS of UNESCO with the need for the EUROPEAN UNION to improve the INTEREST OF YOUTH IN SCIENTIFIC VOCATIONS and make them aware of global health challenges like Infectious diseases and vaccination, Global nutrition , Water and Genetic modification. This partnership aimed to achieve this through RESEARCH of the students themselves, guided by teachers.
Students were handed LARGE GLOBAL CHALLENGES in which they could choose their own specific field of RESEARCH. The differences in topics was wide during the three seminars. By cooperating with students from other countries they were able to COMPARE PERSPECTIVES and SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE AND COLLABORATE ON THIS RESEARCH.

Hence this project is called SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION AND RESEARCH OF GLOBAL HEALTH CHALLENGES.
This project was aimed at
– Increasing THE NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC VOCATIONS AND INTEREST IN SCIENCE, RESEARCH among the students involved in the project.
– Making students AWARE OF CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL ISSUES AND CHALLENGES according to the UNESCO 21st century education goal.
– Increasing the EXCELLENCE OF THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH skills of the students and of the projects in the school
– Spreading GOOD PRACTICES among the schools in RESEARCH SKILLS
– Sharing NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL ISSUES AND EXPERTISE to compare with each other and the EUROPEAN and GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE.
– Improving the LANGUAGE COMPETENCE of the students involved in the project.
– Increasing THE KNOWLEDGE of the involved TEACHERS of the educational good practices of other European countries by sharing expertise and co-assessing students websites and presentations.

Three schools took part in this project: Lorentz Lyceum, ( Arnhem, The Netherlands), Gladsaxe Gymnasium ( Copenhagen, Denmark) and Gymnazium Jana Papanka ( Bratislava, Slovakia). All three schools share in their mission-vision a broad perspective on internationalisation and all three have a great experience in innovation, research and collaboration projects.
All three schools are UNESCO-SCHOOLS , and incorporate the goals of UNESCO in their education.

In this project students carried out their research first through an electronic learning environment in 12 groups per year which each consists of 6 students, 2 from each country. This phase took about 3 months and in the end the results were shown on a website about the research as a product. You can see several examples on https://ydehaan.wixsite.com/erasmus-globalhealth/erasmus-project. Due to the new privacy rules the site is encrypted with the password Erasmus1618.

Each year the best 8 researches(48 students) per year met during the seminar, continued the research and presented the results at the end of the seminar.
To perform their research students also had to get in contact with EUROPEAN EXPERTS AND ORGANISATIONS on these GLOBAL HEALTH CHALLENGES like universities, local hospitals, the WHO, UNESCO, and the EUROPEAN UNION itself.
The 48 students had to present their research to a general audience in English, so they IMPROVED THEIR LANGUAGE COMPETENCE, their ABILITY TO EXPLAIN A SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE and their COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION SKILLS. To support this the students were given a presentation skills workshop and before the seminar they had class meetings discussing the cultural differences to consider while staying in the host families abroad.

For each school the project was integrated in the CURRICULUM and was therefore supported by SCIENTIFIC TEACHERS AND LESSONS. In the schools the students have to perform a FINAL RESEARCH at the end of their study to be able to proceed to UNIVERSITY. This project helped them develop the necessary skills to be able to do so successfully.
Teachers will cooperated to achieve a JOINED ASSESSMENT of the research. In this way teachers learned from each other’s assessment criteria. Together we formulated joined assessment criteria, which can be found at our website.

Each school hosted one of the seminars. Organizing such a large seminar was new to the involved teachers and turned out to be an informative experience. Several activities were organized to increase the students interest in science , such as masterclasses, workshops, scientific experiment museums etc.
During the seminar the teachers coached the students to achieve more and cooperate continuously with each other. The teachers guided them to reach pre-university levels in their scientific knowledge and to develop their communication skills to overcome cultural differences in the group work.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 107300 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lorentz Lyceum 20TZ & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Gymnazium Jana Papanka
• Gladsaxe Gymnasium