Walking the City – Streets Online Erasmus Project

Project Title

Walking the City – Streets Online

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 : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Context
Promoting educational mobility has been in the core of European policies since the inception of the EU. Open borders for students within the EU creating possibilities for intellectual exchanges, intercultural learning and the development of a trans-European identity amongst the young generations have been in the centre of the European vision. Amongst other things, the Covid19 pandemic has disrupted this common sense together with its practice.

Covid, besides limiting occasions for transnational travel, also upset teaching and learning habits, for the worst or the best. The whole education system had to adapt to online teaching in a very short time. Many teachers and even many students consider online teaching as a necessary evil, opposing it to traditional learning forms in an either-or manner, instead of envisaging exciting possibilities of hybrid teaching.

Objectives
With this project, we intend to support learners and teachers to adapt to online teaching in a playful and pedagogically rich manner. We will create a methodological package addressed to teachers, based on the experience of designing, implementing and testing of a special pedagogical program, combining online and offline methods.

This program will offer a virtual study abroad experience for students. The partnership will implement it in a small scale format in order to test and standardize it for future more wide-scale use.
With the collaborating teachers, we will create the institutional and pedagogical frame of the program and its curriculum.
We will implement a one-semester long virtual student exchange, involving student groups in host-visitor relations, connecting them across internal European borders.
We will document our program in a way to produce a manual for future users (teachers, trainers or youth workers).
Our study abroad program will be thematic. Participating student groups will learn to read the urban space from the point of view of different scientific and artistic disciplines, from an international team of teachers. They will also learn how to conduct a small scale, collaborative research project and how to create creative and artistic representations from their research results. Students will work in small, mixed research teams which will foster the development of intercultural competency, leadership, communication and cooperative skills.

Methodology
The learning experience we create will involve on-line and off-line field-work, desk research and different mapping exercises. In the pilot program, 3 groups of students would participate from 3 different European countries. Throughout the semester, students will attend classes in urban studies and qualitative methodology, including artistic methods. They will also be prepared to conduct real-life and virtual fieldwork in small thematic research teams under the supervision of local teachers. Students in host countries will act as guides and co-researchers next to their visiting peers. For each student group, the program will consist of 1-month preparation, 1 month hosting and 2 months virtual visit and fieldwork in 2 different countries.

Activities
IO1
Preliminary research: innovative use of digital platforms for collaborative learning in tertiary education, including tools supporting student mobility
IO2
Modulable curriculum for involving students in online study abroad programs.
IO3
Case study: setting up, document and evaluate the pilot project.
IO4 On the bases of IO3 creating a teachers’ manual for practising teachers

Other activities:
Dissemination: multiplier event offline and online
Blended mobility for partners in the form of joint staff training
Participants
In the pilot program, we will involve directly 24 students and 12 teachers. Our dissemination and multiplier activities will reach directly at least 120-180 professionals, indirectly we will reach at least 10 000 stakeholders.

Proposed results
As a result of their participation and of the project, students will have developed their cooperative and intercultural skills, will be able to combine online and offline methods for learning and will learn how to conduct collaborative research. Teachers will have developed their digital competences and will be motivated to create and deliver blended pedagogical programs

Longer benefits
As a longer-term benefit, personal, professional and institutional relations will be reinforced between the 3 participating countries. Professionals of education will have more facility and confidence to experiment with blended teaching methods and the pedagogical format of virtual study abroad program will have gained legitimacy and popularity in the Europeans higher education landscape, complementing the traditional student exchange schemes. The introduction of this new format will help students, teachers and institutions to face the challenges caused by the new circumstances triggered by the pandemic.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 202863 Eur

Project Coordinator

ARTEMISSZIÓ ALAPÍTVÁNY & Country: HU

Project Partners

• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS
• UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID
• EOTVOS LORAND TUDOMANYEGYETEM