WIthin the initiatives connected to the T4EU Project, Saturday, October the 22nd, the students of two partner Universities held an initiative for which they had started working a few months ago.
The international conference, entitled “Life in Original Language”, aimed at highlighting the incredible life experiences that language knowledge can bring you.
Three speakers from USaar (Lukas Redemann), SISSA (Nadia Bersier) and Units (Francesca Di Rosso) spoke about how they lived abroad, learned each time the local language, and how enriching it was to seek understanding between cultures.
But their message about multilingualism would have been less strong, if they hadn’t spoken each in their language (German, French and Italian), simultaneously interpreted by the students of the Studies Section in Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste.
A special award goes to the Student Group “Trieste Interpreting Practice”, which launched the project and organized the whole event, granted by the University of Trieste and University of Saarland under the flag of the T4EU Alliance.
Margherita Giordano, T4EU Student Ambassador from Trieste comments:
“As a language student, it was really interesting to hear how foreign languages can play an important role in the lives of people who use them on a daily basis as a way to communicate, rather than as the main element of their jobs or studies.
It was also very useful to learn more about the job of interpreters, and I found it fascinating to listen to them as they interpreted simultaneously.”
Multilingualism and Multiculturalism are indeed a corner stone in the Transform4Europe European University Project and are also part of one of the 3 key actions of the European Students Assembly.
In taking the initiative, the students of the partner Universities showed that these are not empty words and that they are ready to live up to it.
This year, Transform4Europe Alliance hosted
its first Innovative Teaching Award for all Alliance members. The
purpose of this award was to identify, acknowledge and recognize
innovative teaching practices and to provide opportunities not only for sharing
and exchanging best examples but also to encourage cooperation between the
Higher Education Institutions of the Transform4Europe alliance.
The applications were evaluated, and a
mixed committee selected the winners. The Selection Committee was composed of 7
representatives (one member per institution) and included teaching staff
members, students or independent experts (stakeholders, etc.).
The awards consist of 2500 € each for the
realization of innovative or creative teaching projects (4 awards). The next
round of applications will be announced in 2023.
The four winners will be presented their awards during the first annual
Transform4Europe international Conference-hackathon for Innovative Teaching and
Learning Methods in Higher Education on 24 October 2022. You can check the full
conference programme here.
Best-rated
Innovative Teaching ideas:
1) Educational Escape Room
Monika Frania from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland
The optional Educational Escape Room course
is an example of good didactic practice for teaching adults, where education
meets fun. Participants, divided into project teams, deepen their digital
skills and social competencies, taking part in an adventure during which they
not only solve puzzles but have to create their escape room. For this, one needs
knowledge, creativity, and determination. In education, overcoming difficulties
is essential, and the escape room is an example of a challenge.
2) Critical Thinking and the Digital
Gender Divide: Transforming Students’ Mindset for a Better Future
María D. De-Juan-Vigaray and María Elena González Gascón from the University of
Alicante, Spain
The purpose of this good practice is to discover whether
Active Learning methodology, using different technologies, contributes to
improving the Critical Thinking of the student body, applying it to the Digital
Gender Divide. The importance of the practice becomes relevant in the context
of European higher transformation to students of the Business Administration
programme in their final semester of studies, who are about to become
professionals entering the labour market.
3) Intensive Care Medicine and Pain
Therapy
Tobias Hüppe and Department of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine and
Pain Therapy from Saarland University, Germany
“Masterclass: Intensive Care
Medicine” is offered synchronously as an interactive live event. The 15
seminars (120 min each) are given by fifteen internationally experienced
intensivists and include the topics of Shock and Resuscitation – Cardiac
Disease – Respiratory Disease – Renal Disease – Infectious Disease – Surgical –
Medical Ethics in ICU. The course includes clinical case scenarios,
ventilator curves and biochemistry, blended learning with a video-based visit
to the intensive care unit, principles and content of evidence-based critical
care medicine and an online final exam. Live demonstrations of intensive care
interventions (intubation, bronchoscopy, thoracic drainage installation,
cannulation of an ECMO, etc. on cadaver preparations) are intended to convey
the practical elements of intensive care medicine.
4) Visible Interactive Speaker for
International Best Learning Experience Marcel Lauterbach from Saarland University, Germany
Programming skills for data analysis are
taught in an international online class to interdisciplinary students from six
universities. The class uses a virtual webcam to make the lecturer visible in
the PowerPoint slides, which creates a personal link with the students. Using a
“virtual webcam” that overlays PowerPoint and the webcam, the
presenter becomes visible IN the slides, not in a separate small window. Exercises
with personal tutoring in breakout sessions give immediate feedback to the
students, and in-class discussions with them contribute to community building
and inclusion.
A delegation of our University is in Kaunas to attend the conference and taking
part to the workshops:
Prof. Giovanni Bacaro gives the lecture: “How
to “game” the system through the promotion of inclusive student-built
game-based frameworks in STEM subjects.”
Professors Valentina Bologna, Elena
Bortolotti, Francesco Longo, Renata Longo, Maria Peressi, Paolo Sorzio are
giving the lecture: “Including students with learning disorders in Physics
Higher Education.”
And Professors Alessandro Carrieri, Tullia
Catalan, Roberta Altin will take part at the Transform4europe International
Conference-Hackathon for INNO-METHODS Workshop
We will hold the Trieste Regional Policy Roundtable on 3rd October 2022 from 5pm to 7pm.The title of this event will be: T4ERI and social inclusion through museums in border areas: the new ICOM 2022 definition.
This roundtable reflects the will to discuss how, and to what extent, our region can implement the new definition of ‘inclusive’, as recently established by ICOM, the International Council of Museums, in Prague.
The content of the roundtable is well illustrated by the following sentence: “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”
The event, moderated by Prof. Roberta Altin and Prof.
Tullia Catalan from the University of Trieste, will be divided into two parts:
1st part: prof. Catherine Brice of the Paris-Est Créteil University and Dr. Mario Buletic, Curator of the Ethnographic Museum of Istria, in Pazin (Croatia) will introduce the topic of the roundtable;
2nd part: stakeholders will engage in a debate around the new definition of ‘participative museum’, as defined by ICOM, starting from questions by the moderators.
The following Stakeholders have been invited:
ERPAC (Regional Body for Cultural and Artistic Heritage)
The Transform4Europe
Alliance aims to ease the experience of visiting students by establishing the
Student Ambassador Programme, which provides them with “buddies” to welcome,
foster, and support them during their mobility.
The Ambassadors are outstanding
students from the home university, with a good knowledge of the city, the
university, the Transform4Europe Alliance, and of more than one language.
Let’s get to know the
University of Trieste’s new Student Ambassadors:
Margherita Giordano is a bachelor degree student in modern
language translation and the current president of ESN Trieste. She is also
involved in ESN Italy and she has had several other international and
volunteering experiences. As a language student, she is very keen on
getting in touch with different cultures and practicing foreign languages, and
she hopes that the Student Ambassador Programme will allow her to do just that.
Solange Lazzaro is also
a language student, specializing in Spanish and German. As for her
international experiences, she spent some time in England and Spain when she
was in high school, while during her university studies she became a member of
ESN Trieste. She hopes that the Student Ambassador Programme will help her meet
new people and get to know their languages and cultures.
Nurah Omar studies
Translation and Law and has two great passions: languages and volunteering. She
already speaks six languages, but she is always looking for new ones to learn.
She has a rich baggage of volunteering experiences, that range from helping
refugee children to assisting victims of domestic violence. At the moment, she
also organizes events for the Islamic Cultural Centre of Trieste as well as for
ESN Trieste, and she is very excited about her new role as a Student
Ambassador!
The Transform4Europe Alliance has developed various innovative training materials as short online training units (webinars).
The training sessions will be launched in May-June 2022.
The webinars will cater to and foster various skills of every academic and non-academic staff member from across the Alliance. The list of available webinars, including the registration form, is below:
The University of Trieste will be attending the Transform4Europe weeek held in Katowice, Poland.
A delegation of 34 people, made up of students, professors and technical-administrative staff, will be present in Katowice, city of the Silesian University hosting the event, from 9th to 13th May. All 7 universities of the Alliance will take part in a rich programme of debates, workshops and joint research projects.
Professor Pallavicini, the Rector’s delegate for internationalisation and contact person for the Transform4 Europe project, comments: “This event is a unique opportunity, not olny for educational purposes, but also for networking, as all the people who remotely worked together for over a year, will finally have the chance to meet in person. Next year, the University of Trieste is going to host the second edition of the Transform4Europe week.”
The Transform4Europe alliance wants to help the actual and prospect European students attending our universities to acquire an entrepreneurial mindset useful to prepare them to face the complexity of the global challenges (digitalization, sustainability, circularity, etc).
To this aim, the alliance is organizing International Visiting Lectureship For Entrepreneurs And Practitioners, where an entrepreneur or a practitioner will present his/her experience at the University of Silesia in Katowice during the first Transform4Europe week. He/She will hold three lectures for different audiences highlighting the different perspectives: a general lecture for the students, a specific lecture for the teaching staff and an open lecture for the citizenship.
The selection of a lecturer will be based on the assessment of the curriculum vitae and an interview also the applicants will submit their application by e-mail within the deadline of April 11th to the address: transform4europe@us.edu.pl
We invite you to watch twelve short movies with elements of animation in which sixteen scientists talk about research conducted individually or in teams at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Silesia in Katowice.
Please take a moment to watch the short videos: the scientists present the latest research conducted at the Faculty and talk about their scientific fascinations. In this way, they want to invite humanists from Transform4Europe universities to cooperate.
They are interested in cooperation with centres, teams and individual researchers representing six disciplines:
philosophy
culture and religion studies
literary studies
linguistics
history
arts studies
The movie material prepared in English, French and German creates the possibility of dialogue and exchange of views, as well as establishing permanent cooperation with centres, teams and individual researchers from around the world.
Below is the list of aid measures in place for academic communities provided by all members of our alliance.
ITALY | THE UNIVERSITY OF TRIESTE
In collaboration with the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Authority, the Universities of Trieste, Udine and SISSA – International School for Advanced Studies are preparing to welcome Ukrainian students and researchers and support them through scholarships. In particular, regional universities make available up to 18 semesters for doctoral students or master degrees for thesis preparation. Additional mobility grants for visiting faculty are available at SISSA :
The University of Trieste rector wrote a letter of support to Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian students: UniTS for peace | Università degli studi di Trieste
GERMANY | SAARLAND UNIVERSITY
Dormitory rooms for refugees (in Saarland e.g. 14 rooms directly given to Ukrainian refugees)
Donations (food and money) -> most used one, collective of big humanitarian organizations: Spendenkonto Nothilfe
Involve local Refugee Law Clinics, e.g. to help refugees to be part of the society in case they would like to stay for a long period of time or forever
Lectures about Asylum Law open for every student
Offering extra and free language courses to Ukrainian Nationals
Emergency fund open to everyone in need (in preparation)
Establishing local coordinators (on municipal level and university level)
Helplines with speakers of Russian/Ukrainian as mother tongue
International Office is offering “Student Jobs” especially for students of crisis-stricken countries
Extension of stay and scholarships for exchange students and staff
SPAIN|THE UNIVERSITY OF ALICANTE
The University of Alicante has set up an institutional working group to help Ukraine, made up of the vice-rectors responsible for International Relations, Social Responsibility, Students and Culture, with the aim of joining forces and preparing a global aid programme in view of the forthcoming arrival of refugees from Ukraine to Alicante, given the state of war in the country. More info
ESTONIA|ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
Estonian Academy of Arts offers Ukrainian students free study opportunities at our four faculties of Fine Arts, Design, Architecture, and Art Culture until the situation in their country stabilizes.
EKA opened Ukraine student fund, which helps students to get their starting grant
It also offers help with the transportation to Estonia, finding a place to stay and food
There is currently a physical spot open at the Institution where people can donate goods to support those in need
POLAND | THE UNIVERSITY OF SILESIA
Fundraiser organized by the University of Silesia to help both the students who came to UniSil prior to the war and their families, and those who arrived at the University during the last days and will continue to arrive. Please find the details here: Fundraiser for urgent needs of Ukrainian students and their families | Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach. Here is the direct link to the fundraiser. All of the money is used directly to support the students and their families. I assure you that no penny is lost on the way
Fundraiser organized by the Polish Humanitarian Action. They support both the Ukrainians who stay in Ukraine and those who left Ukraine and are in Poland. They are acting directly both in Ukraine and Poland. More information
No semester fees for Ukrainian students at UniSIl
Flexibility or even suspension of students’ obligations (extension of exam session, excuse of all absences, possibility to participate in classes online, short-term leaves)
Student volunteers helping the students to deal with anything
Offering extra and free language courses to all Ukrainian Nationals at UniSil
Offering free accommodation to Ukrainian students at the University dorms
Offering accommodation and support to students who had been studying in Ukraine before the war started and fled to Poland, Katowice
Psychological support at the University
Legal support at the University
Financial aid to Ukrainian students
Collecting most essential products at the University (for Ukraine, for refugees, and students: medicaments, clothes for refugees, even products for Ukrainian pets and animals)
Different kinds of lectures on how we can help our Ukrainian neighbours to deal with the situation
BULGARIA | SOFIA UNIVERSITY DT. KLIMENT OHRIDSKI
Indefinite extension of stay in university dorms for Ukrainian students
Canteen and cafeteria offering free food to Ukrainians
Official information about the situation shared on the University website
VMU has admitted new students from Ukraine and provided accommodation in the university dormitories for them or their families.
Ukrainian students are given scholarships, covering their accommodation, settlement needs, and other expenses.
Many partner companies and stakeholders of VMU offer jobs and internships to Ukrainian students and/or their relatives.
The VMU staff organizes various charity campaigns to collect relief supplies for Ukrainian students and tries to support them in any possible way.
The VMU community, institutionally and individually – students, academic and non-academic staff alike – demonstrate their faith in being “Strong together”, calling for fundraising, organizing relief actions, providing accommodation, offering psychological support.
In 2020, VMU established a support fund dedicated to students who suffered from repression by the Belarusian government. Now, this fund will also support students who suffered from military operations in Ukraine. The university is also prepared to welcome students and lecturers who are fleeing from war in Ukraine. More information: support@vdu.lt
Invitation to sign a petition against war crimes organized by the Ukrainian World Congress. The petition, which aims to stop war crimes, can be found here.
