Teach the EU through Collaborative and Student-Centered Learning

Course description

By explaining the European context students live in, and teaching about the process of integration of the European Union and the functioning of its institutions, schoolteachers can raise student awareness about the complexity of issues such as the immigration crisis and climate change and bring up conscious European citizens.

The course aims to help teachers in this challenge by suggesting engaging strategies and tools based on the Student-Centered approach and Collaborative learning. Both methodologies focus on student ownership of their learning, although Student-Centered Learning focuses on students’ autonomy while Collaborative learning requires students to work together.

The course will propose a variety of learning tools and activities to help the user understand how Student-Centered and Collaborative learning work in the classroom. In particular, it will dig deeper into the four Cs, task- and project-based learning, and warm-up activities.

Each module offers clear definitions, differences, and similarities among the proposed approaches, as well as exercises and activities that will familiarize the user with teaching about the European Union with Student-Centered and Collaborative learning methodologies.

Contents

The 4Cs and the Student-Centered Methodology

The module explains the fundamentals of Student-Centered Methodology and the four Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking. Moreover, it discusses how to structure an engaging lesson plan and how to choose the most appropriate EU topics for each lesson.

Teaching the EU through TBL and PBL

The module provides definitions and discussion about the principles of task- (TBL) and project-based learning (PBL). It explains how to design effective tasks and projects for either TBL or PBL. Finally, it provides many examples of TBL and PBL activities based on EU Topics.

Creating Appealing Warm-Up Activities to Potentialize Student Motivation

The module discusses what motivation is and how to keep it up by proposing engaging warm-up activities that focus on developing skills on EU democratic culture.

Summing up Active and Collaborative Learning Strategies

The module discusses further active and collaborative learning strategies that have not been introduced early in the course. Finally, it discusses the case study of the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) to exemplify how to conduct a workshop on EU material.

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