International students meet at the UAB for the end of the «Intercultural competences» micro-module

The objective of the course was to help students develop their intercultural competences, a high necessary skil in the professional life of any student, by working on three main components: a project on Citizen Science, different meetings with experts, and reflections on the topic of interest with the help of coach.

Students from Kaunas (Lithuania), Twente (the Netherlands) and Stavanger (Norway), after having taking several online theoretical classes these past few months, were able to meet face-to-face and bring their ideas together, while also discovering Barcelona and its local culture in order to prepare the final project for their micro-module.

The students travelling to the UAB were also able to participate in a variety of workshops, such as one on Citizen Science of the BiciZen project of the ICTA UAB, one on Catalan and Spanish culture at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, coordinated by lecturer Laura Santamaria, one of the CSI-COP project “Citizen Scientists Investigating Cookies and App GDPR” at the COMTEC hall of the Communications Library and General Newspaper Archive and, finally, a visit to the UAB’s different OpenLabs.

At the end of the week, the diferent groups presented their idees for their final project, which consisted in creating a journal on the intercultural knowledge they had acquired during their stay in Barcelona. There was also a final debate among students, coaches and experts on the experience and the aspects that should be taken into account in future editions.

“Intercultural Competences: Guiding Practical Insights through Citizen Science” (ICCS) is the first micro-module with a one-week stay in Barcelona to be offered to students enrolled at universities that are members of the ECIU University.

New micro-modules and challenges

UAB students can also participate in future stays offered abroad and live the experience thanks to the ECIU University, which offers a large variety of challenges and micro-modules.

At the present, there are 8 new micro-modules, four of which are offered at the UAB: “Citizen Science, a Practical Approach for Methods and Tools”, in which public participation in science, participative data supplying, volunteering, etc. Is explored; “Gender as a Cross-cutting Tool for Understanding, Diagnosing, and Solving Challenges”, in which students can identify and understand the key concepts of feminist thought and how to apply the gender and queer perspective to the analysis of social challenges, and “Language Studies - Catalan“ and “Language Studies – Spanish”, with different language levels to choose from.  

The ECIU University also offers five new challenge-based learning courses which are currently open for registration: The Sustainable Wine Race and The Flowers Gourmet Hackathon, offered by the University of Trento; School education on conscious consumption and waste disposal and Consumer Digital Engagement for Energy Sustainability, offered by Kaunas University of Technology; and Innovative Entrepreneurship at the Linköping University.