BEST: The Regional Meeting experience

Last weekend I went to Coimbra, in Portugal, for an internal BEST event, in this case, to a regional meeting - an event that gathered all the local BEST groups of a specific region.

Even knowing that my English it’s not so great as I would like, I was crazy enough to go as EDU-ID (BEST Educational Department) delegate, where my role would be facilitate and deliver some sessions about the work developed within the department.

Apart the material missing, the first session it was "okay" and was about the process of writing a paper, since we (department) receive the outcomes and the reports of some events (related with education), until we attend a conference, in order to present our work. Because I wasn't understanding the standard case study that I was supposed to deliver, I decided to change it for something that I was familiar with. In other words, I applied the knowledge acquired on the Erasmus+ TC (training course), in Czech Republic, about storytelling.

Using the Hero’s journey, also known as The Monomyth, I split up some papers all around the room with different stages of the journey. In each stage, there were a sentence of a movie, with the aim of contextualize the participants about what was happening in that moment of the story. At the same time, I was doing a parallelism between the passage of the movie and the work that a paper team is supposedly doing at that moment.

Maybe because I’m still lacking in English skills, the message wasn’t transmitted as I would like, however the session it was quite nice. It was the first time that I used this technique, which allowed me to see her potential as a facilitation tool. This way, I’m quite sure that I’m going to use it again.

                   

This session was followed by a discussion group that happened in the next day. The participants were quite amazing, they were very active, which was felt through the quantity of distinct points of view that were shared. 

After 2 days just speaking English, my confidence increased a lot, however in my last session everything fell apart. The last session was quite terrible (at least the beginning). For some reason, I got too nervous and my pronunciation disappeared completely, which was really scary. Once that I was sure that I hadn’t been able to transmit the message, I asked the participants to organize a Local Event on Education (LEoE) as they were doing it in their LBGs (local group). In the end, they had to present their work and give feedback to the other groups. This way, I allowed myself to make sure that they were understanding how to plan an event like this one.

As conclusion, I’m just happy that I went to the TC in the Summer, it allowed me to learn a lot of techniques and exercises that can be used during all the kind of workshops. About this regional meeting in Coimbra, it wasn’t perfect (or I should say I wasn’t perfect), I still have to improve myself in some many ways, however it was an amazing experience, allowed me to evaluate my skills and analyse my progress. In other words, my English, my facilitating skills and the tools that I know now aren't the same as when I began the EBEC Study, or when I was in Denmark as a facilitator, which is quite satisfactory. 

*I've to say that going to this type of experiences is allowing me to meet wonderful people. In this case, it was a pleasure to meet the portuguese neighbours (from Madrid). 

All the hero's managed to finish the session!!!

BEST: Speaking about Higher Education, Attractiveness of Engineering Degrees

Three weeks ago I went to Copenhagen (Denmark) in order to facilitate a course about higher education. It was an amazing experience! Unfornately, it showed me that I still need to improve my English skills. However, if I exclude this fact, I couldn’t be happier about the outcomes that we got during this course (we were 4 facilitators).

The topics that we approached were (i) attractiveness of engineering degrees, (ii) self-direct learning and (iii) the role of the professor in higher education. Because I was responsible for the first topic attractiveness of engineering courses, it’s the one that I can speak the most. This theme it was divided in 3 sessions: (a) Interdisciplinary Curricula, (b) Learning Techniques and (c) The role of the engineer.

Attractiveness of Engineering Degrees approach the fact that young people tend to pick other degrees rather natural sciences or engineering degrees. For example, the quantity of women’s picking engineering it's very low, usually they're more interested in social sciences, economics or areas where they can deal directly with other people. Due to this, during these sessions we tried to answer the question: “what can we do to invert this scenario?”.

There are different measures that can be taken to change this scenario, during the first session we discussed the one that it’s been proven as having more impact, her name it was “Interdisciplinary Curricula”. It approached the fact that, the creation of a curricula that embraces subjects as technical sociology, entrepreneurship, economics and languages, it’s attracting more students (female and male) than a mono studies engineering curricula. The world is not just mathematics or physics, through the creation of an interdisciplinary degree, the students have the opportunity to understand how all these different fields of studies can be related in a real world situation.

In the second session we discussed, according to their impact, the measure that follows “the creation of an interdisciplinary curricula”, which was “Learning Techniques”. The students tend to pick degrees and subjects that are more dynamic, which can be achieved by using innovative learning techniques and teaching methods. Are examples of learning techniques: brainstorming, six thinking hats and presentations. On the other hand, when we speak about teaching methods, we are discussing topics such as problem based learning or self-direct learning.

In order to finish this cycle, the last session it was about the engineer role in the society. Depending on the country where we live, the way that society see the engineering roles is different. The reputation of an engineering profession it's different from country to country. The same happen with the salary or the employability. All these 3 indicators are affecting the quantity of people that are enrolling in engineering degrees.

These were the themes that we discussed under the topic Attractiveness of Engineering Degrees. In the next days, I want to write about the other 2. However, because it wasn't me that prepared those topics, before writting about them I need to get some more informations.

Of course that this experience it wasn't just about facilitation!