A Teamcher Reflects

Behind the students in the IVSCs are Teamchers, supporting and connecting and guiding the teams in their projects. As we make continued progress in the piloting of the IVSC across the five universities and over different timeframes, Europa-Universität’s Teamcher Andrea Stammerman reflects on the challenges the IVSC in Flensburg and Madrid faced this semester.

 

This semester’s Intercultural Virtual Societal Challenge (IVSC) was made up of four thematic sub-categories - Environment, Race, Gender, and Inclusion. While last year only covered three of them, this year we added the fourth - Inclusion. Two of the subjects (Environment and Race) were covered by Teamchers from the Universidad Complutense Madrid (UCM) while the Europa-Universität Flensburg teamched the other two. These two, Inclusion and Gender, were also the projects where students from EUF collaborated with students from UCM to create their video project at the end of the challenge. Unlike last year, where almost every group had an intercultural approach, we couldn’t do it this year around for the subjects of Environment and Race, where only students from UCM signed up. Originally, the plan was to also cooperate with the Univerzita Mateja Bela (UMB). Unfortunately, though, no student signed up for the challenge so it was only the EUF and UCM that participated.

 

The number of students turned out to be among the bigger challenges we had to face this semester. While the participants who were there were enthusiastic about their project, the number of students who signed up for the challenge was unfortunately quite low. Thus, we had only one video project for each group, with the Environment group the exception. In that group, each of the three participants created their own video.

 

A Matter of Timing

 

Another challenging aspect was the timing. With a total of only five weeks, we didn’t have much time to first take in all the information providing the baseline for the research and then start said research in order to create a video tackling the most important aspects of the topic chosen by the participants. The last session was also the presentation session, so most students had to work on their project in their free time in order to fulfil the task of the video and essay, in which they had to outline their project. Every week, the students met up with either the Teamcher from Madrid, Xiana Sotelo for Race and Mercedes Agustin for the Environment group respectively, or with me for Inclusion and Gender in order to talk about the most pressing information regarding the subject, as well as the academic and digital resources they needed to create their videos.

 

All’s Well that End’s Well

 

Nevertheless, every group was able to provide the judging panel with a video during the last session. Everyone had worked hard on their respective projects and made sure to include as much information as possible in the three-minute-video presentation, which was very tightly framed timewise. Afterwards, all groups were faced with a short Q&A session in which they answered all questions asked by the judging panel. All videos provided a good overview or even a more specific look at the different subjects involved and one could really see how much effort was put into each video. The students worked well together and even though the issues of timing and participation were apparent, they still managed to create impactful and well-researched video projects.