Workshop summaries from the perspective of our student ambassadors

Teaching peace

In this session, Anne gave a crash course in peace-building and how to become a peace-builder. She started the workshop by providing an introduction to the concepts of peace-building before she talked about her methods as well as experiences in teaching peace-building and conducting fieldwork in PeaceLabs in Rwanda and Kosovo. 

Anne rounded her session up with the possibility to ask questions. Particularly inspiring was her approach to making young people the leaders for change of the future and the need for change makers to step out of victimhood to become survivors.

Anne's two take-home messages were:
1) shut up and listen
2) co-create and trust the process

By Caroline Wagner

Positive eco-psychology

Starting off with a Wooclap on “How anxious are you about climate change?”, “How optimistic are you that we find ways to adapt?” and “How much do you think you can contribute?”, we dived directly into the climate anxiety workshop. 

A central issue is that many psychologists are not sure how to deal with climate anxiety. At the same time, it is based on a real threat it cannot really be cured, but it needs to be learned how to deal with it. The project idea, therefore, was to research how positive emotions have positive functions, stimulate creativity and can add long-term resources by working harder and introducing more innovation. Optimism is also believed to lead to pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour.

The workshop continued with group discussions on answering three different questions while envisioning that we live in the year 2050, where we live in a fossil-fuel-free and healthy world, where Maastricht is covered in greenery, and even the chemical industry has become carbon neutral. Participants mentioned their history with climate anxiety and climate depression and depicted a world where they would have more time to act more sustainably, both in everyday tasks like food waste reduction (planning what to cook, buy locally, preserve foods correctly) and enjoy a more decentralized society (have more time and space to reflect and less rush). This also includes less fast-paced transport (especially as global citizens here are connections with people from somewhere else in the world) and the use of more dialogue.

We continued by describing our best possible eco-self and reflected on which steps we are already undertaking now to become this. It was mentioned that while one person first thought to live very sustainably in the middle of Patagonia, they then reflected upon it and decided that it would be more sustainable to engage more with society to make a sustainable change than isolating themselves in Patagonia. An example mentioned was also to be more aware of the role as educators and support kids to shift their mindset towards more sustainability. Finally, the thought was shared that appreciation of your own and others’ sustainable actions is key to more motivation for future sustainable actions.

A final recommendation by the group was to mix up different age groups in research and include them in a dialogue. This happened through the workshop and was extremely insightful as it led to the sharing of diverse perspectives. The ideas of the project group to create a positive eco psychology workshop in addition to, for instance, climate freak workshops and creating an App were presented in the end. The workshop ended with the suggestion for participants to think of three good eco-things that happened to them throughout the day.

Preparing for Generation Alpha

In this engaging workshop, we discussed the emerging Generation Alpha, a cohort growing up immersed in digitalisation and advanced technology. We explored how this generation will differ from previous ones and how education can be tailored to their unique needs. 

Led by a knowledgeable teacher and two of his insightful students, the workshop featured a brainstorming session where adults had the opportunity to ask questions and gain a fresh perspective from the younger generation. Key topics discussed included the potential role of AI teachers, the impact of social media, and innovative strategies to create an engaging educational environment for Generation Alpha.

Transforming education through entrepreneurship: A new role for teachers?!

FAIL! First Attempt In Learning. The first principle of entrepreneurship is that you must try something and re-evaluate and adapt if it does not work. The same applies to the classroom. Both students and teachers must learn to fail in order to learn to adapt.

As a teacher we must be open to experimentation, both in individual classes as well as in course development. Acknowledging assumptions made during the preparation of the class is the first step, the second is to be flexible to adapt our classes based on student's feedback in a real-time setting. After all, why should students not benefit from their own feedback? Why do we have to wait until the next cohort to implement this feedback? What if this feedback no l onger applies to the next cohort?

A limitation to this for many teachers is bureaucracy. Therefore, the first necessary step is to make a plan for flexibility within our teaching plan. Teachers cannot teach experimentation and adaptation to students if we do not learn to plan for this ours elves in our own classes. It is imperative to learn to find a balance between a structured plan, and the creativity needed to say sorry when a teaching plan does not work for a particular class, and find a solution that works with immediate implementation. We must all learn to learn together.

By Camilla Reitbauer

Community engagement

This session gave insights on community engagement and how to become community leaders. First, an introduction to the Brightlands Smarts Services Campus was given that presents a best-practice example for well-working community engagement. Afterwards, community engagement was shed a light upon from different perspectives.

To put theory into practice, the participants were then split up into smaller groups and got the chance to try out the methods “The Problem Tree” and “The Opportunity Tree” themselves. As time passed quickly, the session ended with small presentations of the main solutions developed in the group sessions and a wrap-up by the workshop facilitators.

By Caroline Wagner

In this workshop, we learned firsthand how to address regional challenges using a community-based problem-solving technique. Through a real-life example, we formed groups and collaboratively tackled the issue by following a structured process: identifying the causes, impact, and possible solutions, as well as identifying the best possible solution.

This process gave us a glimpse into how we can collaborate with our community on an equal basis to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome and to become community leaders.

By Silja Hövelmann

Tackling global issues equitably

The workshop introduced the differences between equality and equity and fuelled a discussion on the topic of how diverse stakeholders of an issue can be integrated into the solution-finding process. To facilitate the process, four questions were offered:

1. Who is the expert, based on whose criteria?
2. Who should be involved in agenda and priority setting (Whose problem is it)?
3. Who should participate and be included (Whose voice are we not hearing)?
4. Who is involved in decision-making and evaluation (Who has the last say in what will happen)?

An example from a participant from Maastricht illustrated the problem of nurses in the hospital when doing a certain task that requires a lot of concentration, people will disrupt them, which in the end, leads to issues for the nurses. A simple solution was found when the actual nurses were asked about their ideas, and they came up with the solution to wear a yellow vest indicating ‘Don’t disturb me’ while working on that matter. 

Another issue and solution introduced by a staff member of Maastricht University was that when they worked in Human Resources and answered questions about Maastricht University, they realized that they had no idea what Problem-Based-Learning was in reality. The solution, also recommended for workshop participants in the end, was to set up dialogues with people who are in the same line of work to foster the exchange of knowledge and experience which all sides can benefit from.

Finally, we wrapped up by concluding that it is important to think through processes from beginning to end and include diverse voices and increase collaboration.

Disinformation, AI, and the relevance of information and digital literacy

In this very interactive workshop, participants delved into the importance of critical thinking when it comes to disinformation, as well as the relevance of information and digital literacy for Global Citizenship Education.

One exercise, for example, was to show several images that were either real or generated by AI. Participants could vote if they thought it was a real image (by holding up a green card) or a fake image (by holding up a red card).

The presenter was very knowledgeable to be able to critically evaluate digital information and, in the process, how to distinguish fact from fiction. Consequently, the workshop ended with the opportunity for listeners to ask questions, which was used plentifully. Those open discussions helped people to stay critical about the things they read or hear on the news.

By Meagan Hannemann