Education delegates from EZA member organisations met again, in mid-February 2018, at the second part of the event at the Nell Breuning-Haus in Herzogenrath/Germany, titled "Taking new paths – using new methods effectively in educational work".
Similar to the first event in June 2017, the course addressed theoretical foundations of education, its historical development, its meaning and purpose, its actors and forms. The focus this time was on the possibilities of formal education (school/university), non-formal (out-of-school) and informal (individual, uncontrolled) education, taking digitalisation into account.
Social scientist Prof. Ulrich Deller from the Catholic University of North Rhine-Westphalia provided an overview of this and focused in particular on the changes in learning and teaching via the Internet and smartphones. In the workshop part of the course, together with Ilona Matheis M.A., head of the Academy for Scientific Education at the Technical University of Cologne, the focus was once again on designing educational measures in such a way that the learning contents taught build upon one another well and are designed so that the knowledge acquired can be effectively called upon and used later. This requires special attention under the specific conditions of European seminars with different languages, participant backgrounds and learning needs. In addition, activating methods and techniques that can create new dynamics for learning, and which are - also in European educational events - easy to use, were presented.
In a planning simulation, the participants could also introduce their own seminar projects with contents, seminar procedures and goals and select appropriate methods. The presented plans were then discussed with the expert and further suggestions were given.
During the course, it became clear that it is often possible to try out innovations and use activating methods without having to completely abandon tried and tested seminar concepts.
Other fields of learning that the EZA will look at for its courses will include the question of participant profiles and participant recruitment as well as moderator training. These questions are to be integrated even more firmly into the programmes in the follow-up courses.