From June 5 to 9, 2023, the Super-intensive Block Week 2023 of the Green Project Development Management (GPDM) training course and the Interactive Content (IC) training took place at the Eberswalde University of Sustainable Development (Germany) as part of the international project "Joint Teaching and Learning for Empowerment and Resilience of Ukrainian Academia".
A delegation of participants from the Ukrainian National Forestry University, including the project manager (Vasyl Lavniy), lecturers-developers of the GPDM course (Orest Kiyko, Ihor Solovii), and lecturers-developers of the IC course (Ulyana Pavlyuk, Ihor Kroshnyi, Oleksandr Storozhuk), teachers, and graduate students, had the opportunity to chat live with German colleagues and exchange ideas for future cooperation.
Block Week's program included daily lectures and group practicals, independent work, and participation in collaborative activities including a symposium, public presentations, and wrap-up meetings.
Part of the participants, teachers and students of UNFU, namely Lyuty Pavlo, Volyanyk Halyna, Yaroslav Palyga, and Taras Borovych, joined the work online through BigBlueButton tools and, together with the training team, used the Interactive Content electronic course developed in LMS Moodle.
During the week, six sessions of group work took place, as a result of which participants presented team projects on selected topics (T-Project) and a general team interactive project (X-Project).
Six representatives of the Ukrainian delegation (Yurii Miklush, Nataliya Nalivayko, Olesya Bryn, Solomiya-Iryna Salabai, Nadiya Yurkiv, and Halyna Ortynska) presented group T-projects from Team Forest, Team Eco, and Team Woodworking. The current topics of the presentations and the skillful use of modern technologies and services (H5P, Lumi Education, Google Earth Studio, Canva, etc.) caused a lot of sincere emotions among the German colleagues and the Ukrainian delegation. In their projects, the participants of the IS training presented the advantages of joining the Ukrainian National Forestry University, conducted an overview of the structure of the forest, which allows you to study its components and study biodiversity and ecological importance, and also impressed the audience with an emotional video about the inevitable losses that the war caused to the nature of Ukraine. The community of UNFU had the opportunity to vote for the best interactive video presentation. The winners of the vote were Team Eco, who received a proposal from the university management to use an interactive video for career guidance purposes.
A separate X-project from the IC training delegation was an interactive thank-you video to the organizers from Eberswalde, which combined a huge amount of video footage of the participants of the training course about the most interesting locations from both universities and demonstrated how close our friendly universities are.
In turn, the students of the GPDM course (Risna R., Skrypets S., Chukhna P., Kondratyuk L., Shutyak S., Shvedyuk Y., and Tom Wils) presented the results of their research (individual presentations) on the topics of the seminars of the Block Week program, revealing topical issues of environmentally friendly transformations, "green" workplaces, educational initiatives, "smart" forests, best practices of sustainable forestry management, digital innovations in the forest sector, bioeconomy and biodiversity, combating climate change, etc.
Also, during the week, there were 5 sessions of work in groups, as a result of which GPDM participants presented the main ideas of projects based on the selected topics of tender proposals, key goals in the short- and long-term perspective, the content of work packages, expected results, and mandatory stages of implementation of important tasks. An interesting result of the reports was a lively discussion, debate, Q&A session, and advice from the lecturers of the course, Prof. Orest Kiyka and Prof. Igor Solovia. Intensive work in groups turned out to be incredibly productive, and the results were creative and, no less important for the future cooperation of universities, relevant and promising, as evidenced by the favorable reviews of the project leaders, Prof. Pierre Ibisha and Prof. Vasyl Loveny.
An important mission of Block Week was to expand the areas of work on projects, deepen knowledge of project management, study successful examples of project implementation practices in various fields, and get acquainted with the algorithm for preparing proposals for participation in international grant programs. Working in international groups (together with students from the Ukrainian National Forestry University and the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development) contributed to the establishment of connections, effective interaction, and cultural exchange between the participants of the working groups for further active work on the final versions of presentations on project topics.
The mixed format of teaching GPDM and IC courses, the interesting content, relevance, and practical value of lecture materials, and the intensive Block Week program made it possible to expand cooperation between the two universities, continue existing and develop new directions of scientific research, exchange teaching and learning practices, and jointly implement successful educational and scientific initiatives.
Also during the week, a working meeting was held for the exchange of experience between the distance learning coordinators of UNFU and Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (Moodle team).
As for the project participants, the highlight of Block Week 2023 was the enchanting participation of the Ukrainian delegation in the intercultural evening.
On the last day of their stay at the University of Sustainable Development Eberswalde, the participants had the opportunity to share their personal impressions of the week spent as well as ideas for future cooperation. The collected reflections will help to improve the methodology and technologies of teaching and learning courses and will also open horizons for further practical application of the acquired skills and abilities of the participants in the international project.
Summarizing the above, we are pleased to invite students of NUNFU and Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development to cooperate. We encourage you to follow the announcements on the official information resources of the universities about the start of the Green Project Development & Management course and Interactive Content training and join the community of creative, progressive, motivated, and highly professional young people who are able to make this world a better place.
