On May 6, Dr. Juričková held a 3-hours long workshop with the third year bachelor’s degree students of Badij Mohktar University in Annaba, Algeria, focused on friendship.

The session started with the description of pictures depicting groups of friends from film and television. The students had to identify who the pictured people are, what are their relations, and what personal qualities they display in interaction with each other.

This was followed by a discussion on what friendship is, what qualities are important in it, which form can it have, and lots more, where students were encouraged to share their own personal experience from/about frienships.

Afterwards, the students were presented with 4 philosophical accounts of friendship from different historical periods, from Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, and C. S. Lewis. The students had to discuss which of the characteristics of friendship defined by these men are still relevant nowadays, in orderto observe that human relationship do not change that much throuought history, no matter how much the society develops technologically.

After a break, we continued with developing our own definitions / theories on friendship.

In the last activity, the students had to imagine a situation that a student from Slovakia would come to Annaba for an Erazmus exchange program for 6 months. They had to advise this student on how to find new friends in Annaba, what to do and not to do to find them, and how to maintain friendship with people back home.

On May 5, Dr. Juričková from Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia, organised an on site workshop with the first year master’s degree students of Badij Mohktar University in Annaba, Algeria, which she visited on the occasion of Erazmus teaching mobility.

The lesson started with an introduction of the socio-historical context of the era when Wordsworth lived - the time of the first industrial revolution, the romantic literary movement, and the life and work of Wordsworth.

Despite some problems with the technology, we then proceeded to the analysis of one of Wordsworth’s sonnets, "The World is Too Much with Us". The students discussed its environmental message and its lasting relevance.

Students from Department of English Language and Culture engaged in COIL on Good Health and Wellbeing Practices across Cultures at Constantine the Philosopher University on 25 April 2024. 

They explored various topics like Chinese Tai Chi, Icelandic Hot Springs (Geothermal Baths), Indian Ayurveda, Islamic Fasting (Sawm), Japanese Forest Bathing (Shinrin Yoku), Maasai Community Gathering, Maori Haka, Mediterranean Diet, Nordic Hygge. Their discussion led to fruitful conversations on experiences and opinions, highlighting benefits of these practices.

Are there common characteristics in these health and wellbeing practices across cultures?

• Trying to promote spiritual and physical health, relief body from stress

• Unity with the group, not individual

• Focuses on getting better

• Some of them you can do alone, more like a style

• Takes more time, focuses more on quality of life

Which one(s) of these health and wellbeing practices have you tried or would like to try? Why?

• Mediterranean diet - but with more meat than fish, health benefits - eczema got better 🐟 🥑🥜🫑🫒

• Nordic Hygge - good therapy for mental issues 🧘‍♂️🧘‍♀️🐱🐶🐔🍵🪴

• Would like to try the Japanese forest bathing - relaxing, a good way of healing 🚵‍♂️🌳🌲🐝🐌

Many thanks go to professor Fella Benabed who led the workshop and students who brought their insights into this current topic, especially Alisa Eliovich and Anastasiia Vidiuk. 

We look forward to next COILS!

Diana Židová, Department of English Language and Culture, Faculty of Education, CPU in Nitra

What are myths? How are mythical heroes portrayed in ancient and modern stories? What are the contemporary adaptations of well-known mythical stories? These were the questions that were answered during the interactive first session of the workshops organized by Partium Christian University. Teaching this topic has been a great pleasure for me; the participating students were so motivated and engaged in the discussions that they also reignited my passion for teaching.  From Percy Jackson to Aquaman and Wonder Woman, we shared our ideas on myths’ adaptations, and concluded that myths will always stay with us, even if in constantly new forms.

Borbála Bökös

Partium Christian University, Oradea

On March 22, 2024, we  co-organized together with the University of Pannonia   the international conference on English Language and Literatures in English, EL&LE 2024. During the conference, my colleague, Julianna Borbely and I disseminated the main objectives of our project Fostering Students’ Interdisciplinary Competence through the Action-Oriented Approach and COIL led by CPU in Nitra and presented the aims and procedures of the ongoing COIL sessions organized by our university. We shared the lesson plans and teaching activities used during COIL and discussed about the  feedback of the students involved in a very animated discussion.

With my colleague we have tried our lesson plan Historical, Cultural and Social Context of the USA with the third-grade students, and we would like to share with you their amazing work on the poems related to the culture of the USA. The second-grade students even prepared a special decoration for their older schoolmates, bringing the American spirit to the lesson and creating a unique atmosphere. The whole lesson plan we created is focused on the interesting facts regarding history, art and culture, literature, but also geography. By applying teamwork, different organization skills and critical thinking, they were able to fulfil a variety of tasks, for instance, they managed to distinguish sights typical for the USA, interconnect specific aspects of the American Revolution, and finally, they used their creativity and imagination to write a poem based on the following task:

Write a poem about the USA which consists of 4 verses. You need to include in your poem the following things typical for the USA:

1)    Music style                                  3) Sport

2)    Food                                            4) Famous person

 Use some words from the newspaper articles and stick them on the paper (about 4).

            On February 7, 2024, Mária Hricková, myself (Fella Benabed), and a group of students from Algeria and Slovakia, animated an event entitled “Collaborative Online International Learning for Sustainable Development Goals” as part of the 7^th SDGs conference at Bergen University, Norway. The topic of this year was “The Role of Universities in Transformative Change.” Our event, which lasted 90 minutes, was divided into three stages. Mária Hricková started by presenting the Erasmus+ project “Fostering Students’ Interdisciplinary Competence through the Action-Oriented Approach & COIL” (led by Nitra University in Slovakia, in partnerships with universities and high schools from Algeria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania).

After that, I talked about the first COIL cohort organized by Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, in the autumn of 2023, on the topic of Sustainable Development Goals. The objectives of the COIL workshops were to help learners understand the meaning of sustainability and its four pillars, identify the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reflect on their contributions to the achievement of these SDGs, and benefit from collaborative learning and internationalization at home with peers from diverse backgrounds. The activities were designed to equip learners with the knowledge and skills necessary to take action for the SDGs, allowing them to become effective change-makers today and responsible decision-makers tomorrow.

I organized the workshops in terms of the four pillars of sustainability:

Human Sustainability stresses the need to provide the conditions in which human beings can realize their full potential, like the reduction of poverty and hunger, as well as the investment in healthcare and education.

Social Sustainability emphasizes the interdependencies amongst individuals and communities, cultivating an environment of global justice and mutual respect.

Economic Sustainability goes beyond the traditional conception of economic growth and moves into the qualitative aspects of economic development. It is not only about profit, but also about how that profit is achieved, who benefits from it, and the impacts it has on other pillars of sustainability. An economically sustainable model is characterized by equitable distribution, social welfare, and environmental preservation.

Environmental Sustainability emphasizes the necessity of preserving the ecosystem; it is not only about conservation but also about restoration. In a world struggling with climate change, environmental sustainability involves measures to adapt to change and build resilience against future uncertainties.

Despite their interrelatedness, I tried to classify these 17 SDGs into the previously mentioned thematic clusters and I came up with the following plan for every workshop.

Human Sustainability (SDGs 1, 2, 3, and 4)

Ø  Social Sustainability (SDGs 5 and 10)

Ø  Economic Sustainability (SDGs 8, 9, 11, and 12)

Ø  Environmental Sustainability (SDGs 6, 7, 13, 14, and 15)

Ø  Global Peace and Partnership (SDGs 16 and 17)

In each of these workshops, I tried to design thought-provoking activities to raise students’ awareness and inspire them to take action for the SDGs. For instance, we had whole-group discussions on each SDG using pictures from the UN Development program. We also had individual reflections in which students were asked to analyze the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on SDGs 1, 2, 3, and 4, thinking of possible solutions to avoid similar impacts in the future. We equally had group work in breakout rooms, like an activity in which students watched a video on a sports competition where a black girl was denied her medal. I first asked the students about the emotions raised by this scene, aiming to develop their feelings of empathy and intolerance towards injustice. I then asked them to share stories about a form of discrimination they might have personally experienced, watched on the media, or read about somewhere. In another activity, I asked students to notice and compare the carbon footprint of their own countries, explaining why they reached this alarming consumption of natural resources and how they can reduce it. Of all activities, the one on blogging was the most popular, as many students mentioned it in their post-COIL reflections, and my students at Annaba University are eager to start plogging activities very soon. Finally, students were asked to read the United Nations’ document “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World,” and then reflect on their initial level concerning the SDGs and how it has evolved throughout the 6 workshops. 

In the third stage of the event organized as part of the SDGs conference in Bergen, five students, Nabiha Merabet, Malak Ayette Guellati, Jihan Bouguettaya, Richard Zilai, and Rassim Morakchi took turns to reflect on their learning during the workshops and their ensuing actions, or determinations to take action, for the SDGs. Then, Safa, Souad, and Katar el Nada read excerpts from the assignments of Katarina Malatinova, Milota Mucolova, Natalia Jaworska, Lucia Sandlnova, Katarina Kricikova, Sebastian Pawlik, Bianca Cicáková who attended the COIL cohort but could not make it to the event. The last stage of the event will be devoted to a debate between the audience and the speakers.  

The key takeaway from the students’ contributions is not to underestimate the importance of individual initiatives, illustrating the story of the Colibri or hummingbird: The forest is burning … The alarmed animals are watching, feeling powerless, except the smallest one, the Colibri who says: “I can’t watch this happen without doing anything!” The bird flies to the closest stream, carries a drop of water, and throws it on the fire. It keeps repeating the same action again and again, as lively as possible. Bigger animals are still watching helplessly, thinking that the efforts of this little bird are useless in front of a big fire. Without stopping, the Colibri says: “I am doing my part; I will do the best possible to save my land.”

What is of great interest to us, as educators, is that many students expressed their amazement (one of them used the word “shock”) on how the SDGs are not part of official programs, at least in the educational institutions that are part of this Erasmus+ project. What I mostly enjoyed in this experiment was the students’ raised awareness and determination to spread the word about SDGs; some of them said that they had already started talking about this topic with their relatives and friends, and for me, as an educator, this is the most rewarding experience. For this reason, the next COIL cohort will focus on SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing.

Sometimes the best ideas on how to approach the teaching about and analysing literary works come from our students themselves. In my classes, they are encourage to come up with interactive activities focused on various aspects of literary works, and often they manage to pleasantly surprise me when they create either wonderful and insightful presentations or even games based off given texts. Their ideas, in turn, inspire me to develope them into lesson plans as a part of our project, so they in the furure even other teachers can benefit from them.

So today I want to express thanks to a number of students from CPU whose work I turned into lesson plans for this project and I want to acknowledge their authorship.

The first one is Ivana Kasalová who created a presentation on ecological themes in Wordsworth’s sonnet "The world is too much with us" and suggesting the idea that students and pupils learning about it can either try to create posters reflecting the timeless main message of the sonnet, or even try to write own poems to reflect on the impact of human activity, mainly industrialization, on nature in our days.

Another groups of students, Diana Ďuriková, Lucia Koszorúová, and Veronika Kupková, created a whole complex boardgame based on the reading of Charles Dickens’s novella "The Christmas Carol" accompanied with 60 questions payers have to answer as they progress along the board plan.

Last week I tried in practice my lesson plan called Death Penalty in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens on my English lesson as we are currently dealing with the topic of Crime and punishment. The students approached the topic creatively and provided reasonable and suitable arguments. I was positively surprised by their ideas and mature judgement in the last activity organized in groups in which they were supposed to act as judges and decide on an appropriate type and length of punishment for the selected crimes. In the follow-up discussion they compared their opinions and their exchange resulted in some suggestions for the improvement of the current legal system.

My colleague on another lesson tried with her group only the last activity in groups and she had positive feedback as well. Therefore, I recommend the last activity from the lesson plan to be used also as a separate activity for either a lesson of Civics, a common English lesson, or a lesson of Conversation.

Six COIL sessions on the topic of Postcolonial literature, led by dr. Martina Juričková from Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, took place between October and November 2023. The project combined teachings from the subjects of Literature, History, and Civic education, with the students working with two texts, Rudyard Kipling’s poem Overland Mail and Louise Bennett’s Colonization in Reverse. 

Through a series of group tasks, the students broadened their knowledge of the issues of colonization and decolonization, their effects on both the native population and the colonizers, and learned more about the selected writers, the histories of India and Jamaica, as well as immigration and its relation to the current situation concerning world immigration waves. The tasks consisted of group discussions and research of the assigned topics, as well as close reading and analysis of the poems. The students were thus able to develop both their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, but also their collaboration skills in an international environment.