Between October and November 2023, Annaba University, Algeria, with professor Fella Benabed in the lead, organized a COIL project titled Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), consisting of six online workshops.

Each session focused on a different type of sustainability, the first one introducing its four pillars and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The others focused on human, social, economic, and environmental sustainability, and the last session discussed global peace and partnership. The participants, consisting of university and grammar school students from Algeria, Slovakia, and Hungary, experienced activity-oriented lessons with focus on reception, production, interaction, and self-reflection, all designed to help them get inspired and learn various strategies of making their lifestyles friendlier to our planet from all possible angles. 

Most of the students admitted to not being familiar with the principles presented in the sessions before participating, and afterwards many shared that they loved discussing things they had learned during the workshops with people around them, and were feeling motivated to start living more sustainably.

The last workshop of 2023 took place on December 14, led by Bc. Linda Bernadič from Evanjelické Gymnázium J. Tranovského in Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia. This Art and Literary Workshop focused on the book Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss and let the students explore its different themes and ideas. The activities and discussions stimulated the students’ creativity, helping them envision their own dreams, future goals and ambitions in a fun, supportive environment.

A workshop titled Poetry and Music - The legacy of Blues Music in Blues Poetry, organized by dr. Pop Titus and dr. Lászlóffy Zsolt of Partium Christian University, Romania, took place on November 9, 2023. The workshop focused on the interconnectedness between a musical pattern (call-and-response pattern) and a poetic genre (blues poetry). It introduced how blues music emerged as a genre due to the appropriation of African heritage and how this music influenced the Harlem Renaissance movement. The students listened to blues music and read selected poems, discussed the impact the music had on the new poetic genre of blues poetry, and were able to learn how strongly can a particular style of music impact a whole socio-cultural movement.

A second workshop related to British traditions, titled British Christmas symbols – hands-on-activities: Christmas decorations, took place on December 5, 2023, organized by dr. Iwona Gryz of Radom University, Poland. The workshop sought to consolidate the students’ knowledge of British culture through different hands-on activities and the Multi-Sensory Teaching Method. While listening to and singing popular British Christmas songs, the students made Christmas decorations that portrayed the chosen elements of British culture in teams, their different senses being engaged throughout the activity.

On December 4, 2023, dr. Iwona Gryz from Radom University, Poland, led an online workshop titled Exploring British culture: "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The workshop explored elements of British culture centered around the Christmas time through Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol by using various ICT tools, such as Kahoot!, Learning Apps, AnswerGarden, and more. The students were able to learn about British culture and traditions and at the same time revise different aspects of grammar. Their final task was oriented towards their problem-solving skills and teamwork - through the Five Cards Flick Stories tool, the students had to come up with their own solutions as to how they would change the main character of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dr. Iwona Gryz from Radom University, Poland, led an online workshop titled Story-telling with the use of ICT on November 30, 2023. The workshop introduced the students to the interactive tool StoryBird, used to create short stories, comics, poetry and more, online. The focus was on how the students can improve their foreign language skills through the technique of story-telling, as well as to enhance their knowledge of British culture and literature. At the end the students worked in groups, using StoryBird to create their own short stories, showcasing their teamwork and creativity.

On October 16, 2023, Mgr. Ľubica Durcová from Gymnázium in Myjava, Slovakia, led an interdisciplinary workshop on the topic of Comics. The workshop was aimed to make the students see the appeal of telling stories in picture form, to teach them the history of the medium and how it adapted through time to serve the needs of the readers, and it paid special attention to superhero characters.

The workshop consisted of numerous discussions and activities related to specific superheroes, examples of picture stories ranging from Ancient Greece to contemporary memes and humor, and films based on comic books. As a final activity, the students were tasked with making their own short comics in groups and presenting it to their classmates, exercising both their creative and cooperative skills.

On Thursday, 28 September, we had two online workshops led by professor Fella Benabed from Badji Mokhtar - Annaba University, Algeria. The workshops were focused on two human rights activists, and were titled Nelson Mandela: The Hero Within and Malala Yousafzai: Empowerment through education.

The first workshop presented the South African activist and politician Nelson Mandela through the concept of PsyCap, defined as an individual’s positive state of development, consisting of four elements: hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, commonly abbreviated as HERO. The students were made familiar with how these qualities manifested in Mandela’s actions throughout his political life, and were then encouraged to identify and discuss how these qualities relate to specific quotes by Mandela.

The second workshop discussed the Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai. The students were introduced to the various factors that prevent girls across the world from accessing formal schooling, to Malala’s story, and her mission to fight for equal rights and to education for all children. The students discussed the advantages that female empowerment through education has on society, and after reading a summary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they were tasked to consider how they, as individuals, can contribute to the ideals the Declaration represents in their daily lives and in their communities.

Professor Fella Benabed of Badji Mokhtar - Annaba University, Algeria, led two online workshops on June 20, 2023, titled Heal the Planet through Art and Be a Colibri: The importance of Nature Conservation. Both workshops focused on issues related to nature conservation and climate change, connecting the subjects of art, culture, and civic education.

The first workshop worked with Fabrice Monteiro’s "The Prophecy" photographs and Michael Jackson’s "Earth Song", while the second used Conservation International’s "Mother Nature" video and the indigenous peoples’ Colibri legend. Through a series of communicative tasks, the participants discussed the role of art in raising awareness about nature conservation and climate change, the importance of them in their lives, and how human activity impacts the climate. The workshop also helped them reflect on their own personal responsibility in preserving nature and reducing the pace of climate change, and to identify different strategies that will enable them to do so.

On June 20, 2023, Mgr. Diana Magátová from Gymnázium Myjava, Slovakia, led a workshop titled Rip van Winkle and American Revolution. The workshop started with a warm-up activity, in which students created short poems in teams. To show how history and each author’s experiences influence literature and how art mirrors reality, the discussion moved to analyzing Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle and the key terms surrounding the American Revolution. The students worked directly with the literary text, analyzing its themes and ideas and looking for any similarities between the text and real historical events. Afterwards, they created posters representing the world of Rip van Winkle.