Abstract:

In spite of the fact that Spain became a member of the European Community in 1986, there is still political, economical, social and cultural aspects which are unknown by most spanish college students.

Defined as one objective of the European Union subject, which consists in providing students with analytics tools and empiric evidence in order to value the integration process of the European Community, this role play is included in a collaborative process.

Roles are assigned, and each one of them is linked with one of the 28 European Union countries. Students must analyse aspects related to politics, economics, society and traditions.

In the term of two months they have to redact a report, prepare one exposition about the country they have been assigned and explain it to their classmates. Furthermore, they will have to take into account the advantages and disadvantages of the integration and the way the economic crisis has affected said place. The last task that every group must fulfil will consist in cooking typical meals of the studied country, celebrating a collective tasting at the end of the activity.

Also, this project is improved due to the large number of erasmus students who decides to enroll this course.

All this reports are uploaded to a web page where everyone can learn about a wide variety of a country key aspects. This can be found at http://catibero.ual.es/catibero/europa/mapa.html. (This application is optimized to run on Google Chrome browser).

The results have been very satisfying and students have acquired knowledge about European Union countries. In the same way, it is very interesting for students, teachers or everyone who are planning on travelling to these countries. For instance, a student who wants to apply an erasmus scholarship in a specific country.

Keywords:

Role play, knowledge, Learning Experiences, Higher and Further Education, European Union.