Abstract:

How to integrate the international connexions and influences in modern cities and, at the same time, develop local interests and features is one of several challenges faced by modern cities. Glocal project, an “Erasmus + KA203 –Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education” (2019-1-PL01-KA203-065654) is aimed to do so, and its name clearly refers to it: GLO-bal + lo-CAL. Its European financed activities started in 2019 and finished in 2022, but we hope its results and benefits will continue in the next years, through what all the participants have learned from it. We will present here the results of one of the last activities of the project, Glocal Summer Schools, in Madrid, Spain. Some of the preliminary results were already submitted to the evaluation of academics in ICERI 2020 [1] and ICERI 2022 [2].

The Second part of both the GLOCAL 1 and GLOCAL 2 Summer Schools was as difficult to organize as its First part in Bialystok (Glocal 1, in Poland) or Klaipeda (Glocal 2, in Lithuania). Due to Covid-19 worldwide pandemic, both courses were delayed, 2 years for the first, 1 year for the second. There were other difficulties, like refuges problems on Polish-Belarusian border on the beginning of 2022 and war in the Ukraine which had impact on decisions of summer schools organising process. Prices for accommodation as well as for plane tickets, both for students and teachers coming from Poland or Lithuania, were increasing. But summer schools are one of the key activities of this project for innovation in education.

The experience in the first part of this summer schools was helping to develop the next experience in the city of Madrid, in Spain, in September 2022. The universities organizers had to select the students, which was done for the First part of Glocal 1 and Glocal 2. But they have to face unexpected problems and solve them. They have also to coordinate all the participants, teachers and professionals, creating a schedule of teaching during summer schools for students that had to be adapted to meet the changing circumstances of the professional firms participating in it. All coordinators were determined to carry it on and reach all the results established by Glocal project. This paper will explain how we did it.

References:
[1] D. Gawryluk, M.A. Flórez de la Colina, D. Krawczyk, P.C. Izquierdo Gracia, D. Jankauskienė, E. Brezgyté. “Understanding the problems of teaching future engineers to think globally and act locally: Glocal Project”, ICERI 2020 Proceedings, pp. 7249-7257. IATED, 2020
[2] D. Gawryluk, M.A. Flórez de la Colina, P.C. Izquierdo Gracia, D. Jankauskienė, D. A. Krawczyk, E. Brezgytė, “Developing a challenge: the design of green bus stops as a tool for international and interdisdiplinary collaboration in face-to-face summer schools”. ICERI 2022 Proceedings, pp. 3341-3351. IATED, 2022

Keywords:

Education and Globalization, Joint Education projects, Student and staff mobility programmes, New Trends in the Higher Education Area.