Abstract:

The education of future professionals in the field of law in higher education institutions in the European space is based on common principles and values such as integrity, equity, transparency, equality. Educational institutions have always designed the activities related to the teaching-learning-evaluation process in order to train the skills inherent to a contemporary professional in the field of law.

At the same time, we cannot deny the fact that we are currently witnessing a paradigm shift in education, but also in higher education. The pandemic introduced major corrections through digitization and the empowerment of participants in the educational process. With certainty, after the year 2020 the whole world has become witness to the blurring of the demarcation between classical face-to-face education and that with the use of information technologies.

Today we need educational institutions and teaching staff that "operates" differently and meet the expectations of the beneficiaries of educational services. In this context, in the present study we propose to analyze the relevance of the contents and the establishment of the compatibility of the methodology of the HELP Platform courses of the Council of Europe with the objectives and competencies resulting from the educational plans containing legal courses. In order to achieve this goal, we propose the following objectives: increasing attention to the need for quality teaching in the human rights segment (the experts trained in the development of HELP courses are the best in the respective fields); development of the specific methodology for adapting the HELP courses to the university curriculum.

The European Program for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP), aims at improving the training of judges, prosecutors and lawyers on the European Convention on Human Rights ant its implementation at national level. The topics for the courses are selected in response to member states' needs, identified annually at the HELP Network Conference. Thus, today the HELP Platform of the Council of Europe offers 42 distance learning courses and more than 500 national adaptations, including those adapted to the realities in Romania. Among the most important themes proposed to the beneficiaries are: Violence against women and domestic violence; Transitional Justice and Human Rights; The Environment and Human Rights; Bioethics; Rights of persons with disabilities, etc.

With reference to the research methodology, as a case study, in order to substantiate the exposed theses, we intend to evaluate the perspectives of adapting the study plans, the curricular standard of the legal disciplines within the Cross-Border Faculty of Humanities, Economics and Engineering, ”Dunarea de Jos”, University of Galați (Romania) in order to implement the mixed process of teaching-learning and evaluation, with the aim of advanced university training of future legal professionals.

As a result of the expected research, methodological benchmarks will be developed in order to pilot a HELP course in the training program for Cycle II students.

Keywords:

Blended learning, European Program for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP), e-learning methodologies, legal studies.