HR4RS stamp
Nora Fernandez Fernandez
The Rey Juan Carlos University collaborates with the DEFEP project through a group of teachers from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Jorge Latorre Izquierdo, Ana Santamaría and Clare Cannon are the participating teachers; the first two, teachers of Art History and the last, of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts.
The project aims to implement a sustainable, effective and independent system of distance education in the area of Ukraine and Moldova. The main funder and coordinator of the project is the National University of the Black Sea 'Petro Mohyla'.
According to Jorge Latorre, a URJC researcher on the project, “after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, this initiative, which was already planned, has become more necessary than ever. There are areas that are completely devastated and there is not a single building left standing from some universities”.
The main purpose, therefore, is to improve and guarantee the sustainability of a distance education system, "which has maintained itself quite well despite the circumstances, which is quite heroic," adds Latorre.
The existing system of online education will be comprehensively improved and reorganized taking into account the experience and good practices of the European partner universities. These are the Rey Juan Carlos University, the University of Parlermo (Italy) and the University of Saarland (Germany). In addition, DEFEP focuses on the creation of institutional departments in Ukrainian schools, the development of distance learning methods and materials, and the training of teaching staff.
As Latorre comments, “URJC is proud to be involved in this educational reconstruction project, not only for Ukraine but also for Moldova, with the aim of finding the best online educational practices”. Regarding Moldova, the teacher explained that this country "is also a zone of latent conflict where another war could break out."
The Art History professor wanted to highlight the importance of "being there" and providing support to "maintain online education, through which European values such as dialogue or the non-violent imposition of national ideas can be transmitted. The common point is to collaborate to conceive the own identity of the European community in many ways and to promote diversity in the EU”.
Initiatives like these, apart from recovering the material and non-material damage caused by the war, reinforce cooperation between the universities of the EU and the countries of the East, promoting the development of a quality and homogeneous education.
To learn more about the project, there is information on the following link to the website of the coordinating university: https://chmnu.edu.ua/defep/