First lecture between two EUGLOH campuses for undergraduate students
On 24 September, Prof. Hervé Dole from the Institute of Space Physics (Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale-IAS), successfully co-organised a lecture for over a 100 undergraduate students with a lecturer from the University of Porto who led her course remotely. A great way to intensify links between two campuses of the EUGLOH European university!
Hervé Dole, professor at the IAS and vice-president for Art, culture, sciences and society at UPSaclay, wanted to carry out an experiment – invite a professor to speak remotely in one of his lectures. As such, Dr. Charlotte Géhan, post-doctoral student in astrophysics at the University of Porto, gave a lecture from Portugal to 100 first-year students from the Orsay Faculty of Sciences who were able to interact with her live. The students, who were present in a lecture-hall in Orsay, were able to ask their questions in real time via the Wooclap application, selected beforehand by Prof. Dole.
Among the many questions asked, one, especially, caught his attention: “Did you know what you wanted to do when you were 18?” According to Prof. Dole, “this shows the many roles lecturers assume for their students: they offer fundamental knowledge, a scientific approach, a critical mind, but also offer guidance in human aspects such as motivation, openness to the world, culture, the importance of meeting new people and of the random choices we can make in our lives: a trip to Porto or a discussion with an inspiring astrophysicist can have a decisive impact on the life of certain […] students!”
This initiative is in line with one of the objectives of the EUGLOH alliance, the European university coordinated by UPSaclay that brings together, around the fields of global health, 4 other European universities (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München – Germany, Lund University – Sweden, Porto Universty – Portugal, and Szeged University – Hungary): create transnational campuses in Europe offering common curricula based on pedagogical innovation. The alliance raises awareness to European citizenship and values, offers education in a variety of research fields, and gives all its student and staff opportunities for physical or virtual mobility experiences.
On the basis of the experiment carried out by Prof. Dole, also member, on the French side, of the EUGLOH academic committee, the idea is to reproduce this type of blended lecture throughout our European campus and thus to enable students, who are physically on campus, to follow a lecture given by videoconference on another campus and/or to talk with students and lecturers remotely. In the case of Hervé Dole’s experiment, he was able to invite a specialist in her field that the first-year students would most certainly not have been able to meet otherwise. This type of cooperation is designed to be developed, initially between the campuses of the member universities of EUGLOH, and then on a wider scale at the European level.
All our congratulations to Prof. Dole and Dr. Géhan who have thus paved the way for a new form of fruitful teaching method for all, which will become the norm on the scale of EUGLOH.
