Yes, last Thursday we got off to a flying start with our first international learning circle! And what an amazing experience it was.

The day started off with an exciting buzz among the consortium members, wishing one another A Happy International Circlet Day, with all of them looking forward to talking to the participants in the international online session in the afternoon. The day ended with an interesting, enthusiastic and openhearted exchange of feedback from all involved participants (see responses below).

The outcome of our international online meeting in numbers? 19 participants and 8 consortium members from different parts of Europe, and with different disciplinary backgrounds, who dug deep into questions such as research, reflection, and cross-national curriculum development and many more topics, all revolving around community engagement.

How do you let your students reflect on their community engagement, what type of involvement can you expect from the partner organization, how do you implement a taste for community engagements with students from an early stage?

All of these topics, and plenty more, were discussed during the 6 world café tables, all of which addressed a priority topic chosen earlier on by the participants.

We selected a few of the responses of the participants to the question what they took from this session:

“[We have] a lot in common, different slants and disciplines, but all contributory to a holistic approach to learning and understanding.”
“Open-minded perspective”
“Concerns/ issues/ concepts are not region specific”
“There are many ways how we can work together with the partners”
“We are all open and desire more interactivity ?”
“[there is a] need for a platform that really allows to be interactive and gather resources and ideas”
“global citizenship”
“Hungry for learning from each other, though not much clear how we will really co-create.”
“cross-disciplinary learning”
“That we have a lot in common!”

Many thanks goes out to the enthusiasm of our participants, for without them, of course, the success of this international learning circle would not be possible. We take into account all the feedback for further steps within the CIRCLET set-up and are thankful for the feedback we received.

Curious about the session, but you weren’t able to attend? Worry no more – you can get in touch with your local project coordinator if you want to have a brief update on what has been exchanged there and then!