In previous mutual Erasmus+ projects the partner universities concentrated on subject of mediation - theory, methods and deeper research. While teaching students subjects related to mediation topic and its methods, we have discovered that students (from most of the faculties) lack sufficient interdisciplinary and soft skills required for: 1. ability to cooperate in team work, 2. set professional and academic goals by means of modern coaching, 3. time management skills and efficient planning, 4. multicultural communication and 5. conflict diagnostics and conflict management. Those skills are crucial not only in mediation field, but also in most of the subjects thought in the Universities. Curriculum of universities does not offer separate course to tackle this problematics. Moreover these skills are required not only during academic studies, but even after graduation to be prepared for professional life challenges. Therefore a goal is set to create inter-faculty study materials for the students from Law, Business, Communication and other Social science faculties in order to increase these skills and the university teachers could widely access such study materials. Main aims of the project: 1. development and implementation of innovative practices – elaboration of interdisciplinary study materials and tools for students and teachers of different faculties; 2. promotion of cooperation among partner universities for to exchange the best practices in teaching of interdisciplinary soft skills. The main results of the project: 1. video lectures, 2. study materials - activity tasks 3. mobile phone application for daily studies 4. reading materials and self-study materials 5. intensive study program of 2 weeks will be organized in Turiba University (Latvia) to test the study materials and mobile application. During the course 40 students will raise their knowledge and skills. 6. teacher training (12 teachers of partner universities will be trained about modern techniques of work with students by means of coaching, conflict diagnostics and settlement of multilevel conflicts). Duration of the project: 36 months.
Main aims of the project: 1. Development and implementation of innovative practices – elaboration of interdisciplinary study materials and tools for students and teachers of different faculties. We aimed to gather massive amount of information tools and materials for soft skills training – for team work, multicultural communication, conflict diagnoses and management, time management and setting the goals. 2. Promotion of cooperation among partner universities for to exchange the best practices in teaching of interdisciplinary soft skills, also creating network of experts. 3. Awareness raising about importance of soft skills’ training in the higher education field.
In previous mutual Erasmus+ projects the partner universities concentrated on subject of mediation - theory, methods and deeper research. While teaching students subjects related to mediation topic and its methods, we have discovered that students (from most of the faculties) lack sufficient interdisciplinary or so called soft skills. After research and consultation with colleagues partners discovered that there is strong need for development of soft skills of students from different study fields. We also discovered that there is also need for teaching and self-study materials for soft skills training. Our partnership chose 5 most relevant soft skills which are necessary to train no matter which faculty students are studying: 1. ability to cooperate in team, 2. setting professional and academic goals by means of modern coaching, 3. time management skills and efficient planning, 4. multicultural communication, 5. conflict diagnosis and conflict management. Most of our curriculum do not offer separate course to train and develop students' soft skills. However these skills are required not only during academic studies, but even after graduation to be prepared for professional life challenges. That why partnership united to explore methods and create materials for soft skills' training. Even more – our aim was to raise the awareness about importance of soft skills in our study programmes and in higher education system in general.