DEVA participates in STUPS project activities in Austria: soft skills enhancement for Student participation

The European project STUPS-Student Participation Without Borders, held its second training activity at the Austrian city Steyr, from 27 September to 1 October, 2021. The event broad programme focused on assessing the updated outcomes achieved in the project, providing an interactive platform to offer two MOOCs which are currently developed by the consortium led by the University of Huelva-UHU, and participated by DEVA-AAC. These new online courses, open and free, are focused on in-depth analysis of the soft skills required for student participation. It is expected that completion of this project will entail a qualitative step forward with regard to the available online training offer on this issue.

In this activity, developed at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria central campus, both this European network partners and a great number of Erasmus students from 40 different nationalities participated. Among the event trainers, Pilar Romero Godoy, from DEVA-AAC, collaborated together with the organising university researchers, and the European Students’ Union speakers at the University of Warsaw.

Among the issues discussed, equality, inclusion, co-governance and student commitment within the participation structures and processes, have been specially relevant. On the other hand, the University of Huelva has coordinated the module on soft skills for effective participation, which will take form in a MOOC entirely devoted to this topic.

Following a great interest in the proposal, the participants outlined the need of analysing especially on three key skills to activate the student body participation: communication, leadership and teamwork.

At the halfway point of this transnational university cooperation project, it is expected that both MOOCs will be provided over the next months, as well as, afterwards, the last and intended outcome of this project, an integral plan for promoting students participation, on which the University of Évora is currently working.