EEA and Norway Grants
Working together for a green,
competitive and inclusive Europe
Education remains the pillar that supports the development of society and at the same time the most appropriate tool in training future generations, giving them access to information. In the context of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by Romania, as a member of the United Nations and the European Union, education (Goal No. 4 - Quality Education) is a prerequisite for the sustainable development of communities.
Aiming at an education that promotes responsible behavior towards the environment, Transilvania University of Brasov has come up with solutions available to the general public in the framework of the initiative "Environmental Education - open educational resources for rural citizens".
Together with Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania - the project coordinator, the initiative benefited from the expertise of specialists from the University of Reykjavik, Iceland - the donor country partner, the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest, Romania and the Technical University Gheorghe Asachi of Iași, Romania.
Shortly called EnvEdu-OERs, the approach was conceived as an educational opportunity for rural communities in Romania, offering them an open space for training and educational resources to transform them into sustainable communities.
The project aimed to help educate active citizens who make informed decisions through digital methods that develop smart communities, all for a healthier environment.
Citizens have the right to information, but lack knowledge
At the start of the initiative, it was realized that although citizens have the right to participate in public consultations, including on environmental issues, they often lack the necessary knowledge. Thus, the efforts of the implementation team were focused on digitizing education by developing a learning process with Open Educational Resources (OERs - Open Educational Resources), which would be freely available to rural citizens.
The higher education cooperation project "Education for the Environment - Open Educational Resources for rural citizens" was funded through the RO Education Program, the amount of financial support being more than 128 000 euro.
"EnvEdu-OERs is not an isolated action, but part of several applied actions of our university. We started environmental education projects since 2000 and each implemented project has given us more courage to implement even more complex projects. At the same time, during these projects we realized that the environment has limited resources, which must be protected. This was the main motivation for the elaboration and implementation of this project from a multidisciplinary perspective", revealed Lucia Camelia Drăghici, professor at Transilvania University of Brasov.
Professor Lucia Camelia Draghici is one of the academics in charge of implementing the project
The solutions found by the project partners were the development of training resources with free access and the organization of specific events (project meetings, dissemination events, workshops).
"We realized that the environment provides resources, but we have to take care of them. Our task is to help people understand environmental problems. A challenge in this project was the multidisciplinary approach, from several perspectives, but also the actual case studies", said also Dana Perniu, Professor at Transilvania University.
Among the deliverables of the EnvEdu-OERs project are specialized publications.
The need for environmental education also emerged from the processing of the responses to a questionnaire, addressed in particular to representatives of rural local government, but also to rural citizens, and the University of Brasov proceeded to determine the topics of interest to respondents.
The course modules, in the form of open educational resources, initially involved the development of video lessons, using text documents and knowledge assessment tests, produced in English and Romanian.
Environmental issues were addressed in six course modules covering topics such as sustainable community definition and social communication, quality and management of environmental projects, impact and risk assessment, waste management in rural communities, as well as data and information on water resources and their balance for a sustainable community.
Course modules are available both on the project website and on the E-learning platform
In addition, 51 video lessons in English and 50 lessons in Romanian, 37 supporting text documents (in both languages) with a total of more than 500 pages and 32 assessment tests were developed.
The course modules are available both on the project website and on the e-learning platform developed under this initiative.
In the future, complementing the information obtained through the course modules (OERs), the platform will serve as an interactive, collaborative learning environment by guiding beneficiaries to stay informed on environmental topics. The platform allows them to go through, in addition to the video lessons and supplemental texts, quizzes to assess their knowledge.
The policy recommendations developed within the EnvEdu-OERs project have resulted in the publication of two books.
Solutions for rural education with support from EEA grants
EEA grants have played a fundamental role in the realization of this successful project by providing all the necessary financial resources of almost 130.000 euro for the development and implementation of the initiative.
The EEA and Norway Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Kingdom of Norway to reduce economic and social disparities in the European Economic Area and to strengthen bilateral relations with the 15 beneficiary countries in Eastern and Southern Europe and the Baltic States. These funding mechanisms are established on the basis of the European Economic Area Agreement, which brings together the EU Member States and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway as equal partners in the internal market. In total, the three countries contributed 3.3 billion euro between 1994 and 2014 and 2.8 billion euro for the 2014-2021 funding period.
More details are available at: www.eeagrants.ro and www.eeagrants.org