Description
The COVID 19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the way we teach and learn but has also created unexpected opportunities to foster meaningful internationalisation-at-home initiatives and redefine the boundaries of virtual environments.CARE LAB (Creating Adequate Residence for the Elderly – Learning Across Borders) is an English Medium Instruction multidisciplinary and inter-university workshop that was organised fully online for the first time in November 2020 amid second waves of lockdown hitting hard worldwide For five intensive days, teams of students from different disciplines and linguacultural backgrounds were invited to rethink housing for the elderly and to design alternative, more inclusive built spaces that would respect people’s dignity and freedom better than traditional nursing establishments. Content teachers, language specialists and guest lecturers collaborated on designing tasks and offered directions by providing sustained support and feedback on students’ reflections and their respective interpretations of the sense of home. Two of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations member states in 2015, namely SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) were introduced at the beginning of the virtual exchange and served as guidelines in the design process.
English was used as a lingua franca throughout the exchange for students and teaching staff alike, making the workshop a field of experimentation in terms of negotiation of meaning, resilience and adaptability, and therefore encouraging participants to engage with the content and develop effective communication strategies – a set of skills highly needed in a digital age.
| Period | 9 Nov 2020 → 13 Nov 2020 |
|---|---|
| Work for | Université de Mons, Belgium |
| Degree of Recognition | International |