A Workshop on Active-Learning Tools to Teach Contemporary Policy Issues and Multilevel Citizenship and Governance in the European Union

This workshop addresses two key challenges of teaching European Union (EU) politics; learners’ perception of political relevance, and the facilitation of different learning styles. Teacher and learner perceptions of EU complexity pose a particular challenge to teaching and learning in group settings with divergent exposure to topics. The workshop is premised on two active-learning tools (a semi-digital escape room and a scavenger hunt) developed by the Hub in Active European Citizenship (UCC) which attempt to hurdle these challenges. They have been created and piloted in collaboration with teachers and learners across educational level (from primary to third level) in the Republic of Ireland. In some instances, with blended groups involving European students on Erasmus mobility. The semi-digital escape room targets learning about the EU’s environmental, energy, transport, agricultural, and trade policy. It incorporates ancillary learning about stakeholder and sectoral interests at national and EU level, and legislation and implementation processes. The scavenger hunt targets learning across trade, economic, environmental, defence and civic/cultural amenity policies. It incorporates ancillary learning about EU symbology, stakeholder interests, and the relationship between local, national, and EU level political and governance actors in legislation and implementation. Both tools make use of digital aspects for gameplay, accessibility, and in surrounding educational scaffolds. However, by intent and design, their gameplay is primarily non-digital, with collaborative deduction, and a multiplicity of viewpoints, set in shared physical spaces. In the case of the scavenger hunt, learning artefacts in public spaces are leveraged to indicate the EU’s political and policy impact at local and national level. Workshop participants will receive an outline of the theoretical bases and pedagogical aims (in content and skill) of each tool. They will then explore a portion of the escape room and scavenger hunt through gameplay, to assess their explorative, deductive, interactive, and applied-learning merit. This sets up the final element of the workshop, a facilitated discussion by participants of the requirements and challenges in designing and delivering active-learning tools to teach aspects of EU politics. Theoretical and practical considerations and trade-offs (such as factual knowledge or interpretive understanding) when developing flexible educational scaffolds around such tools will be discussed. Finally, the potential to incorporate research on political engagement and pedagogical approaches will also be explored.