Last project steps: the Results in Cyprus

The Cyprus Perspective and Deliverables

By Philippos Pouyioutas and Emilios Solomou
Intercollege, Cyprus

The Insula Europae project started by developing the report for the National Educational and Teaching System of Cyprus. This report was the first deliverable of the project as far as the Cyprus contribution is concerned, and was posted on the web-site of the project.

The second deliverable of the project was the development of the didactic methodology and the deepening material for the European Integration and the accession of Cyprus to the European Union. Further to the development of the general learning material, the development of the Cyprus material was materialized in the following thematic areas:

1. History of European Integration
2. European Literature and Culture
3. European Civic Education

The material is supported by a question bank and topics for discussion, as well as by short biographies of the key people in Cyprus that contributed to the accession of the country to the EU and a list of references and bibliography. The deepening material has been integrated into the general multimedia learning material.

Once the general and deepening material were developed, the training of the trainers took place in Cyprus. This was the third deliverable of the project. The training of teachers of secondary education schools took place at the premises of Intercollege and was carried out through hands-on seminars. Teachers had a chance before, to access the on-line material on learning, using e-learning material that was developed as part of the project. They also had a chance to experiment with the project general multimedia material.

The project was then introduced to the students during the pilot/project experimentation phase. This took place in schools of secondary education and also at Intercollege. The feedback of the students and teachers on the didactic methodology and the general and multimedia material was collected through questionnaires and interviews. The feedback was analyzed and recommendations have been made to improve the learning material and the hosting e-portal. A paper entitled “The Insula Europae Project – A Multimedia Application Portal for Teaching the History of European Integration” has also been written and sent to the 20th World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, June 2008. All the aforementioned activities and reports constitute the fourth deliverable of the project.

Finally the project e-portal and the multimedia material were presented during several occasions to the general public and academia. These constitute the fifth deliverable of the project as far as Cyprus contribution is concerned. More specifically the project was presented at the:

1. End-of-year exhibition organised by the multimedia students in Cyprus. Apart from student work we selected a number of multimedia applications, that were developed outside the College so that visitors were also exposed to professional work
2. Research Week at Intercollege (open only to Intercollege faculty)
3. Meetings with Prospective Students of Intercollege at the following towns/villages of Cyprus
1. Paphos - 14/6/2007
2. Polis – 15/6/2007
3. Agros – 21/6/2007
4. Paralimni – 21/6/2007