VEREAD

An Innovative Pedagogy in Euro-African Religious Dialogue

The VEREAD project, an initiative promoted by FSCIRE and supported by the EU through Erasmus+, aims to redefine virtual learning at universities.

With a specific focus on Virtual Exchanges in Religious Euro-African Dialogue, VEREAD seeks to introduce a new pedagogical approach through the implementation of a series of online training meetings and interactive sessions that embrace the Euro-African religious dialogue.

In this context, the interview with Alessandro D’Antone, from the Department of General and Social Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, a trainer within the project, offers an in-depth perspective on the pedagogical core of the project, highlighting how teacher preparation for the Virtual Exchange program goes well beyond merely improving teaching skills. The centrality of content and teaching style, according to D’Antone, lies in their role as mediators in meeting, exchanging, and confronting cultural diversities, emphasizing the importance of connecting people through their differences.

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In preparing professors for the Veread -Virtual Exchanges Program, what key intercultural competencies are being emphasized to ensure that the forthcoming virtual classrooms will support and engage students from different cultural and academic backgrounds?

The preparation of lecturers for Virtual Exchange is not a “matter of fact”, and it would not only be a matter of enhancing or testing teaching and disciplinary didactic skills: if the content conveyed by the lecturers is central, as is the teaching style of each, this centrality is due to the role that content plays in conveying the possibility of encountering, exchanging, conflicting (in a pedagogical supporting way), and confronting otherness.
The core value here is the connection between people through their differences with cultural content as a mediation object. It is important to consider that the project has, as a crucial aspect, the intercultural and interreligious dialogue: the depth of cultural content has value in itself, but it assumes its full potential when it becomes the cultural substrate for group work, communication, and connection between students from different universities, towards a transnational perspective.
This is why the ongoing training of lecturers goes hand in hand with the training of facilitators. Indeed, it is through facilitators that we can better consider the group as a pedagogical object and device, its observation and monitoring, its dynamics and styles of interaction, as well as the enhancement of individual exchanges within the construction of communities of common thought and reflection.

What steps are taken to harmonize the different pedagogical approaches in the co-design of the educational modules of this program?

With the project planning and guidance of Claudio Dondi, an expert trainer in the field of Virtual Exchange, the section of the project dedicated to the Capacity Building will not be – similarly to what will happen in the actual lessons – solely frontal, but will have an interactive, reflective character with ample room for simulation. In fact, work started immediately following this perspective. In involving each university based on the courses it could deliver in Virtual Exchange, discussions were held on how to structure each working group in pairs of universities, simulating the type of delivery with an already structured basis to promote intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue and interaction.
This aspect not only allowed the lecturers to better conceptualize the content of their respective courses, but also ensured the participation of the facilitators in this definition process within the Capacity Building Program. From a pedagogical point of view, the binding element is represented by small group works as a constant structural feature: regardless of the theme addressed, each unit of Virtual Exchange should enhance the contributions of small transnational groups that can work both in the form of Project Work and through discussions and debates on topics proposed by the lecturer. The variability of each individual’s styles (which guarantees autonomy and teaching freedom) is accompanied by the design of cooperative, albeit virtual, settings that, with the support of facilitators, ensure a deeper exchange among participants.

What training or support is provided to future facilitators to equip them for their role in a multicultural and interactive online learning environment?

Differently from lecturers, who are experts in a specific discipline, we did not adopt a criterion of familiarity with the discipline for the recruitment of facilitators. Certainly, sector-specific knowledge can significantly aid the work. However, the crucial aspect for us concerned the skills that could be used within group dynamics and in supporting the work of the lecturers. Therefore, the aspects on which the facilitators will focus the most are: attention to group training, their monitoring and support for the work; the promotion of spaces and themes for autonomous exchange to be accompanied by moments conducted under the facilitator's supervision; the observation of emerging dynamics within the groups; and, last but not least, a form of monitoring to ensure that the lecturer can formulate an assessment of the work done not only based on actual performance, but on a proper evaluation of the work processes as a whole – essentially, a perspective of formative assessment. In summary, facilitators represent a very important resource for this project, helping it to go beyond mere frontal teaching; at the same time, they should not be considered as an alternative to lecturers. On the contrary, facilitators have a supportive role to the lecturer, collaborating with the lecturers to promote the cooperative dimension of the project.

In light of the project’s collaborative nature involving various contexts, what measures are being taken now to address potential limitations that might affect participants once the student sessions begin?

Each university has adopted measures and precautions to ensure active and consistent participation for the students. Therefore, there are institutional support measures, particularly critical and important in universities where internet connection, for example, is not always available and stable.
At the same time, an effort has been made to promote a working perspective that is structurally online, but that could involve in-person and hybrid moments, especially for small group works. In this way, the dimension of personal interaction can be fully recovered in its educational density, while, at the same time, groups of students can both attend distance learning in a single classroom with one or a few devices, and support online work with in-person exchanges.
Indeed, the same course composition represents a precaution to ensure that everyone can participate actively and consciously: through the co-design between two universities, the modules are not delivered only by individual departments, but through an exchange between multiple lecturers, with the aim of involving a wider pool of students on topics that can be interesting and innovative precisely because they are interdisciplinary. In this context, the role of facilitators becomes particularly important as support for the lecturers, to ensure that the courses in Virtual Exchange are not just theoretical seminars, but real environments for discussion and exchange based on group work. As previously stated, this does not detract from the central role of the lecturers’ work and their culturally and disciplinarily based content; rather, it helps to focus more structurally on the cooperation and exchange processes that represent the crucial moment of the VEREAD project.

In your opinion and in two words, what is the most innovative aspect of this training program?

I believe that, both from direct experience and in light of the exchanges I have had so far with colleagues, the most innovative aspect concerns precisely the possibility of ensuring that transnational training moments have both a strong cultural dimension and a pedagogical framework that enhances interaction among participants at a collateral and profound level. This is an interesting challenge that, within the project, we will gradually seek to implement and realize.