In 2023, 78 students with “Bachelor’s” and “Master’s” degrees joined the study of the selective discipline “Local Democracy: Best European Practices for Ukraine.”
The academic discipline aims for students to achieve modern constructive, fundamental thinking and a system of special knowledge in the field of European practices of local democracy.
The discipline is taught in the educational project “Local Democracy: Best European Practices for Ukraine” (ERASMUS-JMO-2021-HEI-TCH-RSCH-101047645) under the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Module program.
The project method was used in teaching the discipline, which made it possible to transfer the theoretical material to the practical plane. In particular, after studying the available domestic and European tools of local democracy (for example, petitions, participatory budgeting, elections, etc.), students, divided into groups, chose a specific problem that exists in their city, village, on the street (for example, problems with ecology, transportation garbage, lack of convenient infrastructure) and with the help of tools of local democracy developed a project to solve this problem. This method is effective from the point of view of acquiring practical skills and developing critical thinking, creative abilities, and communication skills.
To implement the asynchronous learning format, the electronic version of the course is placed on the Institute of Technical Education of Sumy State University’s platform.