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UNICOMM - University Community Active Participation Project

About the project

The idea of the project comes from the belief that HEI is more than academic courses and research, and that all of the people who attend and work at HEI should matter and feel motivated to be engaged in the initiatives that are important for them. The main motivation to conduct this project is to re-establish the sense of belonging to the HEI community for the students who spent most of their studies in the online mode and are uncertain how the further education will look like.

Partners’ experience shows that students’ active participation in initiatives and projects is enhancing the relationship between students and HEI. Due to the rapid changes in the modalities of studies, HEIs were focused on providing the best possible solutions to sustain the high quality of online education. The community aspect of academia often fell into the background. Yet the pandemic situation made prominent how important are relationships and a sense of being part of a certain group. Hence, the project will strengthen the sense of belonging to HEI through engaging students into active participation that will bind them with the institution and enhance their sense of agency.

From the institutional perspective, the motivation for such project is to realize the social mission of the HEIs in practice. With their diverse potential, HEIs should have a positive impact also outside the academic environment and be actively involved in building active and engaged societies that will face today’s world problems. The project aims to enhance this involvement through students’ active participation in initiatives that will bring positive impact for the communities outside the academia, and will respond to most current social, environmental and digital issues. Students should have equal access to the HEI’s academic and non-academic offer, thus the inclusion of diverse groups of students into the active participation is also one of the main points in the projects’ agenda.

This project will allow not only to enhance the academic communities in the partner institutions and individuals involved, it will allow to re-define the meaning of this community in the contexts of everyday challenges. We are not sure which changes from the pandemic times will stay with us for longer or will become part of the daily work and studies, thus the project will propose results and tools regardless of the situation.