Students placed at the heart of learning in Florence

FLORENCE – Around 120 student representatives, policy-makers and experts in higher education gathered in Florence, Italy, on Sunday 28 September for the 28th European Students’ Convention and the first annual conference of the Peer Assessment of Student-Centred Learning (PASCL) project.

Student-centred learning is a cross-cutting theme of this conference co-organised by the European Students’ Union (ESU) and the national union of students in Italy (UdU) with support of the European University Institute (EUI). During this conference the participants will be introduced to various approaches to student-centred learning taking place at the European, national and institutional level.

“Student-centred learning is one of grassroot areas and projects such as PASCL will push forward this agenda even more, by providing us with important data and analysis on the subject. In addition, an inclusion of student-centred learning in the European Standards and Guidelines is important across Europe,” said Elisabeth Gehrke, ESU’s Chairperson that formally welcomed the participants on Sunday.

“I believe this topic is of central importance. When we talk about student-centred learning we are talking about the future of education. We should question the assumption regarding the existing consideration of higher education systems in the times of an economic crisis. Student-centred learning in universities has been implemented without a proper participation of students,” said Gianluca Scuccimarra, Chairperson of the Italian union UdU.

Elly Schlein, Member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, also spoke during the event.

Video streaming

The event is streamed live via the video sharing website Youtube and recordings of all the sessions made available on PASCL’s website pascl.eu, as well as a detailed agenda and abstracts. This new website also includes useful information about student-centred learning, the background of the project and future tasks. The project’s deliverables will also be made available on the website.

The PASCL project is co-funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union. Tomorrow the event will continue where the participants will be invited to breakaway sessions focusing on particular concerns in student-centred learning.

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For more information, please contact:

Elisabeth Gehrke, ESU Chairperson: +32/479.591.499 // elisabeth@esu-online.org or Robert Hlynur Baldursson, ESU Communications Manager: +32/473.669.894 // robert@esu-online.org