Results of summer school for Flying University (Photo and video)

Summer school held on 19-22 July, has become one of the most outstanding events in the history of Flying University (FU). The participants shared their impressions and wishes for the future evens with the Information service of EuroBelarus.

Summer school held on 19-22 July, has become one of the most outstanding events in the history of Flying University (FU). The participants shared their impressions and wishes for the future evens with the Information service of EuroBelarus.

Summer school is firstly intensive and diverse communication between people who are anyhow engaged into the activity of FU. It’s a range of lively discussions on the issues of civil society. It also included summarizing the year, evaluation of the implemented actions and prioritization of the next stage of FU’s evolution.

As participants say, this year, the summer school was more interesting than a year ago. There came 61 people which is more that in the previous year, and the open faculties enlivened the event.

“Representatives of various occupations and ages, views, education levels made the school interesting in terms of social experience. This is what a real university should be like - open to the whole society”, highlighted Andrei Lavruhin, PhD, head of Philosophy Department of European Humanities University. “We seldom meet and interact intellectually and physically. There are too few venues for that. The summer school is a unique space for free and efficient communication”.

Andrei Lavruhin said, that the program of open faculty is a right decision in the extent of education design. It gave diversity and dynamics, and made the school intensive and easy at the same time. He suggested introducing a foreign language into the program of FU and argued against its commercializing. “Flying University is attractive because it’s a non-commercial and open project, and this creates a special confidential atmosphere which allowed to participate in FU’s activities with heart and soul. This easiness brings magnetic attractiveness which we would like to preserve”, says Lavruhin.

“Once again the organizers proved their talent to turn intellectual activity into interesting and captivating game, which involves everyone present”, claims the lecturer of Politology and international relations department of Minsk State Linguistic University, teacher of FU Vyacheslav Bobrovich. “I was lucky to get acquainted with teaching fellows, and new interesting people. It’s nice to see that the student community is developing, and  includes different, extraordinary, and what is even more important, active people”.

Both Bobrovich and Lavruhin supported the idea that the summer school should be a little more continuous, for example for a week, because the schedule was tight and there was a lack of some time for outdoor activities and rest.

Listeners of FU told that they were pleased to meet all the “dwellers” of Flying University, and that they enjoyed the form of democratic communication and discussions when they were suggested to participate all together in the discussion of issues.

It’s true that FU gradually develops student community which already perceives itself as such, and it forms the requirements for FU.

“In our speech on behalf of students we said that we will try to influence the development of the university”, says the listener of FU Ivan Vedenin. “Originally it was claimed that LU wasn’t student-centric. Not arguing with that, we would like it to be convenient for students. During the summer school we asserted ourselves and let know that we are going to work in this direction”.

Ivan Vedenin marked that it would be good to make the remote platform of FU more user friendly.

“I enjoyed the intellectual tension and possibility to control it by means of moving from one space of open faculty to another”, shared her impressions the listener Viola Yermakova. “Besides the summer school helped me self-determinate and understand how FU helps me follow my way”.

Last year was more experimantal for FU. There was created a wide and various program, but speaking about formats, there were mainly lectures and public lectures.

In a new academic year, FU will vary the formats of training, even lectures will be different: basic, oriented on mastering the instruments of thinking and working with knowledge, thematic, problem-oriented, showing where the mastered instruments from the basic course can be used.

“It might seem strange that FU is not oriented on any specific topic. But this is exactly the attempt to collect a modern universum which is based not on the topics, but on the types of knowledge, methods of working with it”, explains the coordinator of Flying university Tatsiana Vadalazhskaya.

There is expected a large set of seminar and club-discussion formats. Also the organizers plan to realize the format connected with pedagogics  of the ideal. It will be a school or a workshop where there will be an expert doing his job and the students will come to learn from him. We wish to organize such workshops for Iryna Dubianetskaya, Michal Aniempadystau and Andrei Kazakevich.

Videos from summer school:

Summer school opening (FU coordinator Tatsiana Vadalazhskaya) and the orientational speech of a philosopher and methodologist Uladzimir Matskevich “University lifestyle: the slope and assembly scheme of university spaces and places”.

Presentation of Pavel Barkouski “Communication and activity coordination in Flying university: working out rules, norms and strategies”.

Presentation of Andrei Kazakevich “Forms and institutional frames of autonomous from the state academic activity”.

Presentation of Iryna Dubianetskaya “Sever free arts and quantum physics of the educational process: to the issue of modeling of an ideal modern university”.

Presentation of Flying University student community representatives (Yauheni Klishevich, Alyaxey Chubat, Alexander Meleshko).

Presentation of Andrei Yahorau “University game of University as a game”.

Presentation of Kirill Mylnikov “The role of research in the university activity in the concept of Global Research University”.

Presentation of the FU coordinator Tatsiana Vadalazhskaya “Flying University: assembly model”.

Presentation of the group of conflictologists working with Flying University (Alexey Konstantinov, Viola Yermakova, Roman Chvyrov).

Open faculty of Piotr Rudkouski “Philosophic potential of Belarusian language”.