Presentation • Yerevan
Student-led Advocacy Campaigns
Student-led advocacy campaigns will be organized as one of the main outputs of the project. Young activists will jointly identify one or several problems of higher education in Armenia and will develop and execute a campaign supported by a network of youth NGOs. 4 student campaigns will receive funding. The aim of this particular output is for students to learn and experience campaign tools first hand, as well as to practice student mobilization, movement building and advocacy. In the preparation process of the project proposal APY has conducted a focus group to reveal which can be the possible topics for the campaign. The focus group has involved 35 respondents. The finding of the focus group reveal the main problems students are facing and would like to advocate for reforms. Below are the topics from 1 to 5 where 1 is the most important and 5 is the least important: 1. Old-fashioned, soviet methods of organization of educational process; 2. Education is too theoretical and not related to real life; 3. There is a huge gap between education and labour market; 4. No possibility of personal learning agenda and optional selection of subjects; 5. Lack of literature in Armenian language; 6. Pollicization of student organizations; 7. Lack of teaching skills, interactive methods among the professors; It is interesting to observe that none of the respondents mentioned corruption as nepotism as a problem of higher education in Armenia. There were only 2 respondents who talked about accessibility of education and only who mentioned the feedback between students and professors is non-existent and excellence in education is considered not “cool”. All of the respondents considered old-fashioned, soviet methods of organization of the educational process as a main challenge of higher education which is also very connected to the second problem identified: theoretical education that has no connection to real life and labor market. These are also the issues students are more likely to advocate for. Once the group of 30 students is formed, a new focus group will be organized to see the interests and perceptions of students involved. Another assessment will be carried out after the Summer School and 4 topics for campaign will be jointly identified.
http://apy.am/actors-of-change/
