First day of the Danube Spring School

The first lecture of the first day of the Danube Spring School was presented by professor Pavle Sekeruš, from the Faculty of Philosophy. His lecture was about the concept of macro regions, the history of macro regions and how they are organized. He spoke about the EU macro region strategies and especially about the Danube region strategy. The Danube strategy was endorsed in 2011, and is divided into four pillars - connecting the region, protecting the environment, building prosperity, strengthening the region and one horizontal priority. In addition, he mentioned the 12 priority areas and the institutions that are responsible for the implementation of the strategy. He emphasized the flagship projects of Priority area 7, that is called knowledge society (DRRIF, DREAM, DANUBIUS, DANUBE : FUTURE, Dual education, H.I.N.O.). After this, he presented the activities of the Joint Research Center and how it functions.

The second lecture of the program was presented by Biljana Lungulov, Phd, from the Faculty of Philosophy. Her area of expertise is pedagogy and she presented the higher education reforms in the Danube region. She presented the Bologna process, when it started, what was the aim of it and the goals. She spoke about the criteria that define the quality of education. After this, the participants discussed the concept of quality education and what education means for them. The main goal of this lecture was to determine the product of education and what do the students expect from higher education. She showed the participants the statistics regarding the goals of Serbian student and what do they expect to gain when they enroll into University. The participants did a small exercise, ranking professional competences regarding their importance for their work. At the end, the participants discussed the Bologna process and did it succeed.

The afternoon session began with a lecture presented by Ivana Knežević, from the Color Press Group and Darija Kustudija from the Radio Television Vojvodina. The presented the media situation in Serbia and in the region. The spoke about the digitalization of television and how it gave more freedom of choice to watchers. Also, they emphasized that the written media do not have much respect from the population. The media that are most in use are television and the internet. However, some people have verz limited access to the internet, because they haven't developed computer skills, or they have limited access to computers. After the lecture, the participants had time fro group work, to develop their projects.