Information and Communication Technologies in Application,

Dissemination and Evaluation of Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Activities

Mariia A. Galaburda

1 a

, Olena H. Kuzminska

1 b

and Mykola K. Halaburda

2 c

National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroyiv Oborony Str., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine

Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman, 54/1 Peremohy Ave., Kyiv, 03057, Ukraine

Keywords:

Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Project, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Food Safety Compe-

tence, Evaluation, Education.

Abstract:

A new training module on EU Food Safety Control was developed and implemented at the Department of

Veterinary and Sanitary Examination (currently Department of Veterinary Hygiene) of NULES. The article

describes ICT used for the achievements of results of Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Module “EU Food Safety Con-

trol”. Module in the EU food safety control was design to contribute to better understanding of applied system

of European food safety assurance and the objectives of ofﬁcial food control at EU level within the frameworks

of different types of competencies. To assess the effect of the educational course on food safety control, at

the start and after completion of the Module, participants’ knowledge were evaluated. The monitoring of the

project results presents a comparative analysis of the implementation strategy for blended learning stage (be-

fore spring 2020) and distance learning under the COVID-19 disruption. Tools and the degree of involvement

and satisfaction of participants in the project outputs were determined. Impact effort matrix technique reviled

that action taken with ICT are the best for achieving project result.

1 INTRODUCTION

Making better use of digital technology for teaching

and learning is one of three European Digital Educa-

tion Action Plan priorities (ec.europa.eu, 2021; eur-

lex.europa.eu, 2018). The strategy for the develop-

ment of education in the European Union and other

countries for the last decades has been focused on

the introduction of information and communication

technologies (ICT) (eur-lex.europa.eu, 2018; Osorio

and Nieves, 2014; Khvilon and Patru, 2002; Cran-

mer, 2014). Currently education systems are in-

creasingly embedding digital competencies in their

curricula (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice,

2019; Moiseienko et al., 2020). These trends became

more relevant with regard to the COVID-19 disrup-

tion when most educational institutions were forced

to discontinue or transform the educational process

(Miao et al., 2020; Di Pietro et al., 2020). Those uni-

versities win that had the basis, skills and experience

to work with various ICT tools and digital environ-

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3896-4927

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8849-9648

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3151-5966

ments (Morze et al., 2013; Lynch, M., 2018; Vlasenko

et al., 2020).

In addition to the pandemic impact strategic in-

tegration of Ukraine into the European Community

is one of priority of development, determined by its

close geographic location and interaction in trade,

ﬁrst of all by agricultural produce (Galaburda and

Yakubchak, 2019). The appropriate level of educa-

tion, relevance and competence of educational pro-

grams to the request of society determine the future

in the internal and external labor market. The inter-

disciplinary nature of food safety assurance demands

complex knowledge of future food safety experts

(Kholoshyn et al., 2020). Serious gaps in training cur-

ricula of the future veterinarians and poor awareness

of the food safety concept and the key aspects of the

EU ofﬁcial food safety control in Ukraine was the key

reason of development of Jean Monnet Module “EU

Food Safety Control”.

As any educational and project activity Eras-

mus+ Jean Monnet Module need to be monitored

(ec.europa.eu, 2020) and its success is evaluated by

signiﬁcant results (DG EAC, 2020; Mariott and Goy-

der, 2009).

Objectives of the research was to assess outcomes

396

Galaburda, M., Kuzminska, O. and Halaburda, M.

Information and Communication Technologies in Application, Dissemination and Evaluation of Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Activities.

DOI: 10.5220/0010932100003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 2, pages 396-402

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

of the project and value the role of ICT in achieving

the project results: the effect of teaching activities,

dissemination effect of open events, and overall as-

sessment of relevant project outputs by action prior-

ity matrix, judged on the basis of strategy for the dis-

semination and exploitation of project results for Jean

Monnet projects.

2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Activities are one of Euro-

pean grant supported programs intended to promote

the beneﬁts of European integration and development

of cooperation, dissemination of European studies in

Europe and other continents. The initiative of the

grant conditions of the program belongs to the Coun-

cil of European Universities and teachers from all

over the world who conduct research in the ﬁeld of

European integration (Lynch, M., 2018). Grant funds

are earmarked and allocated to universities to start in

the educational process of teaching disciplines that

are directly related to the development of European

law, European economy, education, science, culture,

history, theory and practice of European integration.

The content of the Jean Monnet European Education

Module under the terms of the grant project was to de-

velop and teach specially designed short-term courses

on European integration for a certain category of stu-

dents. Figure 1 describes how the general objectives

of the Jean Monnet Erasmus+ Programme are ad-

dressed in the module activities and ICT integration in

the project “EU Food Safety Control” (587548-EPP-

1-2017-1-EN-EPPJMO-MODULE).

A new training module on EU Food Safety Con-

trol was developed and implemented at the Depart-

ment of Veterinary and Sanitary Examination (cur-

rently Department of Veterinary Hygiene) of National

University of Life and Environmental Sciences of

Ukraine (NULES). The course addressed key ele-

ments of European food law, including the EU’s strat-

egy for food and feed safety assurance and the pro-

cesses of food safety policy integration. The mod-

ule include fundamental questions – theoretical back-

ground of food safety based on risk analyses and prac-

tical application of procedures for ofﬁcial controls in

the food processing chain.

There were three cohorts of participants:

1) students of the ﬁfth term of the Faculty of Vet-

erinary Medicine with similar educational back-

ground;

2) participants of the open events;

3) principal participants of the project (authors of the

project and other experts involved in project man-

agement).

Main research questions of the study aimed:

1. To assess the effect of ICT introduction in the “EU

Food Safety Control” module on knowledge and

skills development of the students.

2. To assess dissemination effect and impact the ICT

make to the open event success.

3. Value the ICT role in achieving project results

from the point of management and implementa-

tion.

3 STUDY DESIGN

3.1 Target Groups, Activities and ICT

Involvement

The main target group of the module educational

activities (ﬁrst cohort) was Master’s students of the

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine studied the training

course “EU Food Safety Control” (ﬁgure 2).

For evaluation of university course efﬁciency and

the role of ICT in teaching activities, data of the stu-

dents testing were analyzed as a general cohort and

with regard to different conditions of the course de-

livery. For that purpose participants were divided in

three groups: 1-st group studied the course as blended

learning (with both contact lectures and seminars sup-

ported by the course on e-learning platform); 2-nd

group studied the course with both lectures and sem-

inars delivered with Zoom and supported by the e-

learning course; 3-rd one had only Zoom lectures

but seminars were provided only with e-learning plat-

form.

Open activities, like summer school and round ta-

bles, were targeted to students and participants from

outside the department meaning that, all interested

stakeholders who specialize in related issues were in-

vited to take part in. That was the second cohort of

involved participants, that included students and re-

searchers, practicing veterinarians, representatives of

the State Service of Food Safety and Consumer Pro-

tection (SSFSCP), NGOs and other EU projects in

Ukraine.

Principal participants responsible for the project

management and implementation (third cohort of par-

ticipants) were involved in assessment of project man-

agement efﬁciency by the project outcome.

The readiness for the introduction of digital tech-

nologies in the educational process and project activ-

ities was studied in NULES of Ukraine for designing

Information and Communication Technologies in Application, Dissemination and Evaluation of Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Activities

397

Figure 1: Consistency between programme objectives and design of Jean Monnet Module “EU Food Safety Control”.

the project implementation plan with the maximum

involvement of digital technologies (Kuzminska et al.,

2019). As a result, the digital educational environ-

ment of NULES of Ukraine (https://nubip.edu.ua/en/

node/3033) has the necessary resources for the effec-

tive implementation of the project.

The preparation stage comprised of develop-

ing the content of the web page to be hosted

within the university website (https://nubip.edu.ua/

node/72229) and FoodSaCo site development (http:

//greeneconomy.com.ua).

An e-learning training course “EU Food safety

Control” (erasmusplus.org.ua, 2020) covers the actual

issues of organization of food safety assurance sys-

tem of the European Union and its legislation on the

food safety. The course was developed by the Food-

SaCo team and became one of the modules of the

courses “State Veterinary and Sanitary Control” for

Master’s students in Veterinary Hygiene, Sanitary and

Expertise (VHSE), “State Veterinary and Sanitary Ex-

pertise” for Master’s students in Veterinary Medicine

(VM), and university elective course “EU Food Safety

Control”. According to the plan, the project educa-

tional activities, started in September 2017, included

delivery of the educational course to the Master Stu-

dents of Veterinary Hygiene, Sanitary and Expertise

and Veterinary Medicine.

The Summer Schools “Towards food safety as-

surance: Approaches in Implementing and Enforcing

European Food Safety Control” with round table de-

bate “EU – Ukraine interaction for the food safety as-

surance” was planed for the second (2019) and third

(2020) year of the project as open event for Ukrainian

competent authorities and food business operators,

State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Con-

sumer Protection (SSFSCP) inspectors, practical vet-

erinarians, higher school lecturers and researchers,

the public in order to disseminate project results.

First Summer Schools with round table debates

implemented one on May 14–16, 2019 on the ba-

sis of the state institution Scientiﬁc and Methodolog-

ical Center for Information and Analytical Support

of Higher Education Institutions “Agroosvita” with

50 registered participants, involving teachers of vo-

cational education institutions, representatives of the

SSFSCP, NGOs and other EU projects in Ukraine.

Taking into account special measures at the na-

tional and University level caused by COVID-19 out-

break, open school 2020 was implemented via Cisco

(Webex Event) platform and resulted in better dissem-

ination due to attraction more than 180 participants.

Digital resources that were used in project imple-

mentation could be divided in following categories

(Assar, 2015):

1. Didactic components used to support learning in-

side the course and project events.

2. Communication tools (emailing, messaging, web

conferencing).

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

398

Figure 2: Organization of the educational process and different conditions of the course delivery.

3. Learning Management System (on-line course de-

livery).

Two ﬁrst years of the project implementation in-

volved digital and ICT tools only as didactic and

supportive. The e-learning course was developed in

accordance with the “Regulations on Organization

of Academic Process in NULES” and was not de-

clared in approved project application. Due to pres-

ence and sufﬁcient development of university digital

learning environment (DLEs) our project continued

to implement the program of action with certain ﬂex-

ibility despite special measures taken at the national

and the university level caused by COVID-19 out-

break. The teaching activities for MSc students in

spring 2020 were delivered on-line with Zoom lec-

tures but seminars were delivered only by the dis-

tant learning course on the university e-learning plat-

form (erasmusplus.org.ua, 2020). Students of Veteri-

nary Medicine in 2019 had blended learning (con-

tact lectures and seminars supported by the course

on e-learning platform), and in autumn 2020 studied

on-line with both lectures and seminars provided in

Zoom, with the support of the university e-learning

platform.

Previously planned Spring school 2020 “Towards

food safety assurance: Approaches in Implementing

and Enforcing European Food safety control” was im-

plemented in Cisco (Webex Event) platform and re-

sulted in better dissemination due to attraction more

than 180 participants.

3.2 Methods and Study Materials

To discover the ﬁrst research question students’

knowledge on food safety control was assessed prior

to the delivery of the educational Module curriculum

using a pretest that included true/false and multiple-

choice questions. The participants completed the

same food safety control knowledge assessments

(posttest) immediately after course completion via an

online test on the university e-learn platform (eras-

musplus.org.ua, 2020). The homogeneity of entry

tests results were the basic to consider the groups as

homogenous. Collected data were initially summa-

rized in Microsoft Excel and analyzed with Students’

t-distribution.

The second research question dealt with the sec-

ond cohort of participants. Open event held on-

line (in 2020) resulted in involvement of 30 students

and 150 researchers, representatives of the SSFSCP,

NGOs and other EU projects in Ukraine – 180 persons

total. For open summer school activity a short ques-

tioner was developed on the attitude and impression

about distance learning activities and events (http:

//surl.li/pqyf). The participants were asked about gen-

eral impressions of the event, their attitude to events

(conferences, etc.) held on-line and the effectiveness

of that kind of activities. The questions of the study

also considered the participants’ perception of dis-

tance learning vs. full-time, and a) main beneﬁts and

b) main disadvantages of distance learning.

Project team (third cohort), including 12 par-

ticipants in total from the Faculty of Veterinary

Medicine, Faculty of Information Technologies, In-

ternational Relation Ofﬁce, university ﬁnancial de-

partment and Erasmus+ Ofﬁce of Ukraine conducted

the assessment of ICT for the project management

success. Impact effort matrix technique was used

for determining the best action taken for achieving

project result. The criteria for assessment project re-

Information and Communication Technologies in Application, Dissemination and Evaluation of Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Activities

399

sults were developed in accordance with Erasmus+

working documents (Bens, 2017; Mind Tools Con-

tent Team, 2015). The impact of each project out-

comes and effort involved were scored from 0 to 10.

By creating a matrix with four quadrants and plotting

the results based on the effort required to implement

(x-axis) and the impact (y-axis), the outcomes falling

into the upper left-hand quadrant are the best action

taken.

4 MAIN FINDINGS

4.1 Evaluation of University Course

Efﬁciency

Participants’ food safety control knowledge was eval-

uated with a questionnaire before and after the mod-

ule. The results of pre- and post-tests are provided in

table 1.

The questionnaire included questions about dif-

ferent aspects of food safety assurance. Only 3 out

of 100 participants had grades lower than 60% and

9 had minor (i.e. = 60%) food safety knowledge

in the pretest. After the delivery of module, stu-

dents demonstrated certain progress in knowledge.

The progress in case of blended learning, when stu-

dents had contact lectures and seminars additionally

supported with e-learning platform (1st group), was

considerably higher than in case of on-line study in

general, but when lectures and seminars were pro-

vided through Zoom (2nd group) students demon-

strated the slightly lower post-test results. Neverthe-

less, the study indicates that Zoom seminars in the

condition of on-line study could be considered as ef-

fective as contact lessons. Students of 3rd group, who

did not have Zoom seminars, demonstrated the min-

imal progress, although they had the highest pretest

results. The latter corresponds with ﬁndings of Mok

et al. (Mok et al., 2015) that the students with lower

initial grade improves at a faster rate than those who

started at a higher level.

4.2 Open School Activities Application

and Evaluation

The main purpose of open events were to disseminate

the results of the project by sharing practices, knowl-

edge and experience gained during the project. Com-

parison of the number of participants and organiza-

tions involved in contact and on-line open event in-

dicated the better dissemination effect of the on-line

meeting.

Participants of on-line event were offered to take

part in survey about their impression and attitude to

the event and to distance learning (http://surl.li/pqyf).

All participants had good impression about the event

emphasizing on high quality of organization and con-

tent. About the efﬁciency of on-line events (confer-

ences, etc.): 64.5% of respondents reacted positively,

indicating that it is an opportunity to join the discus-

sion of topical issues and save money and time; 20.7%

indicated that the form of communication does not

matter if the topic is interesting and experts are expe-

rienced; 10.7% of participants considered the on-line

communication only in case of force majeure (for ex-

ample, quarantine); and only 4.1% reacted negative,

assuming the face-to-face events are more effective.

The idea of distance learning was clearly sup-

ported by 9.9% of respondents; 36.4% preferred

blended learning; 38.8% considered that the form of

learning is not essential if a person is motivated to

learn; 10.7% believe face-to-face training is always

more effective; 4.1% emphasized the need of support

from administration.

As main disadvantages of distance learning par-

ticipants considered technical failures, lack of contact

with audience and between participants.

4.3 Project Results Impact vs Effort

Evaluation

The evaluation of taken efﬁciency actions for achiev-

ing project outputs or outcomes that are relevant for

project results (ec.europa.eu, 2020) reviled that most

effective of them involve ICT (marked blue) (ﬁg-

ure 3).

Most of the activities with ICT technologies re-

quired certain effort or better preparedness and skills

from the team involved in project implementation.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The speciﬁc targeted impacts of the project was teach-

ing and dissemination the key aspects of the EU food

safety assurance system, contributing to reﬂection and

debate about food safety ofﬁcial control challenges of

Ukraine.

Methodical support of the teaching activities was

provided through presentation of all teaching materi-

als, including lectures and reports on eLearning portal

of the NULES and project website.

The ﬁndings clearly demonstrate the importance

of ICT in successful implementation of project re-

sults. Developed EU food safety ofﬁcial control

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

400

Table 1: Analysis of the success rate of training participants by method of communication during educational process.

Group of students

Pre-assessment Final Progress

test rate test rate rate %

General cohort 21.31±0.47 24.65±0.44 3.33

15.64

% to maximum grade 71.04±1.55 82.15±1.47 11.11

1st (contact lectures and seminars + LMS Moodle courses) 21.38±1.13 28.65±0.47 5.46

25.54

% to maximum 71.28±3.03 89.49±1.39 18.21

On-line (general) 20.83±0.52 23.93±0.55 3.10

14.88

% to maximum grade 69.44±1.73 79.78±1.90 10.33

2nd (Zoom lectures and seminars + LMS Moodle courses) 20.12±0.37 24.88±0.64 4.76

23.68

% to maximum grade 67.06±1.46 82.94±2.13 15.88

3rd (Zoom lectures + LMS Moodle courses) 21.77±0.77 22.69±0.74 0.92

4.24

% to maximum grade 72.56±2.55 75.64±2.47 3.08

Figure 3: Impact effort matrix of project result.

course at NULES LMS Moodle platform and intro-

duction open events via WebexEvent platform, de-

spite the COVID-19 disruption, realized a broad out-

reach to the student community by ensuring the par-

ticipation of all interested stakeholders (i.e. not just

students from the Veterinary Medicine Faculty) as

well as participants from other universities, organiza-

tions and projects in Ukraine, who are and going to be

involved in food safety assurance.

Blended learning, when students had contact lec-

tures and seminars additionally supported with e-

learning platform demonstrated better progress than

in case of on-line study.

Impact effort matrix technique reviled that action

taken with ICT were the best for achieving project re-

sult.

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