Hej Hej,
now our first course is almost over. After the presentations on Friday, we finally finished.
The aim of this course was to get every student on the same knowledge level, because everyone comes from another background. For us the speed of the course was not too slow or to fast. We got a lot of input from different teachers during the course, we had some lectures about soil ecology, plant interactions, and political and social issues were covered as well. Of course, there were lectures about methods and theories, too. Some of the theoretical stuff we had to apply in our assignments. Sometimes the tasks for the four assignments, which we had to fulfil during the two months, were not so clear at the beginning but we managed everything. When you ask for help or you have problems, you will definitely get help. As we said earlier, you have to be very self-organised, for example by reading the indicated literature. You are supposed to work independently by yourself, be creative and comply with the deadlines, on the other hand you should be able to work as a group, too.
This course gave us the basic understanding of Agroecology and if you are studying the Master´s programme, it is a good one to start with.
By the way: apple-juice-making was one of the special lessons we have had in this course, too. We collected the apples together and pressed them to juice afterwards. This strengthened us as a group at the very beginning of the course and we got to know our fellows. And finally the excursion at the end of the course was another good event to get to know everyone even better and to just have a lot of fun. Besides the entertaining part of the excursion we also learnt a lot about wild edible plants, mushrooms and meditation.
The next course, ‘Agroecology and Sustainability of Production Systems’, builds up on the ‘Agroecology basic’ course, but you are able to choose another one, too.
So, see you next week with a new course!