FDUL / ELPIS / LINCOLN
Students Research Online Interchange
Pandemic times ask for creative and innovative international pedagogical initiatives aimed at promoting cultural interchange between foreign and national students.
In this sense, the “FDUL / ELPIS / LINCOLN Students Research Online Interchange” initiative was created, a pedagogical project in which about 60 students (30 North Americans and 30 Portuguese), especially selected (at the Lincoln University Duncan School of Law and at the FDUL), participated in a joint academic research project.
This project consists in the association of all the selected students in pairs, elected randomly (one student from each school), in order to research together about a theme of Comparative Law (Portugal/USA) chosen by each one of them, from a list of topics provided by Professor Melanie Reid and Professor Vasco Pereira da Silva (the Professors responsible for the project). During the research, students helped each other in collecting legal elements and bibliographic references, as well as in clarifying doubts on legal terminology and material contents.
By the end of the day, two different papers on Comparative Law (Portuguese law / US law) were written by each pair of students that are afterwards submitted for assessment in a Course of the respective University.
This “experimental project” took place in the 1st semester of the current academic year (2020/2021), and the results achieved were considered as being more than satisfactory, both by the students and by the Professors involved in this pedagogical experience. Given this positive outcome, the experience is having a second edition with different courses during the 2nd semester with more 42 Students (21 from Portugal and 21 from the USA). And we feel like repeating it, again and again.