Inovácia vzdelávacích postupov ako prostriedok inklúzie príslušníkov minority

In the course of our workplace practice, we repeatedly identified the problem of a missing database of specialized literature. This was evidenced by recurring cases where experts from different fields addressed topics without knowing they had already been processed—and conversely, others were unable to identify verified, expert-approved texts and instead relied on unverified sources. The main goal of the proposed project was therefore to identify ways to establish an open online database of high-quality, verified professional bibliographic resources. We decided to develop this concept using the example of the history and culture of the Lower Land Slovaks, under the supervision of Prof. Miroslav Kmeť from the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. The Methodological Centre for Slovaks Living Abroad also ensured the project’s outreach to the appropriate target audience. The need for such a database was confirmed by experts across Slovakia, as well as representatives of the Office for Slovaks Living Abroad, whose website provides a direct link to the Centre’s materials under the section “Quick Access”: https://www.uszz.sk/.

By the implementation of the project, our main objective was to help professionals from Slovak minority communities abroad improve their educational opportunities. One way to achieve this was by organizing educational events—lectures and workshops. We based this on the premise that Matej Bel University (UMB) and its specialized centre for Slovaks living abroad, together with the Centre for Research on the History and Culture of Lower Land Slovaks at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, UMB, serve as expert guarantors unmatched in Slovakia, with more than 30 years of continuous professional activity. UMB also focused on identifying suitable project partners, who in turn were well positioned to assess the educational needs of their target groups and to carry out planned project outcomes—both educational events and the bibliographic database. We identified both areas as priorities for our target groups, and project activities across all partners confirmed this prioritization. Through these activities, the project contributed to improving the quality of education by introducing innovative methods, which subsequently strengthened the position and inclusion of minority participants in relation to the majority.

Throughout the entire project, we implemented two main areas of professional project activities: The first involved organizing educational events based on an initial identification of relevant topics. While the project originally envisaged one lecture and one workshop per partner each year, in practice each partner held conferences and workshops annually, resulting in a total of 98 lectures and 14 workshops. The second professional area focused on developing and implementing an online, user-friendly, and easily accessible bibliographic database containing at least 6,000 expert-verified records related to the history and culture of the Lower Land Slovaks. This goal was fully achieved, as the final database includes 6,261 bibliographic entries. Both WP2 and WP3 were successfully implemented thanks to the organizational and managerial coordination of all WP1 activities—made possible through the exceptional collaboration between UMB’s specialized units (the University Centre for International Projects and the Methodological Centre for Slovaks Living Abroad) and foreign partner institutions—the Research Institute of Slovaks in Hungary and the Slovak Cultural Club in Serbia.

To the concrete outputs of the project we would mention the outputs in WP2 and WP3. The results under WP2 included: - conducting an online questionnaire to identify educational needs and professional topics; - organizing a conference and workshop each year in every partner institution, resulting in a total of 98 lectures and 14 workshops; - publishing outputs on https://www.umb.sk/.../biblio/ under the sections Working Materials and News; - publishing, beyond the original project scope, proceedings from these events, available at https://www.umb.sk/.../publikacie-projektu-biblo/. The specific outputs of WP3 included: - the final online bibliographic database Biblio, available at biblio.umb.sk and directly via the project website: https://www.umb.sk/.../vysledky-projektu/. An important project outcome was also the unanimously positive evaluation of the project and its final database by all reviewers at the closing conference. These evaluations are attached to the submitted project assessment.