Between 29 March and 01 April the Kennedy Institute, working with the European External Action Service and ZIF Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF), Germany, delivered a 4 day online programme aimed at deepening understanding of the nature of complex conflicts, and providing participants with critical skills and competences to analyse conflict dynamics, and to identify and assess realistic responses.
The 16 Participants came from 10 different EU member states, and many are part of diverse EU Civilian peacebuilding missions around the world including Georgia, Iraq, Libya Somalia and Ukraine.
Supported by the Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the programme successfully used Moodle and Microsoft Teams online platforms to engage participants on pre – course reading, interactive case studies and scenario based individual and group exercises, and critical reflection.
Course Director, Dr Kieran Doyle commented “As this was our first EU programme to go completely online, we were curious to see if we could replicate the classroom dynamic, particularly with such expertise on the programme. I’m glad to say that, at the end of the 4 day programme, participants said, while they missed the social aspect of classroom learning, the online systems actually intensified the opportunity to share and learn from other”.