Tue. Feb 18th, 2025

UL Journalism partner on new EU education project

The European Parlaiment in Strasbourg; picture by Udo Pohlmann from Pixabay
New MOOC Offers Journalism Students Insight into EU Policy and Practice

A major new course aimed at helping journalism students understand policy-making in Europe and utilize relevant data and sources has been launched this week.

Journalism@UL is one of the partners on the €1 million project. Funded by the EU, the initiative centres around a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The Journalism@UL subject head Dr Fergal Quinn led the involvement of the University of Limerick in developing the course, aiming to help journalism students better understand and engage with EU policy and practice.

UL was one of 27 partner institutes across Europe that contributed to the project, which was led by the Institute of Journalism at the Technical University Dortmund.

UL Students Engage in Pilot Program for EU Journalism Course
Dr Fergal Quinn; picture Oisin McHugh True Media

The UL team helped write the content of the MOOC, which was then piloted over the last 12 months by students of the university. The interactive e-learning portal is now available free of charge to universities and the public across Europe.

Dr Quinn commented: “Recent studies have shown that a large number of aspiring journalists lack basic knowledge about the EU, while EU spending and actions, in general, are too rarely picked up by the media as important topics and investigated in-depth. We hope our input on this project can encourage an evolution in this area. Thanks to all the staff and students here in journalism@ul for their work on this.”

EU Commissioner for Cohesion Policy and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, praised the newly developed MOOC  platform ´COPE – Covering Cohesion Policy in Europe´ as a “Shining Example of European Cooperation” at the official launch earlier this week.
Ferreira said the future of the EU also depends on independent media, which with their critical reporting, “shed light on every corner of the European house” – and thus advance democracy in Europe.

For more information or to access the course, visit www.cope-journalism.eu.