The JMCoE’s teaching activities form the “VisualEU Academy” comprising of a semester course and a summer school on how to apply state-of-the-art analytics to statistical data about EU policies and current affairs. These teaching activities bring attention to EU studies from a multidisciplinary standpoint and attract attention from aspiring students, scholars and professionals beyond the social sciences, like engineering, economics, humanities, natural sciences as well as from the armed forces and the police.

Analysis of European policies using Eurostat data

The semester course is one of two components of the JMCoE’s “VisuALEU Academy” specific activity. Like all courses delivered at the university, the course is supported by an LMS for facilitating interaction (e.g. course-wide announcements, delivery of handouts and notes, discussions, assignment setting and uploading, marking, etc.)

Scope

The course is an EU-focused, ICT based course on contextual and decisional policy analysis. The emphasis is on developing competence in finding and retrieving EU policy information from EU and EU affiliated websites, data from Eurostat and other providers and to apply bivariate and multivariate techniques to query policy effectiveness.

Learning Outcomes

Those that complete the course successfully have a working knowledge of (a) Key European Policies overall and the policy domains considered in the course, (b) Data retrieval techniques from Eurostat and other databases, (c) data analysis skills in data pre-processing, visualization, correlation, regression, classification and clustering, (d) skills in using integrated analytics software for analysis and reporting purposes.

‘An.EU.Affair’ Summer School

The Summer School “Analytics on European current affairs” (An.EU.Affair) is the second part of the JMCoE’s “VisuALEU Academy” activity.

Scope

The Summer School is an annual, international event focusing on (a) EU Policy Analysis and (b) EU Social & Foreign Affairs. The school is a high value learning, yet enjoyable experience. More specifically: the Policy Analysis strand is skills-oriented, ICT based workshop-style course that focusing on the EU and particularly on contextual and decisional policy analysis, just like its semester counterpart. The Social and Foreign Affairs is bird’s eye view of EU insights focussing on integration, global policy, social policies, values, local government and multiculturalism.

Learning outcomes

The Policy Analysis strand is multidisciplinary at heart, fusing (a) policy content analysis and (b) the use of analytics software and techniques to analyse policies with Eurostat data. Participants will have the opportunity to apply the newly acquired skills in the form of a capstone project.

The Social and Foreign affairs strand serves as a unique insight into European integration along with insights in EU’s global policies, touching on security and strategy, social policies, local policies and governance, issues of trust and multicultural diversity.

Setting

The summer school takes place approximately in mid-July every year. Location may vary.