Studying in Aarhus – week 3!

“Say this: Røde frugter gelé med fløde!” and other challenging tongue twisters are the moments of pure joy for many of our Danish fellow students. Funnily, the Danes are very well aware how difficult their language (especially the pronunciation) is for many foreigners. Some of us Maastricht ESST students are doing the language course offered by the University (for free!) and/or are attending some Tandem-meetings with friendly Danes willing to teach some Danish by learning/improving another language in turn. (e.g. German, Dutch, etc.)  The possibilities to learn Danish are multifarious, however, we are still struggling with the pronunciation of seemingly simple sentences. Yet no time to give up!

We already made our first interactive study abroad experiences! So far, we had 3 double-seminar-sessions – we meet every Wednesday from 9am until 4pm, have some 15 minutes breaks in between and one hour lunch break from 12 to 1pm. This is usually the time when we intermingle in the canteen – students and teaching staff are sitting together at long tables and have easy chats during lunch. Affordable food, cosy atmosphere, and yummy!

The seminars were structured on following topics: IT in historical perspective, IT and infrastructure, material agency, material hermeneutics, configuring the user, participatory design – and the final one next Wednesday will be on surveillance and IT. Although it might be unclear at the beginning what these topics actually mean, the readings are usually written in an easily approachable style so are the down-to-the-earth explanations of the ESST lecturers and tutors – in Aarhus as well as in Maastricht.

From a theoretical perspective, the ESST specialization in Aarhus builds neatly on the content of the first semester in Maastricht.  Many authors we are discussing here, were part of our readings and discussions in Maastricht as well – just to name few: Wiebe Bijker, who is professor of Technology & Society at our home University of Maastricht and was the first scientific coordinator of ESST, and together with Trevor Pinch has developed the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach to elaborate on questions such as How do social groups shape the development of a technological artifact? We also extensively discussed Bruno Latour and his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to come to terms with questions like How to make sense and analyse human and material agency? In comparison to Maastricht, the ESST specialization in Aarhus puts rather emphasis on material agency though.

So far, the seminar sessions were very dynamic and lively – just as it is usually at our home University Maastricht. The major difference between our ESST sessions in Maastricht and Aarhus is that we usually met in Maastricht 3 times a week à 2 hours plus one or two lectures per week (varying from module to module); in Aarhus we just meet once a week and experience a full-blown working day – which might be at first sight more intense than in Maastricht but considering that we have no other official interactions for the rest of the week, the Aarhus seminars remain few (in total 4 meetings for the second semester).

Another organisational difference is while the meetings in Maastricht are based on lectures and discussions of our readings and learning goals, in Aarhus we start with a lecture which presents in the end a question related to our preparatory readings – we are asked to form into small work groups (3 students per group) and to prepare a short presentation (ca. 10-15 min.) after half an hour of preparation time. After the presentations we round-up our long day with a final discussion. The group works are quite fruitful for the understandings of the texts, yet two of these “spontaneous” and quick presentations (one for each seminar) in one day is indeed demanding – but in the end helpful when it comes to prepare the writing assignment (2-3 pages per seminar) at the end of the week, which however will not be graded but is aimed at improving writing skills. Finally, we are strongly encouraged to meet up again in our small working group independently to comment each others writing assignments. The group where I am in meet up every friday afternoon for 2 hours and give each other some constructive comments – so  helpful!

……After this, we go to our faculties Friday´s bar and finnish our day with some quite affordable drinks (1 Tuborg for 10 DK, equally to ca. 1,30 Euro!) and get with each bottle better in pronouncing Danish tongue twisters! Skål!

Indtil da, yours Sarah