Fields reports
At the end of 2023, a team from vocational and business education was in Costa Rica as part of CoRiVET for the second forum on VET research. There were various networking activities and meetings of the actors involved in the intended cooperation agreement on VET research. The trip involved the promotion of joint networks with academic/non-academic stakeholders and research activities in VET, as well as the development of resources for research.
The team's trip was sponsored by the Sievert Foundation for Science and Culture.
Field report by Sebastian Holt, who was in Costa Rica at the end of 2023 for the Department of Biology Didactics for project work and literature research, didactic preparation and creation of analog and digital educational media on the páramo ecosystem.
Over a period of two months, I was able to create various digital media about the páramos of Costa Rica with the support of the Costa Rica Center. These included distribution maps, drawings/illustrations, videos and various photographs and collages. With the help of the resulting materials and the associated final thesis, a book exposé on the subject of "Ecosystems of Costa Rica - A Multimedia Excursion Guide" (working title) is to be produced in the medium term for submission to the renowned Springer publishing house.
The funding from the CRZ gave me great freedom in the development and design of the media. In my opinion, the media represent a sensible use of image material and information and I am looking forward to its application in biology didactic projects. By working with different editing and processing programs, I was able to significantly improve the quality of my work compared to previous results. The biggest hurdle for working on the media was available storage space and loading times. As expected, the result was very satisfactory and I had a lot of fun while working on it.
In conclusion, I believe that the planned book project under the guidance of Dr. Florian Fiebelkorn lays the foundation for further work related to the biodiversity and ecosystems of Costa Rica (and Latin America).
Field report by Daniel Lascarez, who was in Osnabrück in September 2023 to prepare the conference on crisis discourses and the development of vocational training structures to be presented at the DGFE Congress in Halle, Germany, in March 2024. At the same time, he defended his dissertation:
'The visit to Osnabrück was very productive from a scientific point of view: on the one hand, I was able to achieve the goals for participation in DGFE 2024, and I was able to defend my doctoral thesis.
The working group of Prof. Dr. Dietmar Frommberger from the Chair of Vocational and Business Education has a great vision of scientific development and offers many opportunities for bilateral relations with Costa Rica. I would like to thank the Centro Costa Rica for the financial support to deepen academic relations between the two universities. I would also like to thank the administrative team of the CRZ for making my stay in Osnabrück very pleasant.
From the beginning of April to mid-May 2023, I had the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica as part of my Master's thesis. I am studying Intercultural Psychology and am writing my thesis as part of a project to strengthen the sustainable development of village communities in Costa Rica. To this end, the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology at Osnabrück University is cooperating with the Universidad Nacional in Costa Rica. With my work, I would like to contribute to the theoretical underpinning of the project by analyzing the existing resources and the development potential of the communities. The qualitative research method of semi-structured interviews, which would be audio-recorded and later transcribed, offered itself for the collection of the required data.
Equipped with an interview guide and a dictaphone, I boarded the plane in Zurich on April 2. The work then started a few days later in Heredia, where I met up with a Costa Rican project colleague to discuss final questions on site.
I then took the bus to the first community I would be investigating, called Santa María de Dota. This is a small inland village in the middle of coffee plantations, which is characterized by a number of creative small businesses in addition to producing some of the world's highest quality and most expensive coffees. I interviewed different members of the village community, from producers to political actors, to consider different perspectives. I spent most of my free time in the numerous cafeterias, which offer professionally prepared coffee specialties as well as great culinary offerings (from trout tacos to macadamia pie).
I was also lucky enough to see a quetzal (a beautiful but unfortunately endangered bird), visited a coffee plantation where the entire processing process was explained to me, went on excursions and walks in the surrounding area and cheered on the village soccer team at a community festival. After 10 days, it was time to say goodbye to Dota... and after a short stopover in San José, my journey took me to the second community, in the district of Turrialba.
There are mountains here too, but instead of coffee, they mainly produce cheese - the "Queso Turrialba" even has a protected product name. After my own little wooden house in Dota, I now lived in an AirBnB between the towns of Turrialba and Santa Cruz - and got on very well with the somewhat older owner of the house, who served me a lovingly prepared plate of "Gallo Pinto" (the typical Costa Rican breakfast of rice and beans) every morning. Thanks to their great hospitality and helpfulness, it was no problem at all to find enough interview partners and even reach a very remote farm for an interview. Steep and impassable gravel roads are simply part of an authentic Costa Rican experience... I interviewed people with similar functions and backgrounds to those in Dota in order to be able to ensure a certain comparability of the two regions when analyzing them later. Due to the spectacular nature, it was not difficult for me to organize my free time here either - I can highly recommend swimming in one of the numerous waterfalls and a hike on the Turrialba volcano. As for local specialties, you should definitely try "tamal asado" (a sweet corn cake) and of course the delicious cheese.
Many local people made my trip an unforgettable experience! Through the different regions I visited, I was able to get to know the diverse Costa Rica again and again and, in addition to the unique opportunity to be able to travel as a field researcher myself, I also benefited greatly personally from this experience abroad. ¡Pura vida y muchas gracias!
Lea Schlotterbeck
I had the opportunity to be involved as a research intern in the project "Building Communities for Sustainable Change: A program to connect students of Costa Rican and German universities with local entrepreneurs in rural areas in Costa Rica". Four months before our departure, from mid-October to the end of January, we started with the preparations remotely and from February to mid-March we were responsible for the project on site in Costa Rica.
San José or Heredia, where the Universidad Nacional (UNA) is located, was the first stop of our stay. There we had the first team meeting in person with all the participants from Osnabrück University and UNA. During the meeting, we finalized goals and ideas that we wanted to fulfill at the various stops of our stay.
Our second stop was in Santa Maria de Dota, a coffee region in the interior of Costa Rica. There we had a meeting with the local city administration, who informed us about the status of the "One village one product" (OVOP) project and where we could be of assistance. Together with the employees, we came up with a structure for a website that would make tourist activities and special features in the region accessible. We clustered the offers of local entrepreneurs into different categories to make them clearer for visitors on the website in future. In preparation, we reviewed and supplemented existing information, contacted entrepreneurs, conducted interviews to collect missing information and took high-quality photos for the company's website. We were also able to organize an amateur photographer for the last few days in Santa Maria.
Turrialba was our third stop, where we worked on the students' seminar material, among other things. In the winter semester, the students had created material in a seminar on the onboarding process, exit interview, protocol structure, and for a wiki on the organizational part of the internship (a kind of how-to for organizing and planning the internship), etc.
We worked out the material and adapted it to the needs of the project, so that we adapted a template for minutes to our meetings and introduced and tested them directly for the next meetings. We also created an interview guide for our market research and a keyword search and SEO for the turri.cr website, where producers from Turrialba, their history and products are presented and sold.
For the market research, we spent a few days in San José and interviewed various cafés, stores and consumers about local products, their sale and product shelves, among other things. We created interview protocols for this so that the following interns could continue working on the project with the information collected.
I am very glad that I accepted the challenge and let the more or less uncertain things in Costa Rica happen to me. Above all, overcoming the language challenge and using Spanish in a completely new context was an important experience for my personal development. The experiences, the people, the culture, simply the whole Costa Rica package that I was able to experience there was a unique experience that enriched me greatly.
Dilay Dollnick
Report: Felix Przesdzink (doctoral student at UOS), Vincent Fritzen (student at UOS) and Sebastian Holt (student at UOS)
We were in Costa Rica from 27.02.2023 - 21.03.2023 to capture the country's diverse life forms and ecosystems on film. The content of our documentary is based on the popular Costa Rica "Excursion Module" by apl. Prof. Dr. Klaus Mummenhoff from Botany. We now want to transform the complex content of the module, which is tailored to students, into a more accessible documentary for the general public. The finished films will be successively published on YouTube in the second half of this year and then also linked on our website. Below we briefly describe our experiences on this journey:
Felix Przesdzink:
For me, this Costa Rica trip was particularly special because it took place "without a supervisor" for the first time. As a participant, tutor or filmer, I've always had to assist and take instructions, but I could always rely on someone to solve any problems. This time we had to solve our problems on our own - and problems come up spontaneously and in abundance on a Latin American expedition. In the end, we were able to shoot almost all of the planned scenes without any major losses or equipment or team failures. I'm particularly proud of the latter, as we managed to organize and carry out our first film trip under our own responsibility in a very short space of time.
Vincent Fritzen:
For the virtual excursion project, I traveled to Costa Rica for the first time with a team. This allowed us to experience tropical ecosystems up close and personal and we got lots of exciting impressions. Being part of the Costa Rica project was an absolute highlight for me. I was very impressed by Felix's technical expertise and Sebastian's technical and artistic know-how. We used the small differences of opinion very well to develop and grow as a team.
Sebastian Holt:
It was a great honor for me to travel to Costa Rica again. Compared to last time, this year we were much more on our own and had to solve our own problems. By focusing on the quality of the footage, we were able to capture particularly impressive scenes and bring them back to Germany. As our team was comparatively small with only three people, we repeatedly experienced particularly exciting natural moments that would have been less likely to occur in a larger group. Whether it was the encounter with the little tamandua in the seasonal lowland rainforest or filming red macaws on the Pacific beach, these rare moments have left a lasting impression on me.
Vivian Schütt
My four-hour-a-week research internship began in October 2022 at the Chair of Work and Organizational Psychology. My work in the project was aimed at further developing the project and preparing for my six-week stay in Costa Rica. I worked in various locations in Costa Rica. These included Santa Maria de Dota, Turrialba, Heredia and San José. My local contact was Daniel Avendaño Leadem, who is a professor at the Faculty of Geography. I completed the international internship as part of my master's degree in intercultural psychology, which is compulsory for my course.
My activities were very varied. I helped to set up a website that presented local producers in the region with photos and texts. I was in close contact with them and also wrote introductory texts in Spanish. I also took part in meetings with producers and the local city council and presented our project. I also prepared and carried out a market analysis for our project. This included research, creating an interview guide and visiting cafés/restaurants in San José and Heredia. We then compiled this information into reports.
My everyday life was very varied. In Costa Rica, the sun rises very early (5:30) and sets early (18:00), which is why I always got into the habit of getting up at sunrise. In the morning, I always did yoga on the veranda or in the garden, then had breakfast and started work at around 9:00. In the evening, I usually had something to do, as it was very easy to get in touch with people. We were often invited to dinner and went out to bars or salsa dancing. At the weekends, we explored the area. This varies greatly depending on the region. Inland, there are more mountains and rivers, which is why hiking, rafting and mountain biking are a good option. On the coasts, the weather is much warmer and more humid and there are great beaches.
Overall, I am more than satisfied with my stay. The project to promote sustainable communities has made good progress. Personally, I have noticed that I am more self-confident and have learned to work more independently. Costa Rica is also the most beautiful country I have been able to get to know and I am already looking forward to returning next year.