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Higher education student and staff mobility projec..
Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014,
End date: May 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
With the new Erasmus + programme, MRU smoothly continued the activities from previous LLP Erasmus – facilitated student and staff mobility, sought for the balance between incoming and outgoing mobility. Exchanges of both students and staff continue to be considered as the one of the key measures for maintaining quality of studies and widening the internationalization at the University. All it is a part of the general University strategy on internationalization. MRU seeks that as many students, as possible, would have real opportunity to study or undertake a traineeship abroad thus expanding their own educational experience, growing as personalities and global citizens, interculturally sensitive people, easier adapting to different situations, etc. and put a lot of efforts in guidance to students achieve their personal development plans and finish study programmes in flexible manner adaptable to their needs. Flexibility in educational opportunities, tailored personal guidance, financial support system for students from lower income backgrounds are considered as important measures to keep a high ratio of MRU graduates. For students with disadvantaged backgrounds, additional grant is promoted and paid (out of all study mobility participants 8 % were with disadvantaged backgrounds). For students with special needs, additional grant is also promoted (1 student with special needs was participating in mobility for studies in 2014/2015).
With the new rules of Erasmus+ programme (especially a possibility for several mobilities in each study cycle and traineeships for recent graduates) our flow of outgoing students began increasing. 2014/2015 was a year of balanced Erasmus+ student mobilities at the University: outgoing 251 students (SMS and SMP), incoming – 255 students as registered by the University’s database (SMS and SMP). Most popular destination countries for MRU students were Czech Republic, France, UK, Spain, while the most numerous sending countries to MRU were Slovakia, France, Turkey, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy. New activity of traineeships for recent graduate was already quite popular – 30 graduates benefitted in 2014/2015. This popularity of traineeships expected to grow next year.
Staff mobility was less but still acceptably balanced (we consider that a gap year without organization of STT week at MRU impacted the decrease in incoming staff for training): outgoing 85 staff (STA and STT), incoming 59 staff (STA and STT). Inquiry of staff who chose not to participate in the new programme was made. Several staff members mentioned that with the changes in grant calculation, the financing to their intended partner institutions became too small and did not cover a substantial part of travel costs, others refrained from participating because of increased (8 hours) requirements for teaching. We consider that such situation is temporary and will improve next year. Staff mobility is considered as highly valuable mean to exchange new teaching methods, facilitate new joint projects, implement joint teaching of certain modules or joint programmes (at MRU several joint study programmes and some inter-university modules use Erasmus+ staff mobility grants).