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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: Sep 30, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
The Erasmus+ programme is essential to the internationalization activities of FH Campus Wien. In total we had 103 mobilities, 29 staff and 74 students. In the second part of the academic year 2014/15, we were in a position to fully use the tools provided by the European Commission in addition to the financial distribution, which is essential to the internationalization activities of FH Campus Wien. Concerning the context, as a university of applied sciences, we are satisfied particularly with two aspects of the programme: the new time frame for Student Mobility for Traineeships and also the shorter minimum duration to Staff Mobility for Training. Both adaptations have brought the expected results and improvements in the mobility numbers. With regard to the programme structure, for 2014/15 it was our objective to fully meet the requirements of the Erasmus+ charter and the several agreement types despite the initial challenges of Erasmus+. The objectives in numbers for FH Campus Wien within Erasmus+ is still a steady growth in order to grow not too quickly but to set a good basis for future developments. At the same time, we try our best to keep up the good support of students and staff interested in mobilities. Currently, two thirds of the international office staff are directly working with mobilities while the other third is setting the basis to facilitate mobility activities in the future. We seek to support and to promote mobilities on a personal level with additional use of electronic media such as Facebook, the FH Campus Wien intranet or the International Office Moodle platform. And we appreciate the statistical data provided by the mobility tool, which gives us a good understanding of parts that went well and parts where we have more space for improvements.
With certain activities such as the Welcome Back Lounge or study programme specific information sessions, we intend to disseminate Erasmus+ success stories and at the same time give returned students the opportunity to reflect on their studying and/or working abroad experience. As Student Mobility for Studies is not the easiest field to work on, we set a focus on Internationalisation at Home. which should in the long run create more concrete and solid options for student exchange activities. One successful example is the participation in the Erasmus Radiography Group where student exchange between the partnering institutions is planned on the central network level including the adaptation of curricula. However, the most successful programme of Erasmus+ mobility is definitely Student Mobility for Trainineeships as it fully fits the needs of students and study programmes. The question mark in our portfolio is currently the Staff Mobility for Training which is becoming more popular among different organizational units. However, as an institution we have the obligation to use the results of this investment in staff members in order to enhance long-term effects on the university’s organizational structure. Still, the highest potential for the long term lies in the support of Staff Mobilities for Teaching as they cover the central activity of our institution, provide the opportunity to develop the international network and are also seen as an investment in supporting future activities of our less successful field Student Mobilities for Studies.
Overall, the profile of students and staff is quite diverse, however with a certain focus on certain departments such as Applied Life Sciences, Health and Social Work. During the past two years, the international office has been coordinating two projects to improve the participation in internationalization activities of Engineering students and staff. We hope to see medium term results of these efforts. Finally, the implementation of the Erasmus+ track gave us an important impulse to tighten our internationalization strategy, filter our partner institutions with regard to more quality (e.g. by setting up selection criteria for university cooperations) and get a better understanding of the effects of the different mobility types. In the end, we want to use Erasmus+ to constantly improve the quality of our institution by positively involving as many people as possible in building bridges to our partner universities all over Europe.