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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
A specialist arts university such as Falmouth needs productive, strategic relationships with like-minded universities around the world - plus an increasingly diverse and mobile staff and student population ? if its graduates are to prosper in the global creative industries.
The creative and cultural industries, central to any knowledge economy, account for a significant and growing proportion of many national economies. At Falmouth we aim to equip our graduates with the skills, understanding, networks and experience necessary to exploit the global opportunities open to them.
Given our ambition to be recognised as one of the world?s leading arts universities, increasing our international reputation for specialist learning and teaching, research and innovation, has to be a major, institutional priority.
Our objectives will be achieved by cross-institutional effort ? from academics and professional services staff alike ? and a recognition that responsibility and accountability for international development goes well beyond the scope of the Erasmus & Study Abroad office.
This Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (Mobility of Individuals) project for the call year 2014-15 aimed to fulfil a set of specific quantitative and qualitative goals:
- The quantitative objectives (number of expected participants) set out in the Grant Agreement between Falmouth and the British Council covered four different categories: Student Mobility Study, Student Mobility Traineeship, Staff Mobility Teaching and Staff Mobility Training. Out of these four categories, three of them (Student Mobility Study, Student Mobility Traineeship, Staff Mobility Teaching) came close to, but did not fully achieve the number of participants initially set out in the Grant Agreement. One category (Staff Mobility Training) achieved higher numbers than initially expected.
- Although we did not quite manage to reach the level of outgoing participants we had initially applied for, this project saw an increase in enquiries and we experienced one of the most successful years we've had to date for outgoing students/staff from all categories.
- Falmouth also met these internal aims and objectives as set out in our internationalisation strategy:
III. A more global curriculum: We will prepare our graduates for careers in the global workplace by ensuring that our curricula are truly international in scope and content.
- This Erasmus+ project has offered our students an excellent opportunity to prepare for global careers and Staff Teaching exchanges have added an international aspect to many of our courses' curricula.
IV. Greater inward and outward mobility: We will increase the mobility and global perspective of our staff and students through international exchanges, Study Abroad opportunities, a distinguished visiting scholars programme.
- As mentioned above, this year's Erasmus activity and other outgoing student mobility to our partners outside of Europe resulted in some of our highest total number of participants since starting to engage with exchange programmes.
V. A focus on strategic alliances: We will develop international partnerships of clear mutual benefit with other high quality arts universities, creative organisations and employers around the world.
The total number of outgoing mobilities from the different categories in the project were: Student Mobility Study (21), Student Mobility Traineeship (6), Staff Mobility Teaching (9) and Staff Mobility Training (7).
Key facts about the profile for these participants were:
- Half of our number of total traineeships were undertaken by recent graduates.
- 8 out of 21 outgoing Study exchanges were undertaken by students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Falmouth University's general student profile has a higher than average number of students from this social group so we would expect this to be reflected in the Erasmus statistics.
This project consisted mainly of the following activities:
- Student Study: one-semester duration, most common destination was Germany.
- Student Traineeship: three-month duration, most common destinations were Spain and Netherlands.
- Staff Teaching: week-long duration, most common destination was Germany.
- Staff Training: week-long duration, most common destination was the Netherlands.
In addition to the results mentioned above in relations to our internationalisation strategy, this project has also produced results in line with the European Commission?s Higher Education modernisation agenda (cited below):
- Developed skills in graduates sought-after on the European job market: "critically-thinking, creative, adaptable graduates who will shape our future."
- Improved our focus on curricula that deliver ?relevant, up-to date knowledge and skills, knowledge which is globally connected, which is useable in the labour market."
- Offered students "from a diversity of cultural, social and economic backgrounds" to take part in student mobility.