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 Project is under Erasmus + KA1 and provided funded mobility opportunities to students and staff at Nottingham Trent University (NTU). Nottingham Trent University?s international strategy focusses on 3 main strands; international student recruitment, international research collaborations and project development and internationalisation of the curriculum. NTU aims to prepare all its students to become highly employable global citizens. One of the aims of connecting students globally is to provide every student with an international experience as part of their Degree course, whatever level of degree they are taking.
The project has enabled us to provide opportunities to study at one of our partner universities as an integral part of student?s degree programmes or on one of our joint degrees. At NTU we have organised the curriculum in such a way that all students can either take part in a one year mobility or a one semester mobility; this enabled students to experience a new culture, learn a new language and experience teaching of their subject from a different prospective. It was clear from the student survey results that culture awareness was one of the main areas which students benefitted and this has been evidenced on their return by the number of students wishing to engage with activities in our Global Lounge which seeks to provide integration of home and international students. Their organisation skills have also greatly improved as evidenced by their self-assessment and our own internal assessment tool. This will assist them when preparing for exams and thesis submission.
We also offer students the opportunity to do a traineeship which takes numerous forms; it can be part of a sandwich degree or can be part of our new award the Industrial Diploma. The largest growth area has been in Sciences where students have been taking part in laboratory work; this has enabled students to put into real-time practice what they have learnt in the laboratories giving them a much greater insight into the commercial applications of their studies. Students also have the opportunity to work and study for a semester each which is proving to be very popular. This has been the case in both our Business Schools and on Joint Honours Language courses. Both sets of students have seen improvements in their language skills, invaluable when taking their final language tests.
Curriculum cannot be truly internationalized without staff with international experience. We offer all staff both teaching and administration the opportunity to teach or take part in activities in Europe. This not only gives an international dimension to teaching it also enables support staff to liaise with colleagues in European and learn from either best practice or attendance at workshops.
The benefits to staff and students is evidenced by the feedback we receive which on the whole is positive. It enables students to feel more international and to gain invaluable experience which will enable them to successfully engage in the global employment market.
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