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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
CONTEXT/BACKGROUND
Internationalization has, ever since Malmö University was founded in 1998, been a clearly stated part of the university’s vision. Some of the strategic goals for internationalization at MU are, as stated in our EPS “to create knowledge and understanding of other countries, cultures, religions and values in order to prepare the student communicating and collaborating in a changing world”. Our EPS also states that we believe that mobility of staff and students is a key activity for implementing international perspectives into our educations and organisation. Hence, the Erasmus+ project is a crucial part of our ongoing internationalization project of our institution.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the project are in line with our EPS, and the foundation of the project lies on MU’s belief in that “The most effective form of internationalization is mobility of staff and students”. The other objectives, based on our EPS are:
• The internationalization process shall embrace all staff and all students.
We offer and promote Erasmus+ to all students and staff.
• In order to stimulate mobility the process must start with Internationalization at home.
We have worked out a structure where alumni exchange students get to share their experiences in order to promote this opportunity to new students. Our incoming students study courses together with national students in order to bring their international perspectives in to the classroom.
• The key group for promoting student mobility is the university teachers
At a number of faculty departments, we have managed to recruit internationally and established a more diverse teacher staff. We have established yearly internationalization events for teachers where international cooperation and teacher mobility are highlighted. Teacher mobility is nevertheless an area where we need to do more in order to encourage more teachers to take the step.
• The key issue for communication is language competence
The university offers teachers and staff to take courses in English. Particularly teachers have been in focus, with designed courses for teaching in English. Our students have a generally good knowledge of English. Nevertheless, we see that language plays a part in some students’ hesitation towards study abroad. Here, the Erasmus+ project gives students a possibility to test their language competence before their studies, and then also be offered an online course.
NUMBER AND TYPE/PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS
The number of participants for in- and outbound mobility has been very close to what we have planned for and expected. Incoming students have been the same as during the past years: approximately 70 students in the fall semesters and 50 in the spring, adding up to 240 individuals during the project period. In addition, we have hosted 26 incoming staff during the project. For outgoing mobility we have been able to allocate 95% of the granted funds. We were able to support more outgoing SMS than planned. Outbound staff mobility, on the other hand, was not as successful as we had hoped. The greatest difference appeared in the STA mobility where only 1/3 of the allocated grants were used. Regarding gender, we can conclude that almost 75% of outgoing students are female. This is a slightly higher percentage than what can be explained with the university as a whole, having 67% female students.
DESCRIPTION OF UNDERTAKEN ACTIVITIES
SMS and SMP show a satisfactory result with 143 individuals. For studies, we announce a call for applying for exchange studies in both spring and fall semester. For the internship, students can apply all year. For this reason, the SMS constitute the bulk of the project funds and the other activities are adjusted accordingly. STA and STT were not used in the way we had planned. Particularly, we are not pleased with the fact that we had only 11 STA. Worth to note here, however, is that we, in order to finance the student mobility, transferred funds from STA and hence, we started to use funds from 2015 year's project for the STA mobility instead.
RESULTS AND IMPACT ATTAINED
The project has in many ways helped us towards reaching our internationalization goals. Our outgoing students financed by the project have contributed in maintaining and reinforcing MU’s goal of providing international perspectives in our study programs. The students are ambassadors and an important resource that we make use of. Every year, we organise several events where we invite our former exchange students to share their experiences. Examples of these events are the Study Abroad Fair, International Week, Global Engagement Day, Kick-Off, Exit Seminar. The funding enabled by the project has greatly enhanced the opportunities for more students to take part of an international experience. We can also see that our objective of encouraging more teachers to do an international exchange has been enabled by the project.