Project Title: Academic mobility is a today`s challenge
Submitted by: Prof. Olena Kyzymchuk, Dr.Eng., Professor at Department of Textile Technology and Design, Director of Office for International Cooperation and European Integration, Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design (KNUTD)
City: Kyiv
This project was implemented within the Training Course “Management of Internationalisation and German-Ukrainian Academic Cooperation 2020-2021”, led by the Leibniz University Hannover (LUH), funded by the DAAD (Germany), 2020-2021
Project Goal(s) and SMART Objective(s):
The project`s target is the increasing number of outcoming exchange students. In the future it will be followed by incoming exchange students
The goals of the project are following:
- the implementation of student credit mobility into university educational process by studying at a higher education institution abroad in order to obtain credits from the European Credit System or relevant competencies, university-recognized learning outcomes;
- the development of the Regulation for students’ mobility.
Deliverables:
The Regulation for the academic mobility of students and staff at Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design with two Annexes:
- the procedure of competitive selection of candidates for academic mobility;
- the recognition of learning outcomes received outside the University;
- The Exchange Program webpage for students on the university website
Challenges and Support
The pandemic Covid-19 has unpredictably changed all aspects of life and unexpectedly stopped real academic mobility completely.
The implementation of project ideas is going by different means
- physical mobility by Erasmus KA 107 Agreements with four Universities (England, Greece, Latvia, Romania) – just waiting for resuming;
- physical and virtual mobility by Bilateral agreement (Lithuania, 5 students applied for fall semester)
- physical and virtual mobility by double degree diplomas programs (University received the recognition for its three-year Management and Marketing Programs from UK Universities).
- virtual mobility by Massive Open On-line Courses.
Lessons Learnt:
What are your lessons learnt and recommendations you would like to share?
Any project is teamwork. The project leader must coordinate the work of the team as well as of each member but never do all work by himself. The best collaboration way is if each team member is set up to work together and collaborate effectively by clearly defining goals.
Supporting by upper-level administrators increases the efficiency of the team and is the key to achieving project goals. I appreciate the vice-rector for the educational activity with which support new position was created – Methodist for the international educational programs. It pushes the process to the next stage. We are going to create new elective courses in English at the University
Recommendation to those who would start a project on an academic mobility:
- to start with deep SWOT analysis;
- to evaluate students` English level that allows studying abroad and students willingness study at partner university;
- to evaluate the university possibilities to have incoming exchange students (Study programs in English, faculty readiness, facilities).
Impact:
The result of participation in the project is, first of all, my acquisition of professional competencies in the field of university internationalization. As a person which in the position of Internationalisation for only two years, the project revealed to me the diversity of internationalization processes that can be implemented both gradually and in a complex way.
Within the project, the University students’ mobility starts. There are a number of students ready for virtual and real mobility at partners university for the 2021/2022 study year.
Outlook and Sustainability:
The further development of the project could be in the creation of the Mobility Window in Study Programs to simplify student’s mobility within their own learning trajectory.