Project title: POINT-2021 (PNPU International Week 2021)
Submitted by: Iryna Kohut, Head of the Department of Innovation and International Relations, Poltava V. G. Korolenko National Pedagogical University (PNPU)
City: Poltava
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:
The purpose of the International Week is to intensify international collaboration with our partners in the fields of teaching, studies, research and management international collaboration in general.
During the IW, all PNPU partner institutions representatives will be able to present their institutions, international opportunities they provide and conduct a small workshop on important topics nowadays.
All the presentations and workshops are expected to be delivered in English. There is a free choice of the workshops topics for everyone.
Additionally, the students of PNPU and PNPU’s partners are also invited to actively participate and “have a stage” during the event.
Main objectives:
- meeting with PNPU partner institutions;
- moving forward to the topic “Studying Abroad as a Part of Effective Educational Process Creation”;
- sharing institutional international opportunities with partners;
- presentation of the opportunities of participation in international scientific and academic programmes.
Deliverables:
- Web-site of the PNPU International Week 2021
- News feature on the PNPU International Week 2021, Day 1 (in Ukrainian)
- News feature on the PNPU International Week 2021, Day 2 (in Ukrainian)
- News feature on the PNPU International Week 2021, concluding events (in Ukrainian)
- News feature on the PNPU International Week, Department of Music (In Ukrainian)
- https://www.facebook.com/100003361295401/posts/3776274559161217/?d=n
- https://www.facebook.com/100003361295401/posts/3781882531933753/?d=n
- https://www.facebook.com/100003361295401/posts/3784679798320693/?d=n
- https://www.facebook.com/100003361295401/posts/3793745964080743/?d=n
Challenges and Support
What were the main challenges of your project and how did you manage to overcome them?
- Quarantine restrictions (even online meeting were troublesome, because some people couldn’t have a good access to the Internet).
- We couldn’t decide on using a reliable online platform for events at first.
- There was lack of motivation for participants to participate in this type of event (because the wide use of the online format for meetings resulted in overload)
- There was a huge discussion on how to make the event attractive for foreign partners and at the same time for “home” educators.
What resources helped you?
We had to look for help on successful event management in literature and articles, such as:
- 5 Simple Steps to Perfect International Event Planning,
- “Managing International Events” (W. Gerard Ryan)
- “Global Perspectives on Recruiting International Students: Challenges and Opportunities” (Belal Shneikat, Cihan Cobanoglu, Cem Tanova)
What are your lessons learnt and recommendations you would like to share?
- Agenda must be formed in such a way as to take into account current topics for workshops for participants from different countries, the search for common educational values and needs, temporal features;
- A team of like-minded people (administration, staff, students, stakeholders) must be formed to organize a large-scale event – International Week (and the more – the merrier).
Impact: Please describe how your project contributed to/ advanced the specific aspect of the internationalization at your university:
As a result of this project the general level of university’s internationalization raised, because of:
- created internationalization policy and strategy aimed at developing the educational services’ export;
- increased leadership of administrative part in the process of internationalization – initiation of events, determined on the development of internationalization, support of workers’ initiatives;
- more participations in video/online conferences, development and realization of distance learning courses;
- more participations in international conferences, international scientific projects, holding joint researches; preparation of joint publications;
- more participations in international educational projects, creation of joint international educational programs;
- increased number of seminars and lectures in foreign languages;
- language preparation of higher education applicants;
- participation in joint educational programs;
- academic mobility (training of higher education students at HEI abroad, foreign practices, study programs, etc.);
- involvement of higher education applicants into international research.
Outlook and Sustainability: What happens to the project after the end of the course (are there any follow-up projects? What are you going to do to ensure the sustainability of the project results?)
Qualitative results of the project POINT-2021:
- developedof the Internationalization strategy of the university; meeting with PNPU partner institutions;
- a move forward with the topic “Studying Abroad as a Part of Effective Educational Process Creation”;
- shared institutional international opportunities with partners;
- presented opportunities of participation in international scientific and academic programs;
- developed online format of academic mobilities.
Quantitative results of the project POINT-2021:
- 22 workshops with foreign speakers;
- 12 PNPU partner countries;
- 2 cooperation agreements were signed with the University of Malaysia and Poland;
- 30 events held in English for students and staff;
- 5 presentations by international organizations (DAAD, Erasmus, Fellow, Fulbright, Peace Corps);
- 300 certified IW participants.