Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (TSNUK)

Project Title: University Digest

Submitted by: Dr. Andrii Kravchenko, Lecturer, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (TSNUK)

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):

  1. to improve the awareness of the university units involved in the internationalisation activities about the achievements gained by such units; to enlarge the expertise in the field of internationalization;
  2. to revise the existing strategic development documents (incl. on internationalisation);
  3. to gain new knowledge and implement best practises at work of Kyiv University and to share/disseminate the experience gained;
  4. to bring new projects on internationalisation to university;
  5. to establish a new unit with dual supervision – International office and R&D office – the aim is to support grant seeking activities of the University;
  6. to start University Digest

Deliverables: 

  1. Following the Workshops:
    • reports by Dr Kravchenko were made to Vice-Rector on International Cooperation;
    • presentations with discussion were made to IRO staff (in April; June; September, November 2020; April, July 2021);
    • articulation of the workshops content to vice deans on international cooperation (constantly).
  2. Internationalization strategy has been reconsidered & drafted (in cooperation with stakeholders)
  3. New knowledge gained at workshops was articulated to the “KNU Online” development team (Learning Management System) and used in its development http://www.ipe.knu.ua/elektronna-biblioteka.html
  4. Number of new projects on internationalisation at university was rising a year to year (only in 2020 due to Covid19 restrictions, they were “freezed”, namely 72 agreements in Erasmus+ KA1 in 2019, in 2020 – 78).
  5. A new unit to support grant seeking activities of the University was established in June 2020.
  6. The University Digest project idea transformed from printed to e-version.

Challenges and Support

What were the main challenges of your project and how did you manage to overcome them?

Covid19 restrictions that influenced objectives of a project. We had to adopt to them, online work needs more involvement and dedication, we had to increase time to fulfil all the planned tasks.

What resources helped you?

Dedicated work of staff involved, stakeholders helped a lot, new knowledge and experience through participation in MOI Project

Lessons Learnt

What are your lessons learnt and recommendations you would like to share?

  • The improvement of communication within University (especially among units involved in the internationalization);
  • I believe we managed to finish the project successfully, of course in the scope of the project aims only, at several units only….but we succeeded;
  • Project went smoothly because there was constant fruitful communication at all levels; the idea of the project was clear to senior management, the project was organic in terms of the current needs of university community, thus it had the support at “bottom” and at the “top”;
  • Probably, as the project needed an IT specialist, we had to spend more time on technical issues instead of developing the idea;
  • In future to run projects like this we need a team (not a single player).

Impact: 

It helps sharing and producing knowledge, and consequently it leads to opportunities, connections, newprojects.

Outlook and Sustainability:

It will be developed at the University level, not only in international sphere and research