Internationalization at home through an integrated project

Internationalization and international collaboration are crucial aspects of fruitful and prosperous business activities for Finnish companies and business professionals. According to Government Decree on Universities of Applied Sciences (1129/2014, section 4), a graduate should have adequate communicative and language proficiency for duties in the graduate’s own field, and for international operations and collaboration. However, less than 20 % of students at universities of applied sciences in Finland leave for an exchange semester during their studies (Teeri 2019).

Thus, the development of skills for international operations and collaboration should be integrated in the degree courses. This article presents an example of an activity organized in collaboration of the English teachers of LAB University of Applied Sciences and University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna, University for Economics, Management and Finance aiming at providing students with practice of intercultural communication and creating new international contacts for their future careers.

Idea

The project’s idea came from Barbara Ebersberger-Fischerlehner, the English teacher of BFI, Vienna UAS who contacted LAB´s Language Centre by email and asked if any of the teachers would be interested. After an online meeting with Barbara, we decided to integrate the communication project in the English for work course for Business Administration students, making it a compulsory assignment. The communication project consisted in arranging one self-organized online meeting in mixed groups of students to discuss the given topics. The topics included talking about their studies, their countries, Christmas traditions, future plans. After the project the students had to submit minutes of the meeting, as well as their written report with personal reflections on the project.

Implementation

Students’ collaboration was organized in Howspace platform, as it provided the possibility to add both Finnish and Austrian students as users to the platform without sending their personal information by email, and the platform allowed the students joining it without the need to create a profile.

The students were divided into mixed groups of 5‒7 participants. In Howspace, each group had a chat for communication and a video widget for organizing an online meeting. The project took about three weeks, of which the third week was allocated for paperwork. 

Feedback

In their reports, many students mentioned that they had been extremely anxious about participating in this project: meeting Austrian students online and talking to strangers in English for an hour seemed extremely demanding and challenging. However, all students noticed that conversations went surprisingly well, there were no language communication barriers, and everybody in the group was very supportive and helpful.

Besides learning many useful facts about studying and living in Austria and sharing facts about study culture in Finland, students practiced their communication skills in an international meeting. Almost all reports contained a phrase about gaining more confidence as an English speaker, and some students even mentioned considering exchange studies in Austria.

Overall, the communication project proved to be a very simple and easily arrangeable way of creating an opportunity for students to improve their communication skills in English in an authentic environment and to get the experience of functioning in an international group.

Both Finnish and Austrian students were very satisfied with their personal outcomes of the project and wished for more activities of such type in their further studies.

References

1828079. 2016. Globe trotter, matkustaja, maapallo. Pixabay. Cited 27 Feb 2024. Available at https://pixabay.com/fi/photos/globe-trotter-matkustaja-maapallo-1828079/

Government Decree on Universities of Applied Sciences. 1129/2014. Finlex. Cited 26 Feb 2024. Available at https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2014/en20141129_20191294.pdf

Teeri, T. 2019. A chance for internationalisation for everyone. Rapporteur’s report on doubling international mobility in education. Ministry of Education and Culture. 2019:15. Cited 26 Feb 2024. Available at https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/161526/OKM_2019_15_Jokaiselle_mahdollisuus_kansainvalistymiseen.pdf