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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014, End date: Oct 1, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT AND PROJECT OBJECTIVES European mobility is one of the main priorities of the University of Nordland when it comes to the internationalisation of our university and is embedded in an internationalisation strategy paper from 2012. Being a university with several profession-related studies with obligatory internship embedded in the curriculum, our institution welcomes the introduction of traineeship mobility within Erasmus+ which we consider a great incentive for students to spend their internship period abroad. In addition to supporting students or study periods abroad, we intended to use a large part of the funding to sponsor traineeships in European countries. The project funding was also used to support one of our HEIs main internationalisation-at-home measures by making it possible for our staff to spend a short period abroad, especially by supporting English language courses for staff in positions relevant to the further internationalisation processes at our institution. The ongoing development of a joint degree programme within veterinary science with a partner institution in Kosice, Slovakia was also supported in this project. PARTICIPANTS' PROFILE AND DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES The project included both student and staff mobility. Student mobility for studies was still the more preferred option to spend a period abroad for our students - a total of 10 undergraduate students of business administration went abroad to study at partner universities in France, Spain and Germany. Three students with a very varied academic background completed an internship period abroad (social work, export marketing and biology). The majority of our staff members who participated in the project conducted various training activities abroad. Our university supported an English language course at the University of York, study visits at other educational institutions abroad and workshop participation. Both administrative and academic staff profited from a training period abroad. RESULTS AND IMPACT Apart from student mobility, in case of which here were no significant changes to previous years, a very positive development is the increased interest in European mobility possibilities amongst our staff, specifically for training. We managed to implement more mobilities than originately planned, and still we were not able to correspond to the demand at our institution. Especially successful was again the implementation of our now annually offered English language course for staff members of our university. The same course was offered in the spring of 2013 for the first time, and because of the strong interest of out staff, we decided to use a part of the funding for this course again. The course design - a combination of teaching at our institution and a study trip to the Norwegian Study Centre at the Univerity of York - covered many aspects of our internationalisation-at-home strategy implementation. International students (English native speakers) were involved in the teaching activities in Bodø, thus providing a platform for integration as an added value of this part of the project. In adittion, intercultural training was included in the teaching schedule at the NSC York, enhancing our staff's interculural competence in addition to improving their English language skills. Being an institution with several degree programmes entirely taught in English and with a constantly increasing number of international students and staff, a good command of English is essential for our administrative and academic staff.

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