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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014, End date: Sep 30, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

By way of background, the University of Cumbria has a diverse student population of traditional and non-traditional students. The majority of our students are on professional courses and therefore cannot easily undertake a traditional exchange. A significant proportion of our students fit within the widening participation remit and many of them do not naturally look to spend a semester overseas. We face significant challenges in encouraging students to participate in mobility. However, we believe it is particularly important for this group of students to be given the opportunity to spend a semester overseas thus improving opportunities and boosting skills and employability. Quantitative objectives were 4 staff mobility for teaching, 4 staff mobility for training, 6 student mobility for study and 2 student mobility for traineeships. Qualitative objectives were linked to the commitments set out in the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education. This included integrating incoming mobile participants, providing general and linguistic support, providing assistance relating to visas and insurance, publishing an up to date course catalogue and carrying out mobility only within the framework of prior agreements between institutions. Qualitative objectives also included increasing the internationalisation of education, developing networks of international contacts and enhancing transnational cooperation. There was no outbound student mobility during this project. This is disappointing and reflects the challenges we face in encouraging students to participate in mobility. We constantly look at ways to encourage and support students to consider overseas study as an option and have put a number of changes in place. This includes embedding outbound mobility within the careers service emphasising the clear link with skills and employability and arranging for a partner institution to speak to potential participants thus helping students to understand the support available to them at partner institutions. There were two outbound staff participants for teaching and no outbound staff participants for training. Both outbound participants were male and we are conscious of the need to ensure that all participants are aware of the mobility opportunities available. In previous years there has been a balance between male and female participants indicating that diverse groups are aware of the opportunity. The University is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and has a clear framework to mainstream and monitor initiatives in relation to this area. The two outbound participants for teaching went to partner institutions in Oslo (Norwegian School of Science) and Barcelona (Universitat Abat Oliba). Activities undertaken in Oslo included twelve hours of teaching providing a UK comparative case study alongside other European examples, participation in collaborative writing projects and development of research. Activities undertaken in Barcelona included teaching delivery to journalism and film students, developing understanding of international media systems to feed into programme materials and introduction of specialist dimension to receiving institution's students. The project has had both tangible and intangible results including development of programme material, development of research, improved cultural awareness and development of knowledge and expertise. As a result of the project there are ongoing negotiations with partners regarding future staff and student mobility, programme materials have been designed with an international dimension and collaborative research is ongoing.
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