Page 31 - The-Academic-value-of-mobility-2018

• Courses in teaching and learning in higher education are a good way of
making teaching staff aware of internationalisation issues and the role
they can play. All HEIs offer courses in teaching and learning in higher educa-
tion for their teaching staff. There is huge potential for using these courses to
integrate aspects of internationalisation in teaching. Lecturers are an impor-
tant category to involve. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) meet-
ings for teaching staff can be a forum for discussion and education on mobility
and internationalisation.
• Student surveys can be an important basis for guidance meetings and are
one way of capturing students who are interested in exchanges.
• Scheduled guidance meetings for new students can improve students’

understanding of how mobility can fit into their programme. This type of
guidance can be developed and implemented on a long-term basis throughout
the programme. Participating students demonstrated increased understand-
ing of the way different areas of the programme were linked and subsequent
meetings started at a “higher” level. The route between the students and guid-
ance counsellors was perceived as shorter because they had met at an early
stage of the programme.
• Proactive guidance should be conducted regularly throughout the
period of study. Guidance meetings that not only provide information but
also offer opportunities for reflection and discussion about studying, careers
and mobility.
• Methods for communicating with students can be developed. Getting
students to participate in guidance activities is a challenge when these are
not compulsory. Information about guidance meetings should therefore be
communicated in a range of ways, via teaching staff, scheduled meetings,
reminders, information in course/programme portals and at the start of a
programme. It is important to keep the conversation active by following up
students who show an interest in exchanges.
• A well-developed, proactive guidance chain requires a lot of resources,
particularly initially. It is therefore important that the HEI allocates staff
resources to achieve lasting change and that work is integrated in the facul-
ties’ and HEI’s operating plans.

Did the measures result in increased mobility?
The long-term aim of the project was to increase outward mobility and the reports
from the pilot projects indicate a positive result. Several of them, the University
of Skövde, Swedish Defence University and Linköping University, report a greater
interest in student exchanges and that more students on programmes included in
the pilot project participate in exchanges.

However, the results are not entirely unambiguous. Two programmes at Örebro
University participated; one shows some increase in outward students while the
other is not demonstrating the same result. Survey responses from the students
accepted for an exchange do indicate however that the guidance measures had a
positive result.

Changing intended learning outcomes takes time to implement and the results
are only apparent in the long-term. Therefore, within the project’s timeframe, it
has not been possible to analyse whether internationalising the intended learning

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