More than 25 years after the launch of the Erasmus Programme, fostering youth mobility and developing the intercultural competencies of the younger generation remain crucial issues within Europe. The IEREST project met these needs by developing, testing and disseminating an Intercultural Path (namely, a set of teaching modules) to be provided to Erasmus students before, during, and after their experience abroad, in order to encourage learning mobility, support students and enable them to benefit as much as possible from their international experiences in terms of personal growth and intercultural competencies. Besides developing the intercultural education resources for the teaching modules, the project aimed to foster the institutionalization of the Intercultural Paths within HEIs, in order to make the practice of providing Erasmus students with intercultural services the rule rather than the exception. IEREST was carried out by five partners (University of Bologna; Durham University; University of Savoy Mont Blanc, Chambéry; University of Primorska, Koper; University of Leuven), which had complementary expertise, ranging from study abroad, Erasmus mobility and internationalisation, to intercultural education and communication, and intercultural language education. The project also involved three associate partners, representing the main IEREST target users: students (AEGEE-Europe), teachers (AEDE-Hungary) and international affairs officers and stakeholders (Thomas More Kempen, Belgium). With the aim of developing a research-based Intercultural path which would also respond to the real needs of mobile students, teachers, and HEIs, a multifaceted project methodology was set up: firstly, an extensive review of the three target users’ needs (including a student questionnaire which obtained 3,152 responses) was carried out; then the partners designed, piloted and tested the activities in four different partner institutions; finally, the activities were fine-tuned and published online as open educational resources. Overall, ten teaching activities were designed, divided into three modules, the first to be taught before departure, the second while the students are abroad, and the third upon return. The IEREST activities do not prepare students to adapt to a specific place, by providing practical information on given institutions, cities or countries. Rather, the aim is to make students aware of what is involved in intercultural communication, by for example promoting the ideas that people are different but also similar across and within countries, and have multiple identities. All activities, together with additional materials and services, are freely downloadable from the IEREST website (http://ierest-project.eu/) and Humbox page (http://humbox.ac.uk/group/19), and are published under the ‘Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike’ Creative Commons Licence. But the IEREST partnership did not end with the publication of the resources: the partners will continue their capillary dissemination, by publishing papers and additional resources, engaging in teacher training, and maintaining the professional relationships established during the project lifecycle with educational stakeholders - as these can make the difference in terms of the sustainability of the results.
IEREST public final report
BEAVEN, ANA MARIA GABRIELA;BORGHETTI, CLAUDIA
2016
Abstract
More than 25 years after the launch of the Erasmus Programme, fostering youth mobility and developing the intercultural competencies of the younger generation remain crucial issues within Europe. The IEREST project met these needs by developing, testing and disseminating an Intercultural Path (namely, a set of teaching modules) to be provided to Erasmus students before, during, and after their experience abroad, in order to encourage learning mobility, support students and enable them to benefit as much as possible from their international experiences in terms of personal growth and intercultural competencies. Besides developing the intercultural education resources for the teaching modules, the project aimed to foster the institutionalization of the Intercultural Paths within HEIs, in order to make the practice of providing Erasmus students with intercultural services the rule rather than the exception. IEREST was carried out by five partners (University of Bologna; Durham University; University of Savoy Mont Blanc, Chambéry; University of Primorska, Koper; University of Leuven), which had complementary expertise, ranging from study abroad, Erasmus mobility and internationalisation, to intercultural education and communication, and intercultural language education. The project also involved three associate partners, representing the main IEREST target users: students (AEGEE-Europe), teachers (AEDE-Hungary) and international affairs officers and stakeholders (Thomas More Kempen, Belgium). With the aim of developing a research-based Intercultural path which would also respond to the real needs of mobile students, teachers, and HEIs, a multifaceted project methodology was set up: firstly, an extensive review of the three target users’ needs (including a student questionnaire which obtained 3,152 responses) was carried out; then the partners designed, piloted and tested the activities in four different partner institutions; finally, the activities were fine-tuned and published online as open educational resources. Overall, ten teaching activities were designed, divided into three modules, the first to be taught before departure, the second while the students are abroad, and the third upon return. The IEREST activities do not prepare students to adapt to a specific place, by providing practical information on given institutions, cities or countries. Rather, the aim is to make students aware of what is involved in intercultural communication, by for example promoting the ideas that people are different but also similar across and within countries, and have multiple identities. All activities, together with additional materials and services, are freely downloadable from the IEREST website (http://ierest-project.eu/) and Humbox page (http://humbox.ac.uk/group/19), and are published under the ‘Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike’ Creative Commons Licence. But the IEREST partnership did not end with the publication of the resources: the partners will continue their capillary dissemination, by publishing papers and additional resources, engaging in teacher training, and maintaining the professional relationships established during the project lifecycle with educational stakeholders - as these can make the difference in terms of the sustainability of the results.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
