Hope your long weekend went by not far too fast ka! I’d like to share several I got from my recent reading on IZN ka.
The first is entitled, ‘Europe needs internationalisation, internationalisation needs Europe’ from neth-er.eu on December 3, 2015 by Freddy Weima, Director-General of EP-Nuffic.
The author stresses the importance of intercultural understanding especially when the world has seen ‘enormous turmoil in Europe and the world, caused by ‘the refusal to truly accept the differences between cultures and countries.’ It is one of the main reasons why Europe needs IZN.
He then mentions about the program like ‘Erasmus’, which has positively enabled Europeans to understand one another better, and such a program needs to be continued for IZN to benefit more students.
The second article is, “Defining 'internationalisation at home'” by Jos Beelen and Elspeth Jones from University World News on December 8, 2015.
Even though mobility has its substantial advantages, it is limited to only a few who can participate so recently, discussions are around ‘internationalization at home’ ka.
The new definition “proposed in a 2015 publication, The European Higher Education Area: Between critical reflections and future policies, states: “Internationalisation at Home is the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students, within domestic learning environments.”
It stresses “inclusion of international and intercultural aspects into curricula in a purposeful way while emphasizing the role of IZN for all students in all programs and “does not simply rely on mobility to offer international and intercultural perspectives.” It also means the effort to “engage domestic with international students; or exploiting diversity within the classroom. It also includes technology-enabled or virtual mobility, such as through Collaborative Online International Learning.”
These two articles have quite a few implications and are useful for our universities to think and ACT further to promote IZN properly.
IZN in our country could be seen, more often than not, activity-based approach or lip service or for PR purposes, which won’t impact the students and the whole community much at all.
Frequently, universities tend to complain that they don’t have enough resources to get the IZN efforts moving faster. There’s so much diversity on campus, going beyond just foreign students to individual students, lecturers and others in the workforce. We also have had access to high technology (with underutilization).
As it is the era of diversity, creativity, and innovation, aren’t universities in the best position to maximize their capabilities and rich diversity to support all to learn with favorable outcomes?
Think, ACT, learn, improve, and grow toward IZN goals set loei kaaaa!
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