Again, lots have happened the past weeks with workshops and talks. Just looked back and forward, all were and will be in English......Thai higher education goes more 'inter' na ka!
Last week, I was in Hanoi conducting two sessions for SEAMEO RIHED. It had over 130 participants in one and over 70 in the other and both were meant to be interactive. It was tough to prepare a workshop to stress on 'ASEANness' to member universities of the ASEAN International Mobility of Students Program (AIMS) and even tougher to conduct it ka......thank goodness, I survived ka!
Our region has had mobility programs here and there but intra-regional mobility has been high on the agenda because of AIMS though challenges persist when Japan and Korea are added on!
We've discussed ASEANness for decades and I could recall the earliest back to the time when there was an attempt to create an ASEAN University to become 'ASEAN University Network' we've seen.
Content-wise, not enough understanding have we had about our being ASEAN in terms of characteristics and shared values (not just the facts and figures about our ASEAN region)and that could be one of the reasons why we have yet to integrate this aspect in our mobility program, especially before and after the activities are over.
Management-wise, challenges lie in the facts that many think of it as a 'check-list', meaning that we cross out the activities we've already completed without much attention being paid to 'how' things were done and 'how' to improve them strategically, not just incrementally.
Several lessons learned I'd like to share ka:
1. More emphasis has to be placed on repeating objectives and links to the projects/activities we're doing. I can't help but think of a few Japanese and Thai CEOs who said they continued talking about history and philosophy in meetings at all levels. It could be because we could remind ourselves why those activities and projects are selected to be carried out.
2. The use of 'To-do list' is helpful as a good reminder but we may have overused it as a 'Feel-good list' to see we've done all with 'yes' to all items. Within each item, they could be much more steps that include necessary content or tools to assess them which would allow following steps to be smoother and more fruitful to participants. Need to ask more questions about 'what could have been done better/differently?// and how to be responsive to the objectives'
3. International Relations Officers (IRO) and faculty members don't always have one same picture and shared objectives even when both groups work on the same project. While IRO tended to focus on the processes of sending out/receiving students, faculty members could gear toward credit transfer.
Some missing links to be filled were mobility meaningfulness to students as individuals and for others to share the learning, faculty, IRO, and the institutions. These could happen at any process of the mobility from program mobility to selection, orientation, support during the exchange, debriefing, and use of reflections for improvements.
4. One question that was a big challenge for faculty and IRO to answer their university presidents was, 'What is the ROI of the mobility project?' As in some dimensions of the experiences, it takes time for participants to know for sure what they've got out of the exchanges, I'd love to have a little roundtable to come up with concise and sensible responses for all to answer their bosses (and bosses to be included in the discussion too). Thinking of a big survey of ERASMUS and Fulbright loei ka.
Ideas and comments welcome ka!
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