Raising Global Citizens at Home
The Comenius Senior Fellowship was awarded to Dr. Ingrid Van Rompay-Bartels for the project 'Raising Global Citizens at Home'. She works at the Center of International Business Research at HAN International School of Business. The Comenius innovation program for higher education provides teachers with the resources to apply their innovative ideas to contribute to education.
The awarded project ‘Raising Global Citizens at Home’ fosters intercultural awareness and collaboration skills in diverse teams through with partner universities. The pandemic accelerated technological fluency among students and teachers alike, and now it is more apparent than ever that online education is not only manageable, but it also holds the potential to be constructive for developing student competences.
Raising Global Citizens at Home
Inclusiveness and cultural diversity are important themes in the worldwide arena. The ability to successfully deal and work with diversity is essential in our society today. However, unknown makes unloved: Human beings tend to exclude people they do not know through personal biases and stereotyping. As such, international themes should be embraced in education.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, online learning has become a broad and more prevalent alternative within the educational sphere. Online learning offers more bespoke solutions (reflecting student’s intercultural experience at home) and sustainable (access for more students with less financial resources) international opportunities. Online education allows for more students to be better prepared for their future international professional experience.
Crossing Borders Without Crossing Borders
However, online education does not function in the same way as face-to-face education. Specifically, the lack of social interaction may cause procrastination, motivational problems and may lead to superficial knowledge. Hence, how to engage and facilitate students becomes very important in providing them with deeper knowledge, within the context of an international experience.
This project with international partner universities aims to design and apply educational working methods and manuals to improve virtual group work interactions, critical thinking, and intercultural learning. The focus is on collaborative and reflective soft skills rather than on the content and allows the material to be applied in various educational curricula. The use of such interactive and collaborative material facilitates students in their learning experience by reaping the digital benefits of an intercultural experience, and better prepare them as global citizens.
Comenius Senior Fellowship
Mid-level experienced professionals in higher education can apply for a grant of 100,000 euro and a Comenius Senior Fellowship for small-scale innovation in higher education. The proposed project must be implemented within the context of a faculty, a degree programme or a substantial department of a higher education institution.
Please contact Ingrid.Bartels@han.nl if you have any question about the project global citizenship and International Business.