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Internationalisation in the year of the coronavirus
One duty of the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi) is to support JYU’s internationalisation. Part of the goals of the education development programme in the university’s strategy is to develop a JYUidentity for each student at JYU. This identity consists of strong communication and language skills, cultural awareness as well as global and ethical responsibility.
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At Movi, multifaceted skills, knowledge, attitude and competence are seen to be the core of internationalisation. Internationality is about more than a single experience or a group of experiences; it is also about academic experts’ core competence and ways of thinking. Modern working life means encountering diversity, goal-oriented work with people from different cultural backgrounds, and the management of multilingual interaction skills. It is a way of seeing the world and considering multilingual and intercultural competence and its development as a lifelong process. Movi promotes these goals and develops new pedagogical working models under the Moving Mindsets concept.
The project Multilingual and intercultural competences are at the heart of internationalisation was established to promote internationalisation and has been implemented in cooperation with departments. The aim is for internationalisation to become a natural part of each student’s skills and degree regardless if the student goes on exchange or for an internship abroad or if they internationalise at their home university. The project also looks at the various manifestations and requirements of internationalisation in different fields.
Strengthening internationalisation skills requires consistent planning, and students must understand how competence can be gained and made visible during their studies. The core of the project is to create an internationalisation plan for each student in cooperation with the personal study plan supervisors. Based on the targets, students recognise and knowingly build the competence needed in the international and multilingual world of work. The COVID-19 pandemic came in the middle of the project period and resulted in the closing of campuses as well as national borders. However, the limits on travelling created an excellent opportunity to consider what more than exchanges and internships abroad can be considered international activity. Is it something more than simply going abroad? What competences that have traditionally been sought through mobility can be strengthened and supported without travelling physically from one place to another? These questions will be increasingly pondered in the future in cooperation with the whole university community and our networks.
