2013 eaie institutional award winner: best practice examples

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The 2013 Institutional Award winner: best practice examples Welcome to Session 7.14 B3-013, B3 | 09:15, Friday, 13 September 2013 Provide feedback on this session by filling in the online survey (a link to the survey will be e-mailed to you)

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Learn about the University of Helsinki's embedded internationalisation approach.

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Page 1: 2013 EAIE Institutional Award winner: best practice examples

The 2013 Institutional Award

winner: best practice

examples

Welcome to Session 7.14

B3-013, B3 | 09:15, Friday, 13 September 2013

Provide feedback on this session by filling in the online survey (a link to the survey will be e-mailed to you)

Page 2: 2013 EAIE Institutional Award winner: best practice examples

INNOVATION IN INTERNATIONALISATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTOHELSINGFORS UNIVERSITET

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

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THE EAIE INSTITUTIONAL AWARD FOR INNOVATION IN INTERNATIONALISATIONTHE UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI 2013

HUOM. Mikä tulee otsikoksi. Tähän lyhyt infoteksti

EAIE:n logon kokoa voi miettiä.

Cover photo: AriAalto

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Photo: Linda Tammisto

INNOVATIVE INTERNATIONALISATION PRACTICES

How many people do you have in your international office? What is your international strategy like? These are questions to which the University of Helsinki no longer really has straightforward answers as a re-sult of embedding internationalisation into all activi-ties and also in its strategy. Yet, as has been described above, internationalisation is thriving at UH. It is no longer in the hands of a few but rather institutionalised everywhere from university leadership to faculty and staff at academic units. Today, internationalisation can no longer be marginalised to be the responsibility of the select few. It is the cornerstone in the University’s strategy and everyday life but not only in word but also in action.

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MISSIONThe University of Helsinki is the most versatile institu-tion for science, education, and intellectual renewal in Finland, a pioneering builder of the future.

VISION UNTIL 2020 - TO THE TOP AND OUT TO SOCIETYThe University of Helsinki will consolidate its position among the best multidisciplinary research universities in the world. It will operate actively for the well-being of humanity and a just society.e.

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Over the course of the past eight years, the University of Helsinki has dissolved the central international office, while maintaining, strengthening and spreading its functions and expertise. The University no longer has a separate ”internationalisation strategy”, but rather has internationalisation omnipresent in its strategic planning. Moreover, the former central Internationalisation Committee was discontinued and the responsibility for different aspects of internationalisation was assigned to other committees. These seemingly counterintuitive actions have not led to the disappear-ance or relegation of internationalisation but rather strengthened it and provided new resources for its advancement. UH still retains central co-ordination for its interna-tionalisation activities and ensures the cohesiveness of various individual actions through regular meetings, by effective internal communication and by having nu-merous joint activities. For UH partners and other external stakeholders, a dedicated section of the website explaining the setup has been created at http://www.helsinki.fi/international/ .

While embedded internationalisation is not without challenges and far from straightforward, it is quite clear that the benefits far outweigh the challenges. Today the University of Helsinki is much more international than it was eight years ago no matter which one looks at it. Exchange student numbers are up (and balanced), the University has more international degree seeking students than ever before as a re-sult of the establishment of English-taught Master’s and Doctoral programmes. Par-ticipation in European Union funded programs for research and education is at an all-time high level and continues to grow.

INTERNATIONALISATION STRATEGY AND IMPACT

The University of Helsinki is a pioneer in the approach of ”Embedded Internationalisation”. The underlying idea of this approach is that internationalisation is a key component in all University core activities and their support measures.

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But not only this, the University of Helsinki has also adopted various key perfor-mance indicators and its faculties have a clear understanding of quantitative and qualitative goals for internationalisation for the coming years as well as the duty to report these on a regular basis.

The impact of the University’s strategy on European Higher Education is signifi-cant. The University aims to recruit the best available students, faculty and staff in order to solidify its position among the 50 best universities in the world. This will nat-urally require the broadening of the recruitment pool to Europe and beyond. If and when successful, this will certainly strengthen the European Higher Education Area. And since international student and staff mobility are considered core activities and Erasmus and other European programmes play a central role for their implementa-tion, it is clear that collaboration with other European universities will remain a key component of UH activities in the coming years. Exchange of people and ideas within EHEA will definitely continue to flourish. Additionally the University’s membership in the League of Research Universities (see below) has given it access to influencing the European decision making regarding higher education and research.

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The University of Helsinki was one of the first European Universities to establish a dedicated specialist service for supporting the recruitment of international academ-ic staff members. The International Staff Services (http://www.helsinki.fi/intstaff/ ) first came to be in 2007 and has proven to be a valuable asset in helping non-Finns to arrive and settle in Helsinki. As part of the Service the University has lately dedicated to apartment buildings in the city for entry-type housing (http://www.unihome.fi/)

Another innovative support measure for UH internationalisation is the ”Univer-sity Admissions Finland” concept, which was originally established as an internal ex-pert service for improving the assessment of authenticity and validity of documents by international applicants. After initial success within UH, the service has now ex-panded to be a service on a national scale, while still being part of the University.

The University has also engaged with other higher education institutions in the greater Helsinki region, and among other things, increased the visibility of Helsinki as a vibrant city for students (http://www.studyhelsinki.fi/en/home).

English-taught Master’s programmes have been rapidly increased since 2007 when university started offering seed—funding for the establishment of such pro-grammes. At its peak this funding exceeded 1 million euro per year. Currently the number English-taught programmes exceeds 30. One of the UH cornerstones for the establishment of such programs has been inclusiveness in the sense that most pro-grammes enrol both domestic and international students.

INNOVATIVE ACADEMIC AND/OR SUPPORT PROGRAMMES

Töölö Towers, the researcher’s unihome

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The University of Helsinki is a found-ing member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU, www.leru.org ) since 2002. In addition to advocat-ing the views of the research-intensive universities towards the European Union and national decision-makers, the network also engages in various collab-orative efforts ranging from E-learning to the advancement of research-based teaching. The University of Helsinki is an active LERU member and contrib-utes to the collaboration both as initiator and participant. Lately, LERU members have been engaged in a joint discussions for the development of ”structured mo-bility”, with the aim to drive forward new kinds of operational models for stu-dent mobility.

Additionally the University’s mem-bership in the UNICA network (http://www.unica-network.eu/ ), among other capital city universities, has led to nu-merous initiatives and projects both among the membership but also reach-ing out to neighbouring areas of the Eu-rope. Among the internal activities has been the benchmarking and dissemina-tion of information related to the Bolo-gna process.

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP AND ALLIANCES

NOTES:

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THE WAYS HU HAS INTEGRATED INTERNATIONALISATION

STAFF DEVELOP-MENT

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

STRATEGIC PLAN-NING

According to a decision by the Rector of the University, all staff accommodation owned and operated by the University shall be gradually dedicated to be used for the support of incoming inter-national faculty members. This will make it easier for non-Finnish scholars to settle in the country as accommodation is often one of the most crucial aspects in arriving in a new country. Most of the student accommodation in Helsinki is operated by external pro-viders and the University is actively engaging with key providers to ensure sufficient supply for international students. The University also assist the external providers in their future planning for future accommodation developments.

Issues related to integrating internationalisation within strate-gic planning have already been referred to above. Internationalisa-tion well and truly is at the core of institutional strategic planning. Currently all strategic documents of the University of Helsinki feature issues related to internationalisation, including the main strategy for 2013-2016 (attached). Moreover, all of these docu-ments are always published in English in addition to the two na-tional languages (Finnish and Swedish).

UH has adopted an exceptional approach to Erasmus outbound and inbound staff mobility by prioritising staff not normally in-volved in international work. The thinking behind this decision is based on the realisation that people dealing with international ad-missions and exchanges have other opportunities for international contacts while people in various other offices do not normally have these possibilities. Even with these types of prioritisations, the UH International Staff Exchange Week draws dozens of applications every year.

The University of Helsinki also offers extensive possibilities for its staff to upgrade their foreign language proficiency. The Lan-guage Centre caters for the needs of students, faculty and staff on campus by offering for-credit courses in 17 different languages, in-cluding Finnish and Swedish for international students.

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CURRICULUM

UH set up a service for assisting the University’s academic staff to apply for EU and other international funding already in 1995. The idea behind the service was simply to let the researchers focus on the scientific or academic content of their applications leaving the various technical details to the Service. The results have been exemplary and UH enjoys currently a high application to funding ratio, including being rated among the top recipients of ERC grants.

RESEARCH

Already in the Programme for the Development of Teach-ing and Studies of 2007 , the University of Helsinki considered cultural knowledge and internationalism as key components of a high-quality academic degree and since then, this ideal has been steadily implemented but the its faculties.

The University of Helsinki started developing courses taught in English in early 1990’s. Since then the number of courses has grown exponentially and currently there are hundreds of individ-ual courses and even full programmes offered in English. Initially these courses were designed to cater the needs of incoming ex-change students and were not very much attended by Finnish stu-dents. Since then, however, the situation has changed drastically and currently both fully English taught programmes and individ-ual courses are taken by Finnish and international students alike.

The University of Helsinki has also started pilot projects in bi-lingual degree programmes, initially through offering programs containing elements in Finnish and in Swedish. However, further pilots are being added to also include English-taught components.

Currently, the transcripts issued by the University feature in-formation as to how many credits have been completed in which particular language.

NOTES:

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STUDENT EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

ALUMNI RELATIONS

In an effort to improve the new international students’ and to give them a flying start to their studies, the University has re-designed the for-mer orientation course to “Welcome Fair”. This event combines information, peer-tutoring and extracurricular aspects into a package, which has received very good feedback from participating in-ternational students.

Today the Student Services at UH serve all stu-dents regardless of their nationality or language background. Another aspect of integration of in-ternationalisation is the “First Year Experience” –project which is culminating in an international conference in Helsinki in May 2013 . The Univer-sity has also engaged extensively with other Finn-ish universities, municipalities and public + private sector employers in order to improve international students’ employment prospects.

For a research-led institution, UH puts signifi-cant emphasis in developing its teaching. Instead of just showing rhetoric support to teaching, a sig-nificant investment has been made towards the es-tablishment of a “Teachers’ Academy”. Again, this is an integrated approach to enhance learning pro-cesses and outcomes of all students, international and domestic alike.

Alumni relations and activities are a fairly new thing for Finnish universities, UH included. However, the University realises the importance of retaining contacts with all graduates, including international students. To this end the current on-line-service for alumni has also been made avail-able in English.

TEACHINGThe Centre for Research and Development

of Higher Education of the University of Hel-sinki provides courses on university pedagogy to teachers and researchers of the University. These research-based courses are available also in English.

The Language Centre of the University of Hel-sinki has supported teachers providing education in English through a special programme.

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ENCOURAGING THE INTERNATIONAL OR CROSS-CULTURAL ORIENTA-TION OF STUDENTS

As Finnish is a relatively small language in the world scale, the use of books and other teaching materials in English and in other languages is very commonplace. This not only improves students understanding of written academic English but also ex-poses them to the international academic community and latest research findings. All undergraduate degree programmes offered by the University of Helsinki have a mandatory foreign language requirement and in order to graduate, students need to demonstrate proficiency in a minimum of one foreign language.

The number of incoming international exchange and degree seeking students has developed very positively and one of the key motivations for UH to build capacity in this direction is the realisation that international students contribute significantly to the “Internationalisation at Home”, both inside and outside the classrooms. Today local students have excellent opportunities to engage with students from over 100 different countries. In order to offer the widest possible opportunities for outgoing student mobility, the University tops up funding from Erasmus and other externally funded programmes by offering travel grants to its students. The total amount ex-ceeds 200.000EUR every year.

SUPPORTING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS As part of the embedded approach to internationalisation, the University’s Stu-

dent Services support all students regardless of nationality of mother tongue. In-tranet pages informing the students of various services available are fully translated into English. Student Services staff has received additional language and intercultur-al competencies training in order to be prepared to also serve international students. In order to facilitate the early phase of the international students’ studies, special ori-entation programs are run at the start of both academic terms. These sessions, today known as the Welcome Fair, include information on various internal services (health care, computing, libraries etc) and lectures on the system and culture of studying at the University. As part of the orientation, each new student is assigned to a tutor group, the tutor being a fellow student, who has received formal training as a prereq-uisite.

For more than twenty years the international degree-seeking students have been supported financially by the UH self-funded International Student Grants totalling

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80000EUR every year. These grants are awarded to students in Master’s pro-grammes. Moreover, many of the UH international doctoral students enjoy a salary from the university.

ENCOURAGING INTEGRATION AND INTERACTION BETWEEN DOMES-TIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSAs stated earlier the development of English-taught courses and programmes has been very rapid, and in just two decades the opportunities for international students for taking courses have improved significantly both in terms of quantity and qual-ity. From very early on, the strategic objective was to have both international and domestic students attending the same classes in order to contribute towards inter-nationalisation at home for Finnish students but also facilitating the integration of international students into the student body at large. Having students from different backgrounds in the same classrooms provides a great opportunity for interaction.

The University has also been actively involved in projects with other stakeholders in its region to increase the interaction between domestic and international students. An example of a project in this area is the “Helsinki Region Welcome Weeks” (www.welcomeweeks.fi), which includes events such as the Hidden City Race, particularly aimed at bringing together domestic and international students and to provide fur-ther opportunities for integration.

One of the most significant contributing factor for international students’ integration are the numerous activities organised and provided for by the Student Union of the University of Helsinki (http://hyy.helsinki.fi/en). The various cultural, sports and other sub-organisations incorporate international students in their activities.

NOTES:

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WWW.HELSINKI.FI/UNIVERSITYFACEBOOK.COM/HELSINKIUNIVERSITY

TWITTER.COM/HELSINKIUNIYOUTUBE.COM/HELSINKIUNIVERSITY