INTERNATIONALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: INCREASING INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS THROUGH TEAMWORK

The creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) goes hand in hand with a commitment to students' education and, specifically, developing their skills. Internationality is another cornerstones of this new teaching environment. Nevertheless, little is still known about the role of experiential learning activities based on real projects linked to collaborating entities (companies and NGOs), as a driver of the students' international perspective. To cover this gap, the present paper developed an experiential learning activity which involved a total of 52 undergraduate students attending the Bachelor’s Degrees in Education, International Business and International Relations in the authors’ university. Teams included students from different countries and universities, speakers of more than 10 languages (English, Spanish, Hungarian, Chinese, Finnish, Norwegian, French, Italian, Arabic, and Dutch, among others), who worked in different projects in collaboration with a real NGO with objectives related to the courses they were attending to. Our hypothesis consisted on the assumption that, by working in international teams, students develop intercultural awareness as well as communication skills that shape their internationality; causing an advantage regarding their opportunities to access an increasingly and inevitably globalized market. To test this proposition, a set of focus groups took place before and after the development of this activity. Students, collaborating entities’ managers and teachers involved in this experience were invited to participate and express their perception about their self-perception on this topic as well as to verify the achievement of the above mentioned objectives. Preliminary findings confirm the positive influence of this teaching methodology on the students' international perspective.