ONE THOUSAND FLOWERS IN DELFT. A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO IMPROVE TEACHING FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Delft University of Technology (DUT) is becoming more and more of an international community. Student numbers from foreign countries that attend DUT are rising, lectures on master level are conducted in English and international cooperation within educational projects is a necessity. This brings about new challenges, for instance on international collaboration and intercultural communication.

To prepare educators for the continuum of internationalization and globalization of education, an internationalization project named ‘One Thousand Flowers in Delft’ is launched at DUT. With this project, DUT adopts a bottom-up approach to internationalization.
The Flowers project approach is a method to stimulate lecturers to turn the spotlights on internationalization in their own classroom and to apply international skills, knowledge and attitude in order to make these topics a more integrated part of the regular curriculum.
This approach has proven itself over the years in ICT projects as an important motivational factor for lecturers, because it uses the challenges they themselves experience in class as a starting point. Instead of educational advisors prescribing lecturers what to improve on, lecturers come up with small-scale projects on topics they feel need improvement. The solutions participants find often turn out to be very valuable for a larger group of lecturers, since these solutions are rooted in and easily applicable to everyday education.

In the Flowers project, teachers carry out small projects within the realm of the following themes:
• Internationalization at home. This theme entails projects that address the international classroom, right here in Delft.
• International projects. Students work together with students from other foreign universities in a joint project (excluding developmental aid). The final result for the students is a joint product, design or activity.
• International Entrepreneurship & Development. This theme entails projects which are initiated in cooperation with development organizations and aiming at the development of technical sustainable solutions of global problems.
• Internalization & ICT. Foreign and local students have the opportunity to follow a joint module via ICT applets and local field/home work.

The current ‘One Thousand Flowers’ project group consists of eight enthusiastic lecturers who have set up small internationalization projects in order to improve the quality of their teaching for international students. The group of participating lecturers converges on a regular basis to assist one another with advice and receive educational support. The Flowers are supported financially through € 1000,- which participants can spend on educational matters of their own choosing.

In this paper, we will discuss the development and results of six Flowers, within different themes as mentioned above, and consider the possibilities these results have to offer for other lecturers.