EXPERIENCES FROM AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT AND STAFF EXCHANGE PROGRAM

This paper describes an ongoing exchange program between 20 partner universities; 11 from the European Union and candidate countries and 9 universities form Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, where a bilateral mobility flow between the European and the neighboring countries is implemented. While the idea of this program initially intended to focus on ICT subjects, only it was opened to students from all academics. Nevertheless, the better part of all participating students is from engineering disciplines. The described program encompasses undergraduate, graduate, PhD-students as well as postdocs and academic staff. Besides, by broadening their technical education, we think that all participants benefit from the reevaluation of his/her own culture that occurs while functioning as part of another culture and communicating a foreign tongue. Over 100 scholarships were awarded in the first year of the program. This number shall be exceeded during the second year of the program, which started in September 2009.

A part of the scholarships at the graduate and undergraduate level was granted to credit-seeking students. The rest of the graduate, undergraduate and all PhD-scholarships were awarded to degree-seekers. To mention just one of the challenges that showed up: surprisingly for the Arab students and us, accrediting a degree obtained from some European university turns out to be much easier than getting a credit for a lecture attended at the very same university. The cause quickly turns out: on the one hand, as a consequence of the Bologna Process every European university today uses the ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) as a standard for comparing performance and achievement of students. While on the other hand, all the partner countries are using the American academic system. Actually, one of them is an American University, i.e. the degrees awarded are officially registered by the Board of Education in New York State.

First experiences are reviewed, including the not exclusively academic obstacles that we had to overcome in teaching and learning within these different educational systems. .We will also report on a survey, which we will conduct to learn about the students’ experiences and thus assure the quality of their mobilities.