Abstract:

The European Union (EU) has recently published a new EU agenda for higher education (2017) to improve the prospects for European citizens. In this white paper, the EU has highlighted a series of key transversal competences and skills for future students, which include: students’ capacities for entrepreneurship and resiliance, management complex information, capabilities for creative and autonomous thinking, effective communication, engagement with local communities and promotion social inclusion and mobility. European universities, including De Montfort University (DMU, Leicester, UK), promote different strategies to facilitate the acquisition of these skills including supporting and promoting cooperation and mutual learning through different programmes including Erasmus+ (for students, academics and researchers) and strong collaboration between higher education, research and business. To promote international experience and broaden cultural horizons, DMU has created a specific programme/department named #DMUglobal that includes the Erasmus+ and its own schemes such as academic-led trips. The #DMUglobal trips involve a short-term visit to another country that is offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in specific programmes in DMU. The #DMUglobal programme was created in September 2013 and has rapidly evolved to being one of the most recognisable and popular learning experiences for DMU students, with 11,000 students expected to have engaged and benefited by 2020. Moreover, DMU received a Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award in 2016 for its outstanding international strategy. This paper will report two major experiences that our group has recently developed and have benefited from the #DMUglobal programme, which are: a) the development of a novel #DMUglobal trip experience created for health science students to determine potential public health risks in New York during the first week in January 2018; and b) the use of an Erasmus+ mobility grant for academics to validate our novel training to respond to chemical and biological incidents and outbreaks of infection (Peña-Fernández et al., 2017). To validate the training, we delivered different parts of our training to undergraduate students enrolled in different human health programmes (e.g. Medicine, Pharmacy) in the University of San Pablo CEU (Madrid) during April 2017. Comprehensive student feedback was collected. Analysis of the feedback has indicated that the Erasmus+ mobility grant can be a relevant tool and appropriate resource to strengthen curriculum development. Thus, efforts should be made to continuing participating and having access to this scheme if the United Kingdom leaves the EU. Finally, #DMUglobal could be an appropriate strategy to be adopted in other European universities to facilitate and promote many of the key competences highlighted by the European Commission.

Keywords:

Erasmus+, #DMUglobal, internationalization, student satisfaction.