Considerations in regards to the survey tool memo - CHE Consult

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Monitoring Exchange Mobility Outcomes Without a doubt, internationalisation is currently en vogue: Especially in the higher education sector efforts are being made to implement internationalisation strategies in manifestos, strategy plans and university profiles. National and European institutions give massive financial support to these developments. The ERASMUS exchange programme alone has a volume of 7bn Euro (programmes from 2007 - 2013). But what exactly are the reasons for promoting the internationalisation of education? The internationalisation of teaching is unanimously considered “good”. Internationalisation professionals mostly work on the basis of a concept of internationalisation that is reflected in e.g. Jane Knight‘s definition (Knight, 1993), which characterises the internationalisation of the higher education sector in four ways: - As a process - As a resource - As a means to align the higher education system with international standards and also as - A chance to create a system that is open to a globalised environment (separate from the globalisation process). In their paper The End of Internationalization?, published in 2011, Uwe Brandenburg and Hans de Wit critically reflect on these generally undisputed presumptions (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011). They reject Knight’s defintion and claim that internationalisation and globalisation are used in the current debate as antagonistic termini, whose respective meanings are contentious or, rather, have become devalued. One often says globalisation, when one actually means neoliberalism, the currently predominating economic paradigm. Especially in recent days, as de Wit argues in his critical comment from 2011 (de Wit, 2011), ever new labels for internationalisation are introduced to the debate, e.g. the term “comprehensive internationalization”, which John Hudzik (Hudzik, 2011) presented in the same year. De Wit points out that this new label did not contain any new dimensions of internationalisation but instead relates back to the commonly established definition by Knight (Knight, 1993). In regards to further definitions the tendency towards repetitions and a lack in content is similarly noticeab- www.memo-tool.net le: „There is no other conclusion but that these labels are tautologies, using different words to say the same thing even if the repetition does not actually make the meaning even clearer.” (de Wit, 2011) Brandenburg and de Wit demand for the term or rather for the concept Internationalisation to be filled with new meaning, for its value to be reinstated and furthermore to question, which means and activities are utilised as part in the internationalisation processes of HEIs and why these in particular. Although the future of HEIs will doubtlessly have a global or, as the case may be, international character: “Called for is a common commitment at the institutional and personal level of how we and our students will be prepared to live and work in a global community” (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011, p. 17). Hereby the concern is not only for the scientific, but also for the cultural context: In this regard, the acquisition of intercultural competencies has to be seen as an important strategy for the preparation for living and working within a globalised world whose complexity should not be underestimated and was described by Hofstede (Hofstede, 2009). Intercultural competencies are therefore an attribute of increasing relevance to educational policies and are also a deciding factor in the selection of new employees. The large amount of competency measurement tools or scales employed for (international) personnel development, which directly refer to the measurement of intercultural competencies, document their importance (see, e.g. (Black, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 1991) (Cui & Awa, 1992) (Cui & Awa, 1992) (Kühlmann & Stahl, 1998) (Bird & Osland, 2004)). In his paper Was heißt ,Interkulturelle Kompetenz‘? Perspektiven für die internationale Personalentwicklung, Jürgen Bolten (Bolten, 2007) considers different approaches to defining, measuring and advancing intercultural competencies. He notes: Accordingly, process models understand intercultural competencies as a holistic interaction of individual, social, technical and strategic actions in intercultural contexts. “Intercultural competence“ is hereby shown to be a term for a synergetic process, which therefore cannot be limited to the area of soft skills, i.e. personal or social aspects. As the term encompasses me- 2
Monitoring Exchange Mobility Outcomes thodical and technical competency aspects as well as social and personal ones (or presents itself as the result of the interdependent processes of these competency components), it equally includes “hard” and “soft” factors (Bolten, 2007, p. 6). A slightly more precise definition of intercultural competence is suggested by Stefanie Rathje: Intercultural competence can […] be seen as the ability to create normality, which intercultural interactions initially lack, and to thereby foster cohesion. Following this idea, intercultural competence leads to unknown differences becoming familiar […]. Intercultural competence can also be seen as the ability to convert “fleeting” interculture, which is characterised by foreignness, into culture by creating cohesion through normality. (Rathje, 2006, p. 14) The acquisition of intercultural competence that is deemed to be so important is promoted at nearly every HEI through exchange programmes and similar activities. However, up until now, no competency measurement tool or, as the case may be, survey exists that explicitly deals with what the students actually learned and which abilities they gained while abroad, how they fared physically and emotionally and how they coped with the academic, social and cultural demands of their stay abroad. Vice versa, possible negative effects, e.g. through the cultural shock (Oberg, 1960), are not systematically monitored either. // The survey tool www.memo-tool.net Study mobility and what it means for the students HEIs consider student mobility as something that is positive in principle. But do they know, what really happens to the students during their stay abroad? Whether this experience is helpful to their studies? Do they know, what is important for the orientation in an increasingly globalised world? The survey tool memo measures the added value of mobility. This does not mean simply surveying a person’s satisfaction. The point is to detect, how the time abroad changed the person. Thus, the students are surveyed before and after their stay abroad. Behavioural and attitudinal aspects are looked at and are considered – also in conjunction with socio-economic aspects. 1. The survey tool memo The memo survey tool is available in a growing number of language versions, because each institution will have the possibility to conduct the survey in their students’ native language 1 . The memo student survey consists of three sets of questions: One asks about facts, one about perceptions and one about attitudes. 1 In November 2012, the memo survey was available in English, German, French, Finnish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan. Facts Perceptions Attitudes - Family background - Course of study - ... - Satisfaction with support - Ideas about future career - ... - Personal dispositions such as resilience or curiosity - ... 3
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