Study Abroad in Sweden: Japanese Exchange Students’ Perspectives of Language Use in University EMI Courses

With the availability of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) courses, an increasing number of international students have been joining Swedish universities. However, the language use in Swedish EMI courses may display unique features; while many Swedish students have high English language proficiency, code-switching between Swedish and English is reported as a common practice by both lecturers and students, even when international students are present. Moreover, the term “international students” is often used to include students of various statuses and linguistic abilities, and the experiences and perspectives of short-term exchange students towards the language use in Swedish EMI courses are rarely documented. The current study investigates the perspectives of short-term exchange students from Japan enrolled in EMI courses at a university in Sweden. Questionnaire and focus group interview confirmed previous studies regarding the language-use practices in the classrooms. Moreover, the rate of speech, turn-taking, and background knowledge were found to hinder the learning and participation of the exchange students. The findings suggest the need to raise awareness of the language practices in Swedish EMI courses to students, lecturers, and other universities in order to support the learning experience of short-term exchange students.

Views of Erasmus+ Exchange Students Studying in the Field of Sports in Different Countries Regarding the Programme

This study aims to analyze the views of Erasmus+ Exchange students studying in the field of sports in different countries regarding the programme. In the study, descriptive phenomenology design, one of qualitative study designs, was used. In accordance with this aim, five open ended questions answered by 14 foreign students participating in the Erasmus+ exchange programme in different universities offering sports science programmes in Portugal were analyzed through content analysis. The data obtained from the students were discussed under five themes, which are; reasons for participating in the programme, contribution to the field, challenges faced, similarities and differences with their education and suggestions. The views expressed by the students reveal that their reason for participating in the programme is to experience different cultures; the contribution of the programme to their field is the different course styles; the challenges they face are language and financial challenges; the similarity with the education in their country is the course contents and the difference is the teaching styles; and their suggestion is that the students shouldn’t be afraid to participate in exchange programmes.

Entrepreneurship Education Inside the Japanese Biosphere Reserve to Trigger Work Opportunities for Youth

Entrepreneurship education is defined as the process of providing students with an enhanced capacity to create the ideas and the skills which will be applicable for the future career. From 2018-2019, for four semesters, we have created the regional activities to create the capacity building training program for the exchange students, inside the UNESCO Mount Hakusan Biosphere Reserve (BR) of Japan. Our purpose was to encourage the students to create their own “eco-business projects”, and not to search for the jobs provided from the outside. More than 140 students have attended the course, which was divided into volunteering practices, homestay activities and hands-on practices. After the course completion more than 86% of the students have indicated the willingness to create their own business and some of the students after course completion started their small businesses and worked as freelancers. BR provided the unique platform to conduct the entrepreneurship education, and interacting with local villagers helped the students to re-evaluate the values needed for the sustainable development.

Building empathy through a comparative study of popular cultures in Caracas, Venezuela, and Albany, United States

During our six-week Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) module (Oct.-Nov. 2019), 58 students jointly developed task-based projects on expressions of popular culture in Albany (USA) and Caracas (Venezuela). In teams of seven to eight participants, learners from both countries reflected on variations of popular culture through assignments to be resolved in teams that included summaries and critical assessments of readings, contextualization of theoretical concepts, the drafting of a joint video script, and finally creation of a ten-minute video that focused on popular expressions in both cities. All learners were native, fluent, or near-native speakers of Spanish. We experienced the topic of popular culture to be exceptionally well poised to help students engage with each other from the beginning, represent everyday realities and build empathy and transcultural understanding through written reflections and joint creative final projects in the form of documentaries that included slices of life from the two different realities. The small-scale, everyday popular cultural productions allowed for a connection beyond cultural divides, helped students discover novel terrain within their own contexts, and vice versa, find common ground in the new context, thus fostering empathy toward transcultural awareness and equitable collaboration. In their exchange students actively created a shared ‘third’ culture of collaboration.