What did you do there?
Huma went to Finland for the “International week of Language teachers”. While she was there she attended workshops, lectures, but also gave an interactive workshop herself. The whole week was spent with other language teachers from different universities and all participants had to give each other presentations and workshops and for Huma it was an opportunity to “teach them my method of teaching” she says. The workshop Huma gave was visited by the coordinator as well. “He could have opted any workshop to go to, but he came to mine”, so that was special for Huma.
What differences did you see?
The campus was really modern “they had cards for the doors, no keys…” and everything worked more electronic. Huma also says it was an eye opener for her to see a different university and different methods of teaching. This was different as the university in Finland did not have the PBL method. All classrooms had “a beamer and screen, so everything was through that”. Since the method of teaching is quite distant from the students that could also be seen in the relationship between teachers and students. It was all a bit more reserved, so for the teachers there to see a different way of interaction with students and teaching was also a breath of fresh air. “One of the comments I got was that because of that my workshop is successful, because they really saw the difference”.
She also attended a really nice video/discussion. She even brought home a video for use here at Stenden called; “The neo method of multi cultural workgroups”. Huma thinks it could be nice to implement this here, as Stenden has a lot of international students and students struggling with each other’s working methods and thinks “it’s a pity that even though Holland is so close to these Scandinavian countries it’s not following the same system”. Huma also saw that the internal learning companies were much more sophisticated. Students got started in these young
entrepreneurship companies from day 1, guided by a separate
team of academics and furthermore they worked together
with 300 other companies abroad in e.g. South America,
California, from 30 different countries.
All in all she enjoyed her stay in Finland and
really liked how everything was arranged for
her by the SMC and Erasmus. She already knows
where to go next year…Dublin!