The Independent newspaper published an article headed “Students get a global outlook on universities”, with comments from Geoffroy Gérárd, associate director of communications (IE University).
With an increasing number of universities all over the world offering undergraduate courses taught in English at affordable
rates, UK students are looking overseas for their education. Many of the programmes they find offer a new perspective on teaching and learning.
“It’s a very international environment here,” says Jana Light, who is studying communications at the HAN University of Applied Sciences, a state university in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “In my class we have one Dutch guy, and the rest are from Germany, Ukraine, Lithuania, China, Vietnam, Indonesia – all over.”
It’s similar at IE, a private international university with campuses in Madrid and Segovia, Spain. “We have multicultural classes of 25 to 50 students, which may bring together people from 20 different countries,” says Geoffroy Gérard, associate director of communications. “That will affect everything from the students’ interests to the styles of study they have experienced.” International students make up 60 per cent of IE’s intake. At Jacobs University, a private institution in Bremen, Germany, more than 75 per cent come from outside Germany.
The teaching style benefits from this international mix of students. IE’s approach, for example, prioritises discussion and debate over “chalk and talk”. If there are lectures, they won’t be the stadium-scale, professor-at-lectern affairs that go on at many UK institutions. “Usually, learning will involve some sort of chat,” says Gérard.
Continue reading in The Independent
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