Title: Pan-Nordic project on Intercultural Competencies course development; background and co-creation process, 2021-2024
Name of presenter: Sandro John Amendolara
Affiliation and academic title: University of Helsinki, Language Centre, University Teacher
Email address: sandro.amendolara@helsinki.fi
Keywords: intercultural competency, Nordic academic culture, university teaching, international research collaboration, internationalisation.
Abstract:
This presentation will be given in conjunction with Kirby Vincent’s on the same Pan-Nordic project on the development of an online intercultural communicative competencies course (NordPath); whilst I shall be focusing on contextualization, background and process of the collaborative project, Kirby will be discussing the 2023 pilots, the Digicampus online learning platform, and the completed course series that will be implemented in the 2024-25 curricula.
The project was initiated as a way of implementing the Nordic universities’ strategic goals expounded in Nordic Vision 2030 i.e. that the Nordic Region will become the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030.
In this talk, I will be presenting the NordPath project, 2021-24. The purpose of the project was for 4 Nordic Universities (Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Iceland) to cooperate in designing an online intercultural competencies course series that would benefit the participatory universities and project groups, through networking and a long-term collaborative effort; and students, by offering opportunities to connect and interact with peers from other Nordic universities, also as a means of promoting cultural awareness and understanding.
I’ll briefly introduce some background information before discussing the project goals and cocreation process and evolution over 3 years of project meetings; this will include the challenges participants from the 4 Nordic universities faced, such as misalignment of academic terms, institutional differences in grading criteria and lack of a communal online platform, and solutions we developed in order to overcome the challenges.