PARTNERSHIP
The consortium consists of eight members: Luminar Foundation (Poland), Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), Atlantic Language (Ireland), Medical University of Warsaw (Poland), Medical University of Gdańsk (Poland), Jagiellonian University Medical College (Poland), Semmelweis University (Hungary) and University of Pecs Medical School (Hungary). Luminar Foundation from Poland is the Project Coordinator. We present the Partners below.
PROJECT COORDINATOR
website: http://luminarfoundation.org
Luminar Foundation from Poland is the project coordinator. At Luminar Foundation we strongly believe that internationalisation of education brings about a positive change in education – and the society at large. Luminar Foundation curates a space for students, educators and administration at education institutions, non-governmental bodies, representatives of local and central government to carry out a dialogue leading to increased quality of education at various types of education institutions in the globalising environment. We have created and organised a discussion forum for the leaders in higher education, Leadership Forum in Higher Education.
In its daily work between the editions of the Leadership Forum, Luminar Foundation helps to increase cooperation between the universities in Central and Eastern Europe in the various aspects of internationalisation, engaging in bilateral cooperation, contributing to research and developing new tools in internationalisation. Luminar Foundation also increasingly cooperates with secondary and primary schools on the issues on internationalisation of education, especially in the aspects of global teaching and learning. Luminar Foundation performs analyses, needs assessments, programme evaluations and other services to better serve the international education community.
PROJECT PARTNERS
website: https://ki.se/en
Karolinska Institutet (KI) is one of the world’s leading medical universities. Its vision is to advance knowledge about life and strive towards better health for all. KI accounts for the single largest share of all academic medical research conducted in Sweden and offers the country’s broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. The Nobel Assembly at KI selects the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine. KI ranks as one of the world’s leading medical universities, thanks in part to the quality of its research activities, which account for 40% of all medical research in Sweden. KI has about 4800 employees, nearly two-thirds of whom are female. Some 80% of KI’s income is devoted to research, distributed among some 600 research groups covering all medical fields. KI provides postgraduate training and has 2200 registered PhD students from around the world who are active in basic, clinical and epidemiological research. Research at KI has a strong European dimension, with almost 200 project participations within the EU’s now closed Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). Of these, KI coordinated 28 projects.
KI is strongly committed to internationalization and has invested significant resources in internationalising its education programmes through an Action Plan for Internationalisation and in its recent Strategy 2030, where one out of three pillars is dedicated to this process. The Swedish national inquiry into internationalisation practices (2018) mentions KI’s activities and teacher training as it remains at the forefront of best practice in the Swedish higher education landscape.
KI participants will add value to the Project through their expertise in teaching in an international context and experience of intercultural communication. Teachers at KI are encouraged to disseminate their teaching and learning competences within communities of practice and spread their new knowledge to other colleagues through designated fora. By participating in this Partnership and implementing its recommendations, KI wishes to further enhance the quality of teaching and learning for all its teaching staff and students. It is expected that the academics involved will contribute to creating communities of practice and knowledge transfer after their participation in the project. Each programme has an academic responsible for internationalisation of education, and an academic responsible for pedagogical development who are key persons to involve in this project.
website: https://www.atlanticlanguage.com/
Atlantic Language is a premium English language school, located in Ireland with centres in Galway and Dublin, which has been providing English language courses for international students for 25 years. Atlantic Language is recognised by Eaquals as a provider of excellence in language education, ACELS, a service of Quality and Qualifications Ireland, for English Language Teaching (ELT) and is a member of Quality English, ALTO, and MEI and a recognised Erasmus+ course provider associated with Leargas.
In recent years, Atlantic Language has developed its offering of specialised English language courses for Higher Education Academics and for Administrators involved in internationalisation programmes on university campuses, primarily through the Erasmus+ Programme with programmes offered on School Education Gateway. Atlantic’s Academic Team have designed curricula in response to the needs identified by HEIs throughout Europe who teach, work or research through the medium of English. Current programmes offered include Academic Writing and Presentation Skills, CLIL for Educators, English for Professional Communication, English for the Educational Workplace, Language Teacher Refresher Course, Public Speaking for Academics and Intensive General English. Atlantic Language collaborates with several universities in providing Academic Training courses including Szent István University, University of South Bohemia, Universidad de Cordoba, Salzburg University and VIVES.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become the umbrella term describing both learning a subject such as physics or geography through the medium of a foreign language (such as English) and improving that language by studying a content-based subject. In the course of learning the method at Atlantic Language, participants develop and improve their understanding, expertise and skills related to CLIL in their pedagogical context. This raises a range of important issues among students, teachers and lecturers for whom English is an additional language. CLIL methodology workshops and seminars at Atlantic Language provide the necessary tools that higher education lecturers need in order to guide understanding and support the learning of their students. Development of competences in this area help educators to find solutions in motivating learners, adapting texts, selecting and designing interactive tasks, sequencing content in lectures and lessons, supporting students’ language development and output and developing students’ cognitive and critical thinking skills. This helps to increase the quality of education, retain more students and attract talented international students.
website: https://www.wum.edu.pl/en
website: https://mug.edu.pl/
The Medical University of Gdańsk (MUG) is the largest medical university in northern Poland and is recognized as renowned institution with a long history of teaching and research in the Life Sciences field. MUG educates more than 6000 undergraduate and postgraduate students at 4 Faculties:
Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Pharmacy and the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology. The MUG offers Premedical Course, Medicine Doctor Programme, Pharmacy Programme, Nursing Programme which are taught fully in English. International students constitute more than 17% of the MUG’s students and represent more than half of all international students in Gdańsk. Most of them come from Sweden, Norway, India, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Canada, the UK, the USA, Iraq, Germany and Spain. University has world class teaching and research staff and state-of-the-art equipment and research facilities. In 2019 MUG occupies a high position (8th) in prestigious ranking of Polish Universities “Prespektywy University Ranking” (http://ranking.perspektywy.org/2019/) which benchmarking aspects such: as high prestige of studies, best chances of graduates on labor market, academic potential and research output. MUG was also selected as one of top 10 polish Research Universities by Ministry of Higher Education.
The MUG, within English Division (ED), offers Premedical Course, Medicine Doctor Programme, Pharmacy Programme, Nursing Programme which are taught fully in English. In 2019 ED was educating 877 students in all above mentioned programmes and courses. For the purpose of ensuring high quality education and covering all necessary fields of expertise MUG employs 807 academic staff delegated to teaching ED students in English language. In years preceding the preparation of the project MUG embraced teachers with support of development professional competences related to teaching. Adaptation and implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a next step towards better teaching of medicine in English within English Divison of MUG. Increasing diversity of students requires equipping academics, teaching medical and healthcare sciences in English, with skills allowing them to work effectively in multicultural and multilingual classrooms. By adapting certain material from course onto CLIL methodology, the implementation of pilot at MUG will be introduced.
website: https://www.cm-uj.krakow.pl/en
Jagiellonian University (JU), founded in 1364 and located in Krakow, educates students at 15 faculties at all three levels, following the principles of the Bologna Process. There are over 80 degrees and specialties available in Polish, as well as over a dozen in English. The School of Medicine teaching in English at the Faculty of Medicine, as a division of Collegium Medicum, currently educates nearly 700 students coming from five different continents and twenty countries. They are taught by 784 lecturers.The majority of students enrolled are Norwegian, American and Canadian nationals. The Department of Medical Education (DME) at the College of Medicine at Jagiellonian University (CM UJ) is a team of over 50 specialists who run courses using the latest didactic methods such as team-based learning, problem-based learning, skills laboratories, and medical simulation. The DME team is responsible for OSCE organisation. Lecturers are coordinating following subjects: introduction to clinical science; medical first aid; disaster medicine; emergency medicine; laboratory teaching of skills; professionalism and communication skills. They provide cyclical training for teaching staff in these modalities at the highest standard. With access to equipment and facilities that allow for the conduction of classes with a variety of didactic techniques, the DME has been key in innovating and rebuilding the medical school curriculum with regards to the teaching of doctor-patient communication and non-technical skills.
Since 2012, the DME has been organising an annual conference, the Medical Education Forum, focused on having experts present the latest on practical aspects of medical education, and in the same year started their partnership with the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University (Canada). The DME has been involved in presenting the results of scientific research in the field of medical education at the most important conferences in the field, including the Association for Medical Education in Europe and the Society for Simulation in Europe. The DME cooperates with institutions that play an important role in the American and European educational systems, such as NBME, AAMC, EBMA. Together with 30 other world-class medical universities around the globe, Jagiellonian University partakes in the Global Health Learning Opportunities (GHLO) project developed in cooperation with the AAMC. CM UJ would like to increase the knowledge of its academic teachers on the influence of intercultural diversity on the effectiveness of teaching and its quality. Academic teachers at CM UJ are not assessed in respect to such knowledge when they begin their work; the criteria to be hired include scientific and clinical experience and the ability to speak foreign languages. CM UJ is hopeful that its participation in CLILMED will improve its own teaching practice.
website: http://semmelweis.hu/english/
Semmelweis University is a leading institution of higher education in Hungary and in the Central European region within the area of medicine and health sciences. Its main commitment is based on the integrity of education, research and healing, which make Semmelweis University an internationally renowned centre of knowledge. As a specialist university, it holds a unique place within the country; its prominent role is demonstrated by the fact that approximately 42 percent of Hungary’s doctors, 70 percent of its dentists, 50 percent of its pharmacists and 27 percent of its health care professionals are Semmelweis graduates. It has a truly international community, programmes are offered in three languages (Hungarian, English, German), and foreign students account for nearly a third of the around 11,000 students studying at the University’s six faculties. The University’s English Language Program was established – six years after the German Language Program – in 1989. Since then the number of students participating in the Program has been constantly growing. At the present time every third student of the University is foreigner, who arrive from five continents and 70 different countries. More than 1700 students conduct their education in English language, oversubscription is multiple.
The curriculum in General Medicine consists of six years of studies, while the programs in Dentistry and in Pharmacy last five years. The medical curriculum is a traditional one in which the first 2 years are devoted to the firm establishment of foundational knowledge (such as Anatomy, Biochemistry, Physiology, etc.) and the third year is focusing on preclinical studies. During these years teaching occurs through lectures, seminars and real laboratory experiments. Examinations involve MCQs and oral exams. The clinical years (from 3rd to 6th) are arranged in a block system where the taught subjects vary in length and students are having a real and immersive experience of the clinical work while they acquire the necessary knowledge and competencies in small groups. The University is constantly striving to enhance the methodological knowledge of the academic staff and also puts emphasis on providing the best possible means to them in order to completely achieve the learning outcomes in the highly multicultural environment.
website: http://admissions.medschool.pte.hu/
The University of Pécs with 10 faculties is one of few public higher education institutions in Hungary with a history rooting back to medieval Europe (est. 1367). The University of Pécs Medical School regularly scores above all other faculties of any Hungarian universities with a non-metropolitan learning environment. The English Medical Curriculum in Pécs launched 36 years ago and was the first of its kind in Central-Eastern Europe. Today, the University offers medical education in Hungarian, English and German languages for students coming from more than sixty countries.
In 2018 our leadership has set out ambitious goals for the next decade to meaningfully transform our traditions in guiding the learning process. Campus infrastructure is now being redesigned and new teaching facilities are built. As for intellectual renewal, the University of Pécs is the first Hungarian higher education institution with a Medical Faculty which has been certified by the Academic Cooperation Association in 2019 for its strategy in Internationalization at Home. We have recently established long term strategic teaching collaborations with Harvard University (US), Houston Methodist Hospital (US), Weill Cornell Medicine (US), University of Southern California (US), and Nanyang Technological University. As of the European Universities initiative of the European Union, Pécs is a member of the EDUC consortium led by the University of Potsdam, Germany. Based on existing research collaboration networks and Erasmus Mobility networks, strategic partnerships in education with prestigious European universities have been and are being established with Cambridge University, Zürich ETH, and Karolinska Institutet.
We believe that the natural sciences module of pre-clinical studies could be repurposed as powerful tools for developing communication skills and critical thinking in the new generations of doctors. A role for doctors is to be reestablished and reaffirmed in a globalised environment as communicators and efficient persuaders in the context of delivering complicated but crucial medical information for both patients and for the public. To achieve this objective, high-quality contents of key pre-clinical subjects could be combined with contextual literacy skills, using CLIL methodology. Our academic teachers involved in CLILMED project are associate professors of Anatomy, of Biochemistry, and of Physiology courses. Our experts are delegated from the Department of Languages for Biomedical Purposes, from the Department of Behavioural Sciences, and from our Quality Assurance Unit. The contribution of our experts in this project is co-funded by our institution.
Project Financing:
Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education, total grant: 231 459 €
Project Duration:
October 31, 2019 – October 30, 2022