Application of new information technologies in academic internationalization

The international virtual binomials of teachers that were made up under the TEMPUS project “E-Internationalization for Collaborative Learning” (http://www.eicl.kharkiv.edu), enable to develop the forms of transnational teacher-teacher collaboration and to raise up the project participants to another more efficient level within the international strategies of the universities themselves as well as to make the processes of internationalization real.

Such approach provides teachers with motivation of their activity that is rather important if we are talking about the quality of education at universities. On the whole, there are more than 20 international binomials were created, completed or still being in the process of implementation by teachers within the project. For example, the team 3D game in the OpenSim environment, which final round was held in the frames of the project on 31 May, 2012, with the teachers’ coordination and technical support by the students from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and with the participation of students and teachers from National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute” (Ukraine) and Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnic University (Russia). All the persons engaged in the game carried out coordinated information-and-training actions to select and prepare student teams and to form the game environment. The overall number of the competition participants – 30 students from three countries.

The IT infrastructure, own knowledge, cooperation of highly professional technical and pedagogic support by the universities enabled to implement successfully the new collaboration form which incorporated students and experts in Information Technologies and Economics and has given an opportunity to check their knowledge in Microeconomics as well, also, all this allowed to increase comprehension and apply the skills of team and cross-cultural interaction.
The students and their teachers got added evidence of the importance of collectivity in decision-making process from their own experience. A good team game, knowledge, speed of response, confidence in the team partners as well as striving for victory made it possible for the team from the Department of Production Organization and Personnel Management, Faculty of Economics, NTU “KhPI” (Yekaterina Shilova, Yekaterina Savchenko and Irina Garmash), to win the first place.

Thanks both to the TEMPUS project "E-internationalization for collaborative learning" and the initiatives and support of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the students of National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”, Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas (Ukraine) and Saints-Petersburg State Polytechnic University (Russia) obtained a possibility to implement the cross-border education strategy staying at the same time at their home universities.