Organizing Successful Foreign Students Exchange

Year 2013, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 11 - 28, 01.06.2013

İvanka Shopova Ekaterina Arabska

Abstract

Students exchange activities in the global world we are living in now will become more and more popular and searched for not only by students on their own but also by universities’ management as a part of joint degree programs and the opportunities they give for transferring innovations, increasing competitiveness and expanding markets. This paper presents the most important factors influencing the process of training students from abroad (particularly exchanges between countries with very differing cultures) concerning the significance of social integration and intercultural communication. An investigation into good practices being presented by Bulgarian Human Resources Development Center (as the coordinating body in Bulgaria of the European Lifelong Learning Programme) was accomplished and the main points of reserch were identified. Three types of questionnares were prepared - for teachers, for administrative staff and for students. The results were summurized and analyzed according to the research topic. Some curricula development principles are proposed and recommendations are given concerning development of both student-oriented and competence-based programs which is not fully in its essence adopted yet as an approach in many countries and sometimes misunderstood.

Keywords

students exchange, higher education, social integration, intercultural communication, curricula development, student-oriented and competence-based learning

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