Dr Jooste · 2 August 2010
This, the fifth in the series of Colloquia hosted during 'Family Week', was a continuation of the conversation that started in 2004. The fifth Colloquium was designed to enable a global debate with a particular goal: to develop a common understanding of what globally accepted practices of an internationalised higher education institution are.
This Colloquium was different from the previous four — it only included participants that represented the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University's partner universities. All the universities represented six different higher education systems and at least five types of institutions, including USA liberal arts colleges, Master's granting universities, Doctoral granting universities, German Fachhochschules, Universities of Applied Sciences and research intensive universities. The Colloquium was also attended by comprehensive universities from Norway, Mexico, Japan and The Netherlands.
This was truly a benchmarking exercise across borders — a demonstration of institutional partners cooperating in building internationalisation in a global setting as part of a network.
The internationalisation activities that received the most attention during the debates were mobility (both staff and student), indicators that evaluate internationalisation practices, and internationalisation and the institutional planning process.