Virtual simulated international placements as an innovation for internationalisation in undergraduate programs: a mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: Inherent features in virtual simulation could be utilised to deliver collaborative global education that is inclusive, accessible, and valued by students and facilitators. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the International Eyecare Community (IEC) platform's virtual simulated international placements (VSIP) in optometric education. METHODS: An international, multi-center, cross-sectional mixed methods study with Deakin University, Australia, and the Elite School of Optometry, India, was used to evaluate the impact of VSIP in the IEC using pre-existing deidentified data collected from teaching and learning activities within the optometry course curriculum. Data on students and facilitators perceptions of the VSIP were collected through deidentified transcripts from focus group discussions. The data were interpreted using descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis using constant comparison for thematic analysis. RESULTS: A total of 64 out of 167 student participants completed survey responses (39%) and 46 out of 167 (28%) completed self-reflective inventories. Focus groups with 6 student participants and 6 facilitator participants were recorded and analysed. Student participants reported the IEC was relevant (98% agreement) and motivated them to apply theoretical knowledge to a clinical context (97% agreement). The themes identified through qualitative analysis were: factors inherent to the virtual simulation that enabled learning through VSIP, the VSIP supported cognitive apprenticeship, VSIP enabled clinical learning for optometric education, VSIP' role in cross-cultural professional identity development in optometry students. CONCLUSION: The study found that the VSIP platform helped to motivate students to learn and improve their clinical skills. The VSIP was considered a potential supplement to physical clinical placements and could revolutionize global optometric education by offering co-learning across cultures.

Intercultural adjustment of internationally mobile academics working in Thailand.

Non-nationals constitute up to a quarter of the academic staff workforce of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide. Their motivations to 'work abroad', and their experiences of doing so, are, however, under-researched, especially where migration is to or within the global South. We report a study conducted among internationally mobile academics from a variety of countries working in Thailand. At policy level, Thailand aspires to increase the numbers of international staff and students in its HEIs, but with mixed success in terms of recruitment levels and the reported quality of the experience among these migrants. Conceptually, our study drew on a framework of intercultural adjustment defined as a multidimensional construct comprising psychological, sociocultural and professional/work aspects of the experience. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted to explore experiences of working in Thailand. Thematic analysis of findings showed that reported experiences mainly fell under the category of professional/work aspects of intercultural adjustment, although sociocultural issues were also important. The reported quality of experiences was mixed and generally more negative than positive in the key areas of professional and work adjustment. Specific challenges highlighted by participants related to issues with the work environment, most especially lingual-cultural problems and, crucially, a lack of secure status. We detail and discuss these findings and present recommendations for policy makers and HEIs, aspirant academic migrants, and for future research into global academic migration, particular as it relates to Thailand and other destinations for academic migration.

The disturbance of urban mobility in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the COVID-19 outbreaks, extensive studies have focused on mobility changes to demonstrate the pandemic effect; some studies identified remarkable mobility declines and revealed a negative relationship between mobility and the number of COVID-19 cases. However, counter-arguments have been raised, exemplifying insignificant variations, recuperated travel frequency, and transitory decline effect. This paper copes with this contentious issue, analyzing time series mobility data in comprehensive timelines. The assessment of the pandemic effect builds on significant change rate (SCR) ceilings and the density of the semantic outliers derived from the kernel-based approach. The comparison between pre- and post-pandemic periods indicated that mobility decline pervaded Australia, Europe, New York, New Zealand, and Seoul. However, the degree of the effect was alleviated over time, showing decreased/increased SCR ceilings of negative/positive outliers. The changes in resulting outlier density and SCR ceilings corroborated that the pandemic outbreaks did not lead to persistent mobility decline. The findings provide useful insights for predicting epidemics and setting appropriate restrictions and transportation systems in urban areas.

Functions of digital learning within the international mobility programme - perspectives of university students and staff from Europe.

This paper is based on research studies conducted in the academic community of students and staff members (teachers, researchers and administrative staff) from 16 European universities that focus on digital learning in international mobility. The context of our qualitative study is digital learning during an international mobility scheme when university staff and students do not go abroad for their mobility programme but take courses offered by a partner university from home. By taking the perspectives of both of these academic groups, we aimed to arrive at a clearer understanding of how the digital environment supports digital learning within mobility, ascertain the functions of digital learning and describe the opportunities and challenges that are presented to students engaged in international mobility. Empirical data was gathered using questionnaires and focus group interviews. This study puts forward the assertion that distinctive features of learning in a digital environment within international mobility are systems thinking, self-directed learning and focus on course content. Digital learning environments support motivation to learn, and independence in gaining knowledge. In international digital learning, the online courses of which are characterized by their innovative pedagogical and assessment practices, students and staff become more autonomous in their learning, and more willing to open up to meeting the challenges encountered in various educational settings. Digital learning in the context of mobility means giving meaning to one's own activity in a digital environment and extension of the course content, meaning oral expression such as discussing and interacting with teachers and peers.

[International mobility, a catalyst for skills: the example of the United Kingdom]. / La mobilité internationale, catalyseur de compétences : l'exemple du Royaume-Uni.

International mobility is a real catalyst for skills development and helps to improve the quality of care and develop practices. A nursing experience abroad is an added value for the professional practice back in France: reinforcement of the feeling of personal efficiency and social links. Two French nurses' views on their experience overseas.

Why go the extra mile? A longitudinal study on sojourn goals and their impact on sojourners' adaptation.

Although international student mobility has become a ubiquitous phenomenon in many parts of the world, the goals that student sojourners pursue when moving abroad have received little systematic attention in psychological research. Likewise, their effects on psychological outcomes such as sojourners' psychological and sociocultural adaptation abroad have not yet been examined. Hence, the purpose of the present research was twofold: First, we established the parsimonious Sojourn Goals Scale and confirmed its psychometric quality and construct validity. Second, we used a longitudinal sample of student sojourners to investigate the role of sojourn goals for sojourners' sociocultural (i.e., sojourners' social relationships) and psychological (i.e., sojourn satisfaction) adaptation abroad at 3 months into the sojourn. Regression analyses revealed substantial effects of sojourn goals on measures of sociocultural adaptation. Response surface analyses served to examine the interplay of sojourn goals and respective sojourn experiences on sojourn satisfaction. We discuss implications for both psychological and applied research and identify future research needs.

Sailing Uncharted Waters: Adolescent Personality Development and Social Relationship Experiences During a Year Abroad.

How does spending a year abroad influence the personality and relationship development of adolescents? This question was studied using a prospective control group design comprising 457 sojourners (high school exchange students) and 284 control participants (German adolescents; 73.3 % female; mean age = 15.63, SD = 0.78), all of whom were assessed three times across one academic year. Sojourners demonstrated higher pre-departure levels of Extraversion and Agreeableness as well as lower levels of Neuroticism. Longitudinal results indicated a steeper increase in Openness and Agreeableness trajectories, as well as a buffered increase in Neuroticism for exchange students. As expected, sojourners' social relationships showed high fluctuation, which partially mediated sojourn effects on personality development. The role of international youth mobility for personal and social development in adolescence is discussed.

Pre-Professional International Mobility of European Pharmacy Students-A French Example.

Internationalisation, as well as the need to interact with international partners in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry, brings an international experience to the pharmacist's career, which is essential. The objective of present work is to provide a preliminary study of the current situation of the pre-professional mobility of pharmacy students. It represents the first case study of the international pre-professional mobility of pharmacy students in France, and in north-eastern France in particular. The study is based on a recent preliminary survey among pharmacy students, conducted in 2020 at the University of Lorraine's Faculty of Pharmacy, reflecting the impact of international mobility programmes, such as the European Union educational and training mobility programme Erasmus+, on the pharmacy curriculum. The results of the present work tend to show that, despite a number of barriers to the international mobility of pharmacy students, the outcomes of international pre-professional mobility are rather positive in their globality.

[The challenge of language learning in nursing education]. / L'enjeu de l'apprentissage des langues dans la formation en soins infirmiers.

For more than a century, French has lost its status as the international language of reference and the health system is no exception to this trend: English has become the official language of medical research, the number of non-English speaking patients is increasing and the desire of health students for international mobility is strong. In light of this, language learning during health studies is essential in that it enables future professionals to better understand the changes in society that have an impact on the health system.

Modeling international mobility using roaming cell phone traces during COVID-19 pandemic.

Most of the studies related to human mobility are focused on intra-country mobility. However, there are many scenarios (e.g., spreading diseases, migration) in which timely data on international commuters are vital. Mobile phones represent a unique opportunity to monitor international mobility flows in a timely manner and with proper spatial aggregation. This work proposes using roaming data generated by mobile phones to model incoming and outgoing international mobility. We use the gravity and radiation models to capture mobility flows before and during the introduction of non-pharmaceutical interventions. However, traditional models have some limitations: for instance, mobility restrictions are not explicitly captured and may play a crucial role. To overtake such limitations, we propose the COVID Gravity Model (CGM), namely an extension of the traditional gravity model that is tailored for the pandemic scenario. This proposed approach overtakes, in terms of accuracy, the traditional models by 126.9% for incoming mobility and by 63.9% when modeling outgoing mobility flows.

International mobility activities predict research output: A longitudinal study.

A 4-year data set of 274 scientists and technical staff in a Chinese university's physics department was constructed to study the impact of going on international visits (visit) and inviting international scholars (invite) on researchers' academic output. Results showed visit frequency significantly predicted output quantity and quality whereas invites significantly predicted output quantity, but not its quality. Visit/invite frequencies significantly predicted long-term output through short-term output, giving direct proof to their enduring promotion effect on innovation. Visits predicted far-future output through near-future visits whereas invites did not lead to more invites in promoting output. Age moderated the relationship between visits/invites and output. This study provided new evidence on the behavioral and psychological process of international mobility and its impact on research output.

International travel in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of German school breaks.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered severe global restrictions on international travel with the intention of limiting the spread of SARS-CoV-2 across countries. This paper studies the causal effect of the partial relaxation of these travel restrictions in Europe on the COVID-19 incidence in Germany during the summer months of 2020. It exploits the staggered start of the summer school breaks across German states as an exogenous shock to the travel opportunities of the population. While the school breaks also increased mobility within Germany, the event-study type regressions precisely control for domestic mobility and local COVID-19-related restrictions. The intention-to-treat effects of the relaxed travel restrictions show a significant and sizable increase of the COVID-19 incidence in German counties during the later weeks of the school breaks. Part of the increase can be attributed to a mandatory testing regime for travel returnees from high-incidence areas.

University without Borders.

The paper discusses the problem of master theses' production in psychology from a decolonial perspective. It presents a critique to the reproductive and monological model of knowledge currently promoted in higher education. Then, it proposes an alternative pedagogic model of research-tandem. The research-tandem is an example of an innovative way of understanding a university without borders, as developed within the international network of excellence "IBEF- Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future". Higher education must be detached from national-based curricula, and become a nomadic and collaborative across-cultural knowledge building endeavor. Current higher education aims to be national in its curricula but global in its marketability. In cultural psychology's perspective, higher education of the future shall be regarded as global in its vision yet local in its solutions. Future students must have the opportunity to build new knowledge by experiencing and sharing diversity rather than complying with standardized and monological trajectories.

From Working Tourists to Permanent Residents: Experiences of Migrant Workers with Youth Mobility Schemes in Canada.

In OECD countries, international mobility programs such as youth mobility schemes have gained popularity over the last years. In Canada, the International Mobility Program (IMP) has become the dominant mechanism for temporary migrant workers to enter into Canada, and yet, this stream has operated largely below the radar of public debate. Our article focuses on International Experience Canada (IEC), a category of the IMP allowing young people to work and travel in Canada. Based on documentary, survey and interview material with IEC participants, we investigate how the IEC regulatory framework influences the employment and immigration experiences of these young workers. We argue that, instead of being a form of privileged youth mobility, the IEC is composed of multiple regulations resulting in significant variations in conditions of admission and stay among migrant workers. This situation leads to differentiated employment conditions and uneven transitions to permanent residence.

Atmospheres of science: Experiencing scientific mobility.

This article uses notions of the atmospheric to engage with empirical material concerned with international mobility in science. It draws on recent conceptual work on atmospheres that frames them as allowing access to the affective qualities of everyday life and as 'productively nebulous': atmospheres exist between the local and the globally diffuse, the emergent and the staged, the intangible and the brutally present. Using atmospheric thinking, I devise 'apparatuses of attunement' to capture elusive aspects of life in science, as discussed in interviews with natural scientists about their experiences of international mobility. In particular I use ideas of the situation, atmospheric threads, and the staging of atmospheres to argue that scientists represent themselves as existing in between the particular and the general: they are never wholly at the mercy of the structures and expectations of globalized science, but are also never not in the grip of them. In closing I reflect on what this analysis reveals about the affective qualities of contemporary science, the forms of life being nurtured by the norms and expectations of research (policy), and the kinds of agency available to (these) scientists. The aim of the article is thus twofold: to demonstrate how concepts of atmospheres can be put to work in STS, and to contribute to research on international mobility in science and contemporary scientific careers.

International mobility of students in the medical disciplines from a comparative perspective.

Objective: We analyze the extent to which students of human, veterinary and dental medicine complete study-related stays abroad (frequency, type and duration of stays abroad and countries visited). Furthermore, we investigate the possible correlations between completed stays abroad and the duration of studies, the completion of a doctorate and entering professional life. Methods: The data come from a written cross-sectional survey of 742 graduates of their respective study programs at Bavarian universities. The evaluation was carried out using descriptive and inferential statistical methods. Results: Slightly more than half of the surveyed students completed study-associated stays abroad, with notable differences between the three study programs. The students most frequently completed internships abroad lasting an average of nine weeks. Switzerland was the most common country of destination for the stays abroad. Furthermore, there were no or only weak correlations between stays abroad, the duration of studies and progress towards a doctorate or the commencement of professional employment abroad. There were no correlations with the stress experienced as part of initial employment after graduation. Conclusion: The results clearly indicate that stays abroad are quite usual for students in the medical disciplines and are almost standard in the study of human medicine. The selection of the countries visited indicates that the primary goal of the students' stays abroad is to deepen their competence with a view to later employment in their home country.

The benefits of scientific mobility and international collaboration.

Science is international by nature. Scientific exchange and international mobility are essential for training young scientists in general, and international collaboration has been directly linked to high-quality science and innovation. In this article, we present evidence showing that international mobility has a direct and beneficial impact on scientific discovery, career development and cultural maturity, especially for students and young scientists.

Study on international cooperation mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine in process of Belt and Road / 中草药

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been the focus and highlight of the ancient Silk Road trade activities since ancient times. Since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed for the first time in China in 2013, the internationalized development of TCM has made positive progress. Based on the theory of international mobility of production factors, this paper qualitatively analyzes the "five mechanisms" of international cooperation between China and the countries along the routes in the background of the Belt and Road Initiative: The intergovernmental exchange and cooperation mechanism; cooperation mechanism of TCM inheritance and innovation; TCM service trade cooperation mechanism; TCM resources sharing cooperation mechanism; cooperation mechanism of TCM culture and humanities exchanges. A qualitative and quantitative analysis combined with partial equilibrium analysis were used to analyze the welfare effects before and after the production factors of TCM transnational movement, and make a further investigation on the difficulties and challenges faced by the current international cooperation of TCM in China, and put forward the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.

Científicos Sociales Latinoamericanos en Estados Unidos: Cooperación Académica, Movilidad Internacional y Trayectorias Interamericanas alrededor de la Fundación Ford / Latin American Social Scientists in the United States: The Ford Foundation's Role in Academic Cooperation, International Mobility, and Inter-American Trajectories / Sociologues Latino-américains aux États-Unis: Le Rôle de la Fondation Ford dans la Coopération Académique, la Mobilité Internationale et les Trajectoires Interaméricaines / Cientistas Sociais Latino-americanos nos Estados Unidos: Cooperação Acadêmica, Mobilidade Internacional e Trajetórias Interamericanas em torno da Fundação Ford

RESUMEN El objetivo principal de este artículo es examinar las redes de cooperación académica y los canales de movilidad internacional establecidos por la Fundación Ford en América Latina, los cuales actuaron como plataformas de promoción de científicos sociales de la región en Estados Unidos. El interés está puesto en comprender las interacciones y los vínculos entre varios autores latinoamericanos con algunos "diplomáticos" de esta institución filantrópica para desarrollar en ese país actividades institucionales e intelectuales. De forma específica, se estudiarán los orígenes del Programa Latinoamericano del Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, establecido en Washington en 1977 por las gestiones y mediaciones personales de Abraham F. Lowenthal. Además, y siguiendo un enfoque histórico, se hará un seguimiento temporal y espacial a la trayectoria de este autor y a sus nexos intelectuales y personales mantenidos con Fernando H. Cardoso, Albert O. Hirschman, Guillermo O'Donnell y Kalman Silvert.

RESUMO O principal objetivo deste artigo consiste em examinar as redes de cooperação acadêmica e os canais de mobilidade internacional estabelecidos pela Fundação Ford na América Latina, os quais intervieram como plataformas para a promoção, em terras estadunidenses, de cientistas sociais da região. O interesse reside em compreender as interações e vínculos de vários autores latino-americanos com alguns "diplomatas" desta instituição filantrópica, no intuito de desenvolverem atividades institucionais e intelectuais nos Estados Unidos. Especificamente, serão analisadas as origens do Programa Latino-Americano do Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, fundado em Washington no ano de 1977, em decorrência de intervenções e mediações pessoais de Abraham F. Lowenthal. Além disso, e seguindo um enfoque histórico, acompanharemos temporal e espacialmente a trajetória deste autor e os seus laços intelectuais e pessoais estabelecidos com Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Albert O. Hirschman, Guillermo O'Donnell e Kalman Silvert.

ABSTRACT This article's main objective is to examine the academic cooperation networks and international mobility channels established by the Ford Foundation in Latin America, to have served as platforms for showcasing social scientists from the region in the United States. Our interest is in understanding how the interactions and links between various Latin American authors and several "diplomats" from this charitable institution were fostered in order to develop institutional and intellectual activities in the United States. The article places a particular focus on studying the origins of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, established in Washington in 1977 by means of Abraham F. Lowenthal's personal efforts to manage and mediate. A historical focus is also employed to temporally and spatially analyze the author's career path and his intellectual and personal ties developed with Fernando H. Cardoso, Albert O. Hirschman, Guillermo O'Donnell, and Kalman Silvert.

RÉSUMÉ Le principal objectif de cet article est d'analyser les réseaux de coopération académique et de mobilité internationale établis par la Fondation Ford en Amérique Latine et qui ont servi de plate-forme de promotion de sociologues de la région aux États-Unis. Il s'agit ici de comprendre comment les interactions et les liens entre différents auteurs latino-américains et certains "diplomates" de cette institution philanthropique ont permis de développer leurs activités institutionnelles et intellectuelles aux États-Unis. Nous étudierons en particulier les origines du Programme latino-américain du Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, lancé à Washington en 1977 grâce aux actions et médiations d'Abraham F. Lowenthal. En outre, dans une perspective historique, nous analyserons la trajectoire temporelle et spatiale de cet auteur et ses liens intellectuels et personnels avec Fernando H. Cardoso, Albert O. Hirschman, Guillermo O'Donnell et Kalman Silvert.