Last month, Seb Cadinot from Global and Lifelong Learning team was invited to the University of Lille to deliver specialist staff training across three distinct areas, strengthening the ongoing partnership between the two institutions.
Global Engagement and Student Opportunities
A key part of the visit to Lille focused on Kent’s strategy for Internationalisation at Home with its Global Opportunities Framework. Seb shared insights into how Kent develops a global culture on campus, providing opportunities for all students, not just those who travel abroad for study.
He highlighted the success of Kent’s Global Officer Leadership Development (GOLD) programme, a framework that has benefited students and the wider university community for eight years. The discussion also covered current sector-wide changes, including the growing appeal of short-term mobility programmes and the impact of Brexit on student movement, and provided an overview of current best practice from the recent Innovations in Internationalisation at Home conference.
“Thank you very much for this training. I especially enjoyed the Internationalisation at Home session. I was also interested in learning about the role of Global Officers and this is something that we should definitely think about in the future.” [Lucile Roberts, University of Lille]
Innovations in Language Teaching
The second training session provided an overview of language learning in the UK, from sixth form to university level. Detailing the extensive provision at Kent, including its institution-wide language programmes, the popular Language Express classes, which offers free language courses to all staff and students, Seb then provided an overview of Kent’s English language support for international students and Pre-sessional courses, with a focus on syllabus and materials design.
Delving into pedagogy, current trends in English language teaching methodology were presented, as promoted by leading bodies such as the British Council and Cambridge English and iatefl while also reviewing previously-popular methods and why they have fallen out of favour. Seb embraced the personal challenge of delivering this entire session in French – the first time he’d presented in French for two decades.
Fostering Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
The main focus of the visit was a full-day workshop on Cultural Intelligence, or CQ. Seb, a certified facilitator with the CQ Centre, was specifically invited to lead this session. CQ is defined as the ability to work and communicate effectively across different cultural contexts.
The training provided colleagues at Lille with a framework for understanding and improving their own CQ. There are four key capabilities of CQ:
- Drive: The motivation to learn about and engage with other cultures.
- Knowledge: Understanding cultural similarities and differences.
- Strategy: The ability to plan for and make sense of multicultural interactions.
- Action: Adapting behaviour to suit different cultural settings.
The session was designed to help staff not only enhance their personal skills but also to consider how they could incorporate CQ principles into their own teaching and training.
The visit also provided an opportunity to meet with Lille colleagues who oversee their annual summer staff mobility programme, which sees a group of staff from Lille visit the Canterbury campus for professional development.
If you’d like to find out more about our Global Opportunities Framework, CQ training, the GOLD programme, the Innovations in Internationalisation at Home conference, our English language support for international students or our Pre-sessional courses please contact globalopportunities@kent.ac.uk. For more information on Language Express please contact The Language Centre. Global and Lifelong Learning are also promoting CQ Training externally and will be running this in the autumn.