Objectives

This project aims to assist foreign students in their preparation for their studies in international classrooms of Dutch Higher Education in an online initiative by offering them:

• remedial programmes on learning content
• a familiarisation programme with Dutch educational culture and
• a social programme in online cooperation with their Dutch peers as a possible start of their own social network
 
Problems addressed by the acculturation project

• Foreign students in international classrooms in the Netherlands underperform as a result of their lack of familiarity with the educational culture in Dutch HE.
• Many students educational background does not correspond with the HE programme they have opted for.
• Remedial programmes are offered late and students’ progress is impeded.
• On site preparation programmes are often only done partially or by a small number of students

Our strategy

Step 1: Gathering information and relevant  learning content in English as a foreign language, Mathematics and Economics.  Next, we aim to describe these and make them accessible through an online repository.
Step 2: Developing an online acculturation process with e-coaches, buddies, mentor students and tutors who form a social framework supporting the remedial learning in the respective content area. This is done in the form of pilots carried out by the participating institutions.
Step 3: Making content, descriptions of process and best practices accessible in an online repository.

The outcomes of the project will be

• materials for acculturation processes addressing pedagogy, familisarisation with Dutch educational and national culture and establishing an online network of fellow students. These materials will both be newly generated in the pilots undertaken and reworked existing content.
• learning content with newly generated and existing materials aiming to remedy the students’ lack of content knowledge required for a successful start in the international classroom in the respective field of study.
• conditions for use by third parties

All content will be made accessible to all Dutch educational institutions of HE. It will be protected by Creative Commons copyrights guaranteeing the identification of the materials.

The team of Projectmanagers



From left to right: Bas Giesbers - Marleen van der Laan - Peter Bijleveld - Alessandra Corda - Ria Jacobi - Peter Dekker

Read more in the NAP-Acculturation projectplan.pdf