Building a Global Graduate Experience, Skills and Knowledge – Understanding the Viewpoints of Kazakhstan and UK Students

Kazakhstan / United Kingdom

Project Overview

In today’s global market competition, employers are looking for the graduates with not only subject-specific skills and a good degree qualification, but also the ability to effectively work across various countries and with people from different cultural backgrounds. Such graduates are considered promising in driving the business strategies and growth in a global scale. Both Narxoz University and Coventry University places a heavy emphasis on providing our students all the exciting opportunities to gain cross-cultural and global perspectives, hence make them more employable. In this Online International Learning (OIL) project the students will be involved in the online collaborative information exchange and knowledge building on understanding which experiences, skills and knowledge are highly desirable in the global job market. The perspectives and career prospects from Kazakhstan (Narxoz University) and UK (Coventry University) students will be explored through online interaction during 8 days. This way, they will be able to understand different cultural contexts and viewpoints in relation to becoming a global graduate. They will also develop the respect for the students with various cultural and career orientations and perspectives.

The project partners at Narxoz University are Indira Kadyrkhanova and Yekaterina Kalugina.

OIL Outcomes

By the end of this project the students should be able to:
– Understand what the global graduate means for them and for their national and international peers in Kazakhstan and UK;
– Widen their perspectives on the experience, skills and knowledge required for a global graduate;
– Improve the understanding on the professional development activities laying path towards becoming a global graduate, and see alternative approaches of it from the students with different cultural background and career orientations;
– Be able to better plan personal options for gaining the experience, skills and knowledge of a global graduate.

OIL Activities

THE FIRST PHASE of the Project for Different Participation Options:

Option 1
– The participating student will participate in the Live Workshop (27/02/2017)
– Prepare 5 minutes team presentation with few other CPD students
– present with the team as directed by CPD staff.
The presentation should cover: what global graduate means for the team participants and what experience, knowledge and skills they need to develop during a study period to become a global graduate.
The team presentation will be video recorded and is planned to be uploaded to Facebook closed group for this project by March 1nd.

Option 2 – Until 1st March 2017 a student need to post 200 to 250 words in this project closed Facebook group on the same topic. The student can write about herself/himself or in general about a student.

THE SECOND PHASE
Each participating student will need to take some time to view the uploaded to Facebook group video presentations and posts by other students to widen knowledge in this OIL project topic. Then the student will need to leave comments on at least 2 presentations (minimum of 50 words on each) of overseas partner university students and minimum of 50 words comment also on 1 post of 1 student from the overseas partner university (Coventry for Narxoz and Narxoz for Coventry).

THE THIRD PHASE
Before Monday March 7, 2017 – By this deadline, students email the completed reflection form which must be 250-300 words on: what the student has learned from this project, what skills the student developed and how these will help the student in future career.