Global Skills Opportunity — The Government of Canada’s outbound student mobility program

A York University project aims to make global exchange opportunities more accessible and welcoming for Indigenous students. With support from the Government of Canada’s Global Skills Opportunity program, the new Indigenous Student Exchange Pilot Program offers opportunities for dialogue and collaboration between Indigenous students at York and their peers located in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and the Philippines.

A collaboration among York faculties, the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and the Centre for Indigenous Student Services (CISS), the pilot program will see 15 Indigenous students at York University and partner universities abroad. They participated in a series of facilitated online workshops and explored such themes as global indigeneity; knowledge keeping and spirituality; food sovereignty; and disrupting colonial spaces.

“It’s a global classroom,” says Helen Balderma, Associate Director, International Partnerships and Programs. “It’s not just York providing content, the content comes from all participating countries. It’s about co-teaching and co-learning.”

The goal is to get more Indigenous students involved in global learning and to build a foundation for greater participation in the future. “This program will create a knowledge exchange platform that allows each student to share their unique knowledge based on the Indigenous nation which they come from, while also drawing attention to the fact that there exists a multiplicity of Indigenous perspectives and experiences,” says Breanna Berry, an Indigenous recruitment officer with CISS.

Once it is safe to travel again worldwide, the organizers plan to have the students visit each others’ universities and communities either through semester exchange or other short-term programs. The online sessions during the program provided a safe space to develop rapport and camaraderie among Indigenous students in advance, so they are comfortable and prepared for going abroad.

The workshop format brings students and faculty together every Wednesday night for 90 minutes, with lectures. “There’s one York academic lead and one from a partner institution,” says Balderma. “Then we break into groups for small group discussions, then report to the larger group.

In the fourth week of the program, students were divided into mixed groups to create projects focusing on one of the workshop topics. Their final projects were presented at the program’s Knowledge Fair in April 2021, as a way of sharing their learnings with the broader university community.

The students were excited to be part of this innovative program.

Sara Fuentes Maldonado, a Kichwa-Otavalo student from Ecuador, said “It has been a dream of mine to connect with Indigenous people around the globe. We have historical similarities, but we all have identities that make us unique. It’s important to have a network of Indigenous peoples. We’re expanding our knowledge of who we are, and this empowers us to speak up for issues that matter to us.”

York University and partners held a second edition of the International Indigenous Student Exchange in the fall term 2021 and includes new university partners from Australia.

https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/indigenous-exchange-program/.

The challenges of COVID-19 for higher education are perhaps magnified for institutions that focus on hands-on teaching and research. Such is the case with OCAD University in Toronto, the largest and most comprehensive art, design and media university in Canada. To maintain its commitment to internationalization during the pandemic shutdowns, OCADU adapted the traditional artists’ residency into an online model.

A residency is a common format for professional artists and designers to come together to explore new cultures and themes, experiment with new materials and media, and expand their practice and network. During COVID-19, with funding support from the Global Skills Opportunity pilot project, the university is connecting with new international partners to deliver online art, design and creative-writing residencies for students as an innovative model for experiential learning.

International Online Residency Experiences (IORE) are faculty-led and engage students in producing collaborative work with peers from one or multiple partner institutions over a three- to six-month period. Each residency offers a professional opportunity for participants in each global location, such as culminating public exhibitions or showcases.

“OCADU students have an international buddy or group, and they can shape the residency as a group and also individually to customize it to what they are doing,” says Jennie Suddick, manager of International Projects and Partnerships. For example, some students will end up screening their work with an international partner.

The residencies are very student-driven, with faculty and staff at each partner university acting as professional mentors to support students and set project goals together in partners or groups. Suddick is hopeful this new model will open up more future international opportunities for students who can’t go abroad for a long period of time or face other barriers to global study.

“Whatever barrier you might face, there is a place for you,” she says.

The online residencies are in partnership with Mapua University (Philippines), Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Colombia), Joshibi University of Art and Design (Japan), University of The Arts London (UK) and ENSCI – Les Ateliers, the National School of Industrial Creation (France). The majority of these, and the future IORE partnerships in development are in OCAD University’s focus regions for program development and engagement, which includes the Global South.

The virtual model will transform into for-credit distance and travel programming beginning in fall 2021. The funding support for the pilot period allows staff to fine-tune the model, establish curricular links and further develop institutional partnerships through experimentation.

Suddick says feedback from participating students will help improve the program for the future. “We can find out if this is something that should be embedded in a stand-alone class, for example. [This initial programming] is like a testing ground.”

Thompson Rivers University (TRU), on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory (first house) in Kamloops, is working to engage more Indigenous students in international study and work opportunities. A new initiative, funded by the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program, builds on TRU’s Knowledge Makers program — a collaborative teaching initiative where Indigenous students learn how to research and publish their work.

The university normally brings together up to 15 Indigenous undergraduate students from across the university each year to learn how to ‘make knowledge’ through a multi-modal approach. 2021’s special ‘volume six’ version of Knowledge Makers connects Indigenous undergraduate students from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States as they hone their research skills and explore critical issues.

Through a series of workshops in January 2021, the students learned about research methodology, creating an e-portfolio, citations, finding their voice and related topics. Along the way, support is offered one-on-one as needed. 

The university hopes these virtual connections will lead to in-person international experiences in the future.

“As soon as those relationships are built, the ability to move in those new spaces with these new people becomes much more likely,” says Sandra Bandura, TRU research associate. “It’s important that Indigenous students can go to their peers…and report on how great it was and then want to do more with these partners.”

“The great thing about Knowledge Makers is it allows Indigenous students to explore their voice as Indigenous researchers while providing support and assurance that what they are writing and researching is important for our communities,” says Roxane Letterlough, education professor.

Bandura agrees: “Indigenous students open up and find their voice and see how to use research to empower themselves.”

The new Knowledge Makers project builds on TRU’s Indigenous Cultural Education Exchange (ICEE), a three-week short-term program connecting Indigenous, Aboriginal and Maori students, faculty, staff and elders, with a focus on Indigenous knowledge and issues. ICEE is delivered through language classes, lectures, tutorials, historical sites, social and cultural practices, and community visits.

The new initiative is designed to increase Indigenous student participation in international mobility learning and experiential opportunities beyond the scope of ICEE. Project leaders hope to see this new version of Knowledge Makers create a positive ripple effect to address the harmful intergenerational legacy of residential schools in Canada.

When leaders of the student group CEED Concordia learned about an opportunity to reimagine their Uganda internship program through funding support from the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program, they jumped at the chance. The resulting project – a collaborative effort with the university’s International Relations Office called “Concordia University Virtual Internship: Bridge between Concordia students and Experiential Learning in Uganda” – addresses the challenges of COVID-19 while also strengthening the program for the future.

The student organization CEED (Community, Empowerment, Education, Development) has been hampered by the pandemic in its annual practice of sending students to Uganda for three-month placements on development projects. So it shifted efforts this year, creating new online programming that capitalizes on Africa’s new digital capacities and bolsters participation by reducing barriers to traditional physical mobility.

“Usually these students would have gone to Uganda and done placements on site,” says Andrew Lang, senior advisor in International Relations at Concordia University. “But with no one able to travel, the idea was to provide remote training via the Internet.”

The Virtual Internship project ensures Concordia University and CEED can sustain past collaboration momentum and programming opportunities for students through the Uganda relationship. It also builds CEED Concordia’s capacity for online internship delivery in the future – a benefit for students who may not be able to travel for three months.

This year’s virtual program focused on providing high school students with basic skills in information and communications technology and programming. Concordia students collaborated with university students from Uganda who work both on site and virtually. Together they created a technology training program for high school students, including workshops.

“The fact that it is done virtually opens up more opportunities for Concordia students to participate,” says Hawa Keita, executive director of CEED Concordia. “It can be part-time basis and there are no financial constraints. There’s much more flexibility for marginalized students.”

“It’s one of the few opportunities for students to take what they are learning in their classes and apply it to a real-life situation abroad and in this instance, you aren’t just collaborating, but you are dealing with a development scenario,” says Lang. “We are developing professional skills and professional cross-cultural competencies with students working in multicultural settings as they advance in their careers.”

The Virtual Internship also raises the possibility of spreading the program over a full year. “So this could mean a more sustainable impact on the communities you are trying to target,” says Keita.

“I think this is encouraging more international collaboration,” she says. “I haven’t seen many programs where university students from different countries are working together.”

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With ambitions to engage more students with education abroad activities – and a pandemic putting plans on hold for this year – St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, saw the timing was right to strengthen its risk mitigation and management efforts. The objective of a new initiative funded by the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program is to better prepare students, faculty and the institution to effectively deal with challenges that are inherent with international activities.

“If something happens while a student is abroad, it is important for an institution to have complete clarity on what needs to happen” says Larissa Strong, director of internationalization at StFX. “Knowing who needs to be informed, what resources are available, and the sequence of actions that need to be taken must be established well before a student leaves Canada.”

StFX University has engaged an external firm with expertise in this area to help it formalize its risk tolerance; improve protocols and procedures in responding effectively to crises; develop a toolbox to support prevention and management of risk; and create a training program for students, faculty and administration to build a culture of safety.

It’s about taking a step back during the pandemic to put some of these “foundational pieces” in place. Importantly, the project builds tools and resources for a more robust pre-departure and post-trip debriefing program.

“That will help ensure that students are purposefully building global competencies and can use them,” says Strong. “We are looking to increase the number of students that will participate, so getting some infrastructure in place is important.”

The university will also work to develop new international partnerships “and make sure they are solid partnerships” that can help provide more balance in incoming and outgoing exchange students.

Nipissing University is tackling the challenge of turning students’ interest in study abroad into global experiences through fresh marketing efforts. With funding support from the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program, the “A NU Take on Outbound Mobility” project aims to increase participation rates, particularly among students with disabilities, Indigenous and low-income students.

It’s all about better connecting with these students and tailoring marketing initiatives to help them see themselves in outbound mobility experiences.

“Some students make assumptions that ‘this wouldn’t be right for me,’” explains Courtney Hughes, the university’s education abroad coordinator. “So we want to speak to those students and collaborate with some other units that work with these students to identify barriers and try to better meet their needs.”

In the past, Hughes sent out surveys to students who looked at the application for an international exchange but didn’t fill it out. “This is where I started to see kind of a trend,” she says. For example, “students registered with Accessibility Services with certain needs sometimes feel these supports won’t exist elsewhere.”

Hughes says the university works with its international partners to make sure accommodations would be met and “there are no surprises for the students.” The university’s small size means it’s easy for staff to help to develop a custom plan.

That’s the kind of information they want to get out. And that’s where the ‘NU Take’ project comes in.

“What this funding has allowed us to do is to create more specialized marketing materials and have pieces in certain areas of the campus where students would be going for other supports,” such as Accessibility Services, the dean’s office, financial aid office, Office of Indigenous Initiatives or other support services.

“Sometimes a student has one person they go to and ask all of their questions to, so for me to better inform these people is good for the program overall.”

Each year – prior to the pandemic – Nipissing had between 15 and 30 students take part in outbound student mobility programs. “We want it to grow,” says Hughes.

The new marketing initiative will also help promote non-traditional destinations. The university just added two new exchanges with Norway, which Hughes describes as a “good match for our Physical Health and Education program.”

At l’Université de Moncton, offering students global experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic meant innovating to create a virtual lab for linguistic and cultural learning. The project, funded through the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program, matches Université de Moncton students enrolled in two Spanish courses with students from a Spanish-speaking partner university enrolled in a French course. Initial partners are the Universidad de Colima and the Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora (ITSON) in Mexico and the Universidad de Vigo in Spain – with which Université de Moncton has worked closely for several years.

The virtual lab allows students to communicate via Teams or Skype to practice and perfect their Spanish (French for students from the partner universities). There are also opportunities for students to collaborate on projects and learn about each other’s culture and country. Students report back to their classes on what they are learning through the virtual experience.

“This could be part of our programming going forward,” says Lucille Landry, responsable, Service aux étudiantes et étudiants internationaux et à la mobilité étudiante. “These students are integrating, so I’m wondering if that will have an impact on students wanting to go abroad later. It’s a risk-free way to try out an international learning experience. And it is part of their course work; they will get a grade.”

The funding from Global Skills Opportunity allowed the university to hire a staff person to help develop and operate the virtual lab.

As a small institution with a student population of just over 4,000, the university would normally see about 50 students take part in a global study opportunity each year. For some students coming from other parts of New Brunswick, going to university takes them to Moncton for the first time.

“So, this is a gentle way to introduce the idea of international exchange,” says Landry. “If there is a second part of this project, we might organize a short-term program with those students to go to see the partner institutions.”

For now, 25 Université de Moncton students are taking part in the virtual lab, with 40 from the partner institutions. Part of the success of the initiative, says Landry, is the enthusiasm and support from the university’s faculty liaison person, and choosing universities that were already partners.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Thomas University in Fredericton is reimagining how it prepares students for global studies and supports them upon their return. A new initiative, funded through the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program, aims to ensure students get the most from their international experience through updated pre-departure and re-entry protocols, and education.

Changes are being made with the needs of underrepresented students in mind. The goal is to encourage learners facing barriers to international mobility – including those with physical and learning disabilities, LGBTQ+, Indigenous and low-income students – to participate in these offerings.

The project will also update the university’s risk management policies and create new avenues for international experiences for credit.

“We did a survey and had a good response rate,” explains Carrie Monteith-Levesque, international student coordinator at St. Thomas. “Students told us about barriers they experience and indicated they would be most comfortable with short-term and faculty-led trips.”

With this new funding, “we want to make sure that everything we are doing is accessible and equitable,” she says. “A lot of it is just being really clear about the types of opportunities and partnerships we are creating and making sure students have a good assessment of where they are going before they go.”

Being well prepared helps ensure rewarding experiences. “Students need to know about some of the challenges they might experience. We’re making sure faculty, staff and students have the tools to be able to identify what their specific needs might be and what might arise.” New protocols will ensure safety and security needs with partners are in place if students have accessibility needs, she says.

St. Thomas, with a student population of 1,800, has a robust exchange program with 19 partner schools in 15 countries. “It has grown in response to where students have interests,” says Monteith-Levesque.

“When I started in this role five years ago maybe four students would go on international exchange and we have around 12 each year now.”

Increasing outbound student mobility will help improve the balance with incoming students. St. Thomas currently has students from 42 countries, with international students constituting about 11 per cent of the student body.

“We so value international students on campus and what they bring so it’s equally important for domestic students to be able to have that international experience themselves, to complement what they are leaning in the classroom.”

As part of new efforts to encourage more students to take part in an international exchange, with a special emphasis on Indigenous and newcomer students, the University of Winnipeg has launched an intercultural mentoring program.

Students were invited to submit a video on why they want to have a study abroad experience. Three winners from diverse backgrounds have been selected to be the university’s intercultural mentors for the year.

“We will be tracking what they do as they look ahead to their trip,” says Ashley Dunlop, director of admissions, recruitment and international, immigrant and refugee student services. “They will do short video diary entries for our website. Later we’ll build a professional video from these to promote exchanges to the next group of students,” she says. “It could help other students to follow along and think about doing this themselves.”

The mentor program is part of a new initiative, My Intercultural Journey, supported by the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program. This funding allowed a team member to take the Intercultural Development Inventory training to be able to help students reflect on their international experience. This person will lead the assessment of students for intercultural competency before and after their outbound mobility experience. The goal is to help students develop and enhance the intercultural skills that are essential in today’s workplace, and to acquire tools to reflect on their experience.

The university also conducted surveys and focus groups with more than 200 participants to collect underrepresented students’ thoughts on current UWinnipeg exchange offerings. Information gathered will provide data and insights to measure the effectiveness of the university’s outbound mobility programs and make improvements where necessary, in particular to meet the needs of target groups.

“We want to inspire all of our students to see the value of student intercultural exchange and learning,” says Dunlop.

The project reflects the priority the University of Winnipeg places on cultural awareness, especially around Indigenization and internationalization. “Our campus community is changing; the City of Winnipeg is changing,” says Dunlop. “Making students more aware of what is going on in the world around them has always been a priority and this helps with that goal.

“Do our offerings make sense?” she says of questions to be answered through the initiative. “A lot of our Indigenous students, they are already doing an intercultural exchange. They come from the North. They go home in summer to see their families. This will help us make the program more accessible to them and others.”

Dunlop says she’s grateful the Global Skills Opportunity program “was designed in a way that was very flexible for institutions to create a project that fits with their own needs. The parameters were broad. There are such variances in university capacity for international learning. I like that we were able to work on the needs for these specific students.”

The Université de Montréal is conducting research to better understand and remove barriers to outbound student mobility facing students in specific target groups, including Indigenous students and those with physical or learning disabilities.

Through a new initiative funded by the Global Skills Opportunity pilot program, the university held focus groups and conducted a literature review to gain greater insights around obstacles to student mobility.

“There is extensive literature on inclusive mobility and there are indicators of some good practices around the world,” says International Affairs Advisor Simon Hobeila. “So the first step is to see what hurdles and good practices are in the literature and then let’s conduct some focus groups with students to hear their thoughts and ideas.”

The international team is also developing an inventory of international partners offering services and accommodations required by students with disabilities.

“We’re going to try to find universities that provide the same level of services that we do,” says Hobeila.

The call for participation in focus groups had a big response from students who have had an international study experience and those who would like to in the future.

“These insights will let us tweak things to provide the best support and opportunities possible for these students. It allows us to take a step back and look at how students with special needs navigate the system. Coming out of it we hope to have better linkages between our services at the university and between us and our partners abroad.

The university is also crunching the numbers, cross-referencing its equity diversity and inclusion data with mobility data. “We’ll have hard data about students with a disability, Indigenous and visible minority students, and a gender-based analysis to determine how many of these students take part in the university’s mobility programs each year,” says Hobeila.

“We know the inequities present in society are also present in our mobility programs. But we don’t want the institution to be a hurdle. We want the university help overcome barriers.”

The innovation grant is helping make that happen. “This funding allows us to go over our processes and try to improve things. This is something we just couldn’t have done without this funding.”

COVID-19 hasn’t stopped the University of Calgary from getting students to think globally. The university’s new Global Community Challenge YYC (GCC) program embraces the mantra of ‘act locally, think globally’ by asking students to address global issues while having a tangible impact at home.

The new program, funded through the Global Skills Opportunity, is an eight-week competition in which students work virtually in cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary teams. In collaboration with students in other countries, they develop solutions to real-world issues faced by local organizations in Calgary that have global connections.

“This program enables our students to tackle real problems creatively, innovatively, and also to bring some entrepreneurial thinking and experience to come up with solutions,” says Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura, the university’s vice-provost and associate vice-president research (international).

The funding is being used to hire an intern to support this year’s competition, help develop new community partnerships, and establish resources and processes that will allow the GCC to continue as an annual signature event even after the pandemic is over. The funds also supported the creation of promotional content aimed at recruiting groups traditionally underrepresented in international learning experiences, including Indigenous students and students with disabilities.

The program springs from the university’s Global Engagement plan 2020-2025, which aims to increase the intercultural capacity of the campus community. Providing opportunities for global learning at home is a key aspect of the plan as a way of taking down barriers to global learning experiences. The University of Calgary wants to ensure half of all students graduate with an international learning experience – be it from abroad or from home.

The university launched the Global Community Challenge YYC in October 2020, with students working in digital teams to help local organizations while learning about the impact their actions can have both in Calgary and the global community. Aided by an expert mentor, each group worked on a challenge presented by a community organization.

Colleen Packer, director of International Learning Programs, says the program reflects the need for a “quality experience to provide the students something that allowed them to develop their intercultural capacity, allowed them to connect with students from around the world and something that was meaningful.”

Buy-in was immediate. Within a week of launch of the Fall pilot, more than 500 students applied for 52 available spots in the program, and a second competition in Winter added seats to accommodate the strong interest. The numbers illustrate the reach of the new initiative: In Winter 2021, 136 students from 23 universities in 13 countries worked to solve 24 challenges set by 17 community organizations.

The inaugural competition’s winning team of students – from Canada, France, Mexico, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – tackled a challenge from the Calgary Bridge Foundation for Youth. Their work was overseen by a researcher with the Cumming School of Medicine.

The University of Waterloo began thinking about this pivotal project in 2018. At that time, members of the Global Learning team, responsible for student exchange, met with students registered with the university’s AccessAbility Services (AAS) office. The initial ask of the students was to identify accessibility barriers within the exchange application process, but the students provided much more than that; They shared rich feedback about barriers to even considering an exchange opportunity. Students voiced a reluctance to considering exchange opportunities, citing concerns related to physical accessibility, maintaining necessary medical relationships, receiving academic accommodations, and fear of what might happen during a mental health crisis overseas.

Waterloo’s AAS and Global Learning teams knew that there was a fit with Global Skills Opportunity. They saw a chance to work together on a project that included students with disabilities to further identify and address barriers to global study opportunities.

“We heard a lot about the barriers they expected to encounter as a result of their disability,” says Jennifer Gillies, associate director of AccessAbility Services. “Students expressed concerns about whether their disability would be recognized and accommodated at the host school, where they would refill their prescriptions, and what would happen to them if they experienced a health crisis. These were real barriers, but we felt some could be mitigated by providing students with more targeted information and support.”

“With this grant [from Global Skills Opportunity] came an opportunity to take a deeper look at these barriers and see which ones we can help address and how we can help students make an informed choice.”

The project includes a student survey, focus groups, and the creation of paid engagement teams of students with disabilities to provide input to and test all project outcomes.

“While not a formal research project, commitment to a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology has been critical to this project’s success. We take the ‘nothing about us without us’ model as critical to ensure that we’re designing resources and supports that are reflective of and meet student needs,” says Sacha Geer, manager of International Mobility and Intercultural Learning. “That means including students as much as possible at every step and paying students fairly for their contributions using project funds.”

The first step was to validate the initial findings. This included input from about 1,000 survey responses and through numerous focus groups with students with disabilities, all with various levels of travel experiences.  The focus groups also served to confirm the ultimate project deliverables, in line with PAR methodology.

Deliverables include a toolkit to help students make informed decisions about what destinations would work best for them. The online toolkit will include tips and strategies, based on information from other students with disabilities. It will include information on how to select and plan for an academic exchange destination that meets their needs, related to their disability.

Waterloo’s AccessAbility Services will offer purpose-built appointments to help students make their destination decision and support them in exploring academic and housing accommodations while on exchange.

“We’re also working with our exchange partners to learn more about how they support and accommodate students with disabilities at their host schools and more broadly in the region or country. This information will be shared with students to help them make their choice,” says Geer. The project team is collaborating with Waterloo’s Safety Abroad office and communications specialists to ensure this information is presented in ways that are accessible for all students.