Germany, the Netherlands
June 17 – June 27, 2018 and July 1 – July 11, 2018
In Summer 2018, INTAMT Academy organized and conducted a multilevel professional development tour for two delegations from a prestigious L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University (Astana, Kazakhstan). The delegations included members of University’s senior management staff, faculty deans and leading researchers. The professional development tour was focused on digitalization of higher education, i.e. implementation of digital technologies at leading German and Dutch higher educational institutions.
Most Universities over the world have been facing the same challenges: funding shortages, increasing number of students, increased demands of the information society among other things. Organization of teaching and learning processes at universities requires significant changes to ensure efficient education even under those conditions. One of the solutions to address these challenges is to advance digital-educational offerings and digital governance. The model of knowledge transfer is evolving facing gradual transformation of all the educational institutions into a uniform virtual learning environment. During the professional development tour two Kazakh delegations got to know how digitalization process in the European educational area works and what this term implies visiting best Universities in the world and participating in a series of webinars organized by the INTAMT Academy after face-to-face seminars.
To familiarize Kazakh groups with international best practices in educational digitalization only the universities ranked in the top 200 internationally according to the QS World University Rankings were selected for the professional development event. After face-to-face seminars at the best Dutch Universities in Utrecht, Twente and Maastricht tour participants had a chance to attend webinars of leading German Universities. University professors of the Technical University of Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Göttingen, Dresden University of Technology, Technical University of Berlin, as well as representatives of Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Donors’ association for the promotion of humanities and sciences in Germany) and of an agency of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research introduced tour participants to development of digitalization in German higher education as well as to current trends and innovations in this field.
The Kazakh experts feel encouraged to put the information acquired during the professional development tour into practice implementing digital technologies at L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University and enhancing its reputation as one of the best Asian Universities.