Journal Name:
- Journal of Technology and Science Education
Abstract (2. Language):
Globalization is a trend that covers all society perspectives in general, and higher education in particular. The
main traditional objective of higher education institutions has been to prepare domestic students with a given
set of skills. Research competition and University’s rankings, as well as the need to reach other publics, pushed
them towards internationalization. The exchange of students across the EU is a well-known reality which
success is largely due to cultural similarities. However, a set of issues raises in importance when students from
different cultures are involved. ISEP proposed a Summer Course aiming both to increase its level of
internationalization and to verify how the institution is able to host foreign students. Therefore was organized,
in July 2014, ISEP’s first Engineering for Sustainable Development Summer Course, with a layout specifically
designed to address those questions. In our study, and in order to gain from an intensive and multicultural
experience, the class included equal number of Korean and Portuguese students to develop work under the
framework of sustainability, a theme chosen in order to foster consensus. This work reports some results from
this experience, which included a Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach, and points out new directions: PBL
revealed to be a promoting integration way; the inclusion of multiple cultures allowed the analysis of different
perspectives which otherwise would not have been succeed; institutional academic/social services need to be
adapted in order to receive non-Portuguese speaking students; there is a need for further adequate
accommodation able to receive a larger number of international students.
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