Goals and preparations

You have finished your case study research and prepared for your presentation. Now it's time to take the final step of the digital course. In this step, you will set some goals for the exchange week: team goals related to your case study, and personal goals related to your intercultural compentency and collaboration. After some final preparations, you're all done and set for the week! 

This step will take you about 1 hour. You can find the general planning of the course here.

In the past few months, you have gained knowledge about autonomy, autonomy-support and inclusiveness in the Dutch educational system by following the steps in the digital course. You ended your case study by formulating questions you still have regarding this topic (Step 4: synthesis). You also formulated at least one question you want to ask a staff member, student or teacher in training at the Montessori school we will visit during the exchange week (Step 5: Montessori context). 

As a team, you will now translate these questions into at least two team goals to work on during the exchange week: 

• Make sure to formulate these goals as something that you, as a team, want to learn, achieve, or develop and not just as tasks to complete.

• Formulate your goals in such a way that you can determine if you have achieved them by the end of the exchange week.

• To set your goals, it may also be useful to take a look at the general learning outcomes of the course (what do you still need to achieve these outcomes?) and the exchange week schedule.

• Make sure to inform us on your team goals no later than January 5 by posting them in your team folder or sending them directly to the coordinator of the programme, Esmée Bruggink.

Then, take a (further) look at the schedule of the exchange week: 

• Discuss with your team members which learning activities you think will be relevant to the goals you set together, and what you hope to learn from them. 

• For the exchange week, we prepared six workshops that are scheduled in pairs: each time, students select one to attend. When discussing relevant learning activities, take this into account and decide which workshops would suit you best. You do not have to select the workshops as a team: different team members can attend different workshops. It can even be benificial for your team to split up when both of the paired workshops pertain to your case study and/or goals. 

• Below, you find instructions on how to register for the workshops. 

At the end of the exchange week, you will work on a reflection assignment concerning the goals you set here. 

As part of the steps Collaboration (1) and (2), you have reflected on working in an international environment. You identified several intercultural competencies that benefit international collaboration and set one or two personal goals to develop these competencies. Also, insights gained from the physical meeting at your respective universities have been applied to further improve your team’s (intercultural) collaboration.  

With this assignment you will individually reflect on your personal goals and how your actions contributed to your team’s collaboration:

• Did your personal goal-related actions have the effect you intended? Why or why not? 

• Did you achieve your personal goal(s)? Explain your answer. 

• What (intercultural) competencies (attitudes, knowledge and-or skills) do you need to further develop to enhance your collaboration with your team during the exchange week?

• Which behaviors are relevant to the above mentioned (intercultural) competencies? 

Use the answers to formulate one or two personal goals for the exchange week regarding your (intercultural) compentency and collaboration with your teammates. 

• If still relevant to you and to the activities planned in the exchange week, these could be the same goals you set before. If not, try to adjust the goals and/or formulate new ones. 

• Describe not only what you want to learn, achieve, or develop, but also mention concrete behaviours that are consistent with your goal. 

• If you want to, you can share the personal goal(s) you set for yourself regarding your (intercultural) competencies with your team members. You do not have to inform us.