International Week 2021: Karin Van Ael

What was the topic of your lecture? Why did you choose it?

The topic was ‘Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in Nutrition Health Promotion’. I chose this topic because I developed it together with your colleague Kaija Nissinen and because it is an innovative educational form that makes internationalisation@home possible.

What is best in international cooperation and teaching exchanges?

COIL is an interesting form of international cooperation as it can lower the threshold for students while giving them an international experience. They learn to cooperate with other cultures. Some years ago, during the previous Erasmus programme, I developed and supervised an Intensive Programme: I found this a very interesting form of teacher and student exchange.

What would you like to say about the cooperation with SeAMK?

I got to know SeAMK in 2017 and we have a very good working relationship.  Student mobility for internships is less possible as the competences of our Nutrition and Dietetics students do not match with the competences of the SeAMK students as it is a different course. Students at SeAMK do have the healthy eating and health education part of their programme and this corresponds to what we teach our students. In that respect, there is a cooperation in the field of teaching.

Karin Van Ael