ERASMUS POLICY STATEMENT:

Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University (ALKU) was established as a public university in 2015 in Antalya, Turkey. Although it is a young university, ALKU highly attaches importance to teaching, research, international outlook and its collaboration with industries. It mainly aims to provide a qualified higher education in an international learning environment. It has a strong commitment to the student experience, broadening international perspectives and cultural inclusion, and its internationalisation strategy reflects this vision. As the first and the main purpose is internationalization of the university, language learning is at the heart of the all strategic plans to create a European education area. In order to realize this plan, an English Preparatory School was established in 2018. Additionally, German, Russian and Arabic languages are taught throughout several programs. Students also have many academic options like double major or minor degrees, summer schools, and transfers to other higher education institutions in Turkey.

The university wishes to develop and sustain successful, high quality partnerships with higher education providers and other organisations, both within and beyond the European Union. It wishes to broaden mutual understanding and provide students with a high quality learning experience enhancing employability. This university is particularly interested in issues related to employability. With high unemployment rates amongst young people across the EU, and significant debts amongst new graduates, the need to relate education to employment has never been stronger. We can obviously state that ‘ERASMUS for ALL’ is at the core of our European strategy. The university has a particular expertise and interest in the public sector, which it wishes to understand in a pan-European context. It has also invested heavily in the creative arts and in particular its relationship with the economy and job creation linked to ‘creative’ enterprise and SMEs. In addition to transnational academic and professional development we also wish to strengthen and share best practice in the administrative and support areas. We seek partners with similar core values, in particular a focus on strong and supportive learning and teaching; we have a broad academic offering, also including training for education, health, engineering and other professionals. Depending on its location, the university has strong links to tourism industry, which it wishes to significantly deepen. With its ten faculties (Business, Engineering, Medicine, Education, Tourism, Sport Sciences, Health Sciences, Dentistry, Art-Design-Architecture, Aeronautics and Astronautics), three graduate schools (Sciences, Social Sciences, Health Sciences) and five vocational schools, the university offers variety of associate degree, undergraduate and graduate programs. With approximately 15,000 students, the university pays attention not only to the quantity but also the quality of the students.

Turkey, as a regional power, is attractive for the students of the Balkans, Caucasia, Middle East regions and Africa. This is one of the reasons why every year students from these countries are in tendency to increase especially in degree mobility so, ALKU aims to give an equal chance with its local students to those international students in terms of being exposed to the common values which are shared by EU Member States and experiencing European academic and social life. Accordingly, Erasmus Programmes have a key role for ALKU to be a bridge among cultures. Our recent partners include universities in Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovakia. These links often arise from personal contacts; we are seeking to deepen these relationships to encompass more staff exchanges, and perhaps shared research projects. We believe deeper engagement will lead to greater familiarity, more staff and student exchanges, placement opportunities, and an improved student experience. The university is largely interested in undergraduate exchange and also short study cycles which we believe can be very beneficial.

To achieve these aims we will:

• Encourage incoming and outgoing mobility of both students and staff
• Provide full support for both streams of students, enhancing our language provision and cultural awareness programmes
• Seek deeper and more effective relationships with a core of existing and new partner institutions and organisations via projects and exchanges
• Encourage participation from all members of the university community with an emphasis on those undergraduate and postgraduate students from a widening participation background, a key constituency of our student body.
• Support staff participation, particularly from relatively recent entrants to the sector, enabling them to gain a broader perspective, experience other higher education systems and contribute to curriculum development which enriches the student experience.

Increasing staff and student participation in European exchanges is clearly identified in the University’s international strategy, so full consideration has been given to the support and recognition of such participation. The University positively promotes these activities to both staff and students at enrolment and induction. Teaching and training opportunities are fully promoted and publicised via the internal website and at dissemination events for staff from across the university, ensuring all are aware that such opportunities are available. We expect the following impacts:

1. To improve our students’ awareness of cultural differences and the impact of globalisation
2. To provide opportunities for students to gain additional skills through study, training or work abroad
3. To broaden our understanding of international curricula and seek to learn from the content and teaching and learning of partners
4. To strengthen our knowledge and understanding of the ‘knowledge triangle’, linking education,
research and business through our partnerships.

Through Erasmus Programmes, our students are encouraged to experience higher education and learning opportunities in other countries. At ALKU they can also strongly benefit from the presence of overseas students in their classroom, bringing different perspectives and experiences to the learning process. Both experiences allow them to draw on a broader knowledge base, widen their perspective, and inevitably this makes them more employable. There is very strong evidence to suggest that exchanges have a deep and lasting effect on attitudes, encouraging students to reflect on their own culture, and frequently leading to a long lasting engagement with their host country. Central to the University’s learning strategy is encouraging the capacity to innovate, initiate and respond to change, and the challenge and benefits of study abroad addresses all three very effectively.

We target to improve the awareness and the knowledge of our academic staff via Erasmus. In-coming students also challenge academic staffs’ traditional approach to content and delivery in programmes, leading to courses which reflect a more global environment and embrace a greater range of learning styles. Visits abroad for staff further improve their global awareness, and can lead to joint research of a subject or pedagogical nature. Sharing approaches to employability with partner institutions would be particular interest. In areas such as education and health, exposure to the work place will also naturally provide the opportunity for comparative studies and reflections on professional practice.

One of the most crucial Erasmus strategies of the university is digitalisation. The pandemic occurred in 2020 has emerged some new challenges in education as well as other sectors. In order to integrate into this new digital age, taking some precautions has become urgency and the importance of digital education has increased due to school closures in response to the pandemic. The university has started a distance education with online courses during the spring term of 2020. All the academic and administrative departments began to adapt themselves to a new system, so did Erasmus Office. The office was already aware of digitalisation in Erasmus after ‘Erasmus Without Paper Project’. All the documents have been scanned and transferred to digital databases. Cloud technologies have been used to store the documents and to share them with their addressees. Required preparations have been made to use Online Learning Agreements, Erasmus App and Erasmus Student Cards. The university is planning to use these digital tools after 2020 to ensure that both the institution and Erasmus+ students can benefit from those increased efficiency in administrative processes.

All these strategies and projects are the outcome of needs analysis, strategic partnerships, geographical and subject area priorities, informed decisions, and pro-active attitudes of ALKU management and its faculty staff. Our institutional capacity has been proven by the positive and sustainable impact on all entities involved, by successful implementation of the outcomes, and exploitation of results. These strategies encourage peer learning, modernisation and balanced development in the future. This will strengthen international, intellectual, scientific, technological and cultural relations of Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University.