On October 8, 2013, at 16:00 hours, Vitaliy Popov will defend his dissertation in the auditorium (Aula) of Wageningen University, Generaal Foulkesweg 1, 6703 BG Wageningen. Co-promotors of this dissertation are Dr. Harm J.A. Biemans from ECS and Prof. Andrei N. Kuznetsov from Russia. Opponents are: Prof. T. van Boekel, Prof. A. Weinberger, Prof. M. Valcke, and Prof. J.P.L.M. van Oudenhoven, who (since he had to apologize for absence) for the defence will be replaced by Dr. J.G.M. Jacobs.The topic of the dissertation is intercultural learning within higher education. He did his study mainly within Wageningen University, which is a real international university. There are over 100 nationalities, and over 30% of the students do not speak or understand the Dutch language. Teaching international students groups creates all kinds of opportunities and challenges. As a hyper-modern western university, teachers within Wageningen implement various current pedagogical methods, obviously with a strong emphasis on the content of the courses, but still with a great variety. Many faculty use interesting types of online-learning. How can the teaching and learning methods be adapted to the different characteristics of international students? For instance, when students are placed in international student groups for group assignments, what can teachers do to activate and stimulate self-regulation, participation and independent thinking of students who are culturally inclined to exactly do as teachers are saying, learn the content matter of courses by heart to be able to exactly reproduce it, or who shy away from questioning fellow-students and criticizing scientific research done by experts, let alone disagreeing with what teachers are saying. Vitaliy studied learning behaviour of interculturally mixed groups during study tasks in an e-learning environment. He scripted the study tasks, and for some students he enriched the scripts with interculturally sensitive instructions which were aimed at smoothening the intercultual virtual communication in the e-learning environment. Interested in knowing more about this study? You are most welcome at the defence. and you can request a copy of the dissertation from vitaliy.popov@wur.nl. Since Vitaliy Popov is from Russia, there is a Russian summary included in the book.
Read more about Vitaliy Popov:
http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Persons/V-Vitaliy-Popov.htm
Read more about Harm Biemans:
http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Persons/dr.-HJA-Harm-Biemans.htm
