Category Archives: International Education

Summertime for new thinking

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Dr Sarah Williamson is Executive Director of King’s Summer Programmes.

Sarah Williamson

What a time we have all experienced in the past 18 months. The extent to which Covid-19 has changed our personal and professional lives is nothing short of a revelation.

Daily activities, including a wider range of jobs that anyone would have initially thought possible, have all been taking place online. We have gone from being rooted in our homes via national lockdowns to leaping into new ways of living via our electronic devices. Now, as we begin our second year of online summer teaching we are taking a moment to reflect on how far the world has come despite being forced to stand still geographically.

When Covid-19 began to affect our lives, we decided very early on that we would not let it curtail our summer learning programmes and summoned up all our ideas and energy to launch the King’s Summer Online programmes. The Summer team worked tirelessly to find the best ways to connect with you all via virtual means last year and this year they have taken those good beginnings and enhanced each aspect further. Digital inequalities have become a pronounced strand to our often uneven world and here at King’s Summer it has become an important consideration for our thinking and research plans. But as our lives have progressed, we have all experienced first hand some of the incredible value and ability that moving in an online education sphere enables and it is now clear that our future educational experiences will be all the better for seizing the opportunity to make use of the best of e-learning alongside the best of face-to-face learning. Why choose, when we can work a bit harder and have the best of both worlds?

Of course we all wish that we could come together in this great city of London – the original think space! – and share its dynamism and beauty in real life, but we are certain that though our connection this year may be digital, there is nothing virtual about the very real experience you will have with King’s this summer. And as soon as we all can, we want to welcome you in person to campus. #summerisreallife #summeristheonlyseason

Successful first winter school

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Michael Salmon is Associate Director – Curriculum Renewal for Summer Programmes at King’s College London.

King’s Pre-University Summer School is one of the most popular international programmes of its kind, giving students from around the world in the last two years of high school the opportunity to experience King’s teaching in the subject area of their choice. But how about for those students still exploring their options, looking for a broader introduction to university study at an earlier point in their journey? 

Mindful of this growing global need among young people for enhanced decision-making opportunities, in February 2021 King’s Summer Programmes launched the Pre-University Winter School. This innovative one-week study programme allowed students from 20 countries to sample a range of subject areas under the guidance of talented King’s academics, all from the comfort of their own homes. 

A screenshot of an online seminar

In addition to highly engaging lectures and seminars, participants also connected with current King’s students and worked independently on a project. Feedback received so far has been excellent, with an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 and every student agreeing that they would recommend the course to others. Gongning from China, who studied on the Law, Politics & Social Science pathway, summed the experience up as follows:

“I was inspired by the tutors’ passion for teaching and respect for everybody’s perspective. I really felt listened to in every class discussion.”  

Paula from Spain, who followed the Health & Science course, also praised the dynamic teaching and the quality of the course content, adding that the course has reinforced her enthusiasm for ‘delving deeper into university-level material’. This positive feedback was very heartening, as challenging and stimulating learning experiences in a respectful, supportive atmosphere are what we hope characterise our pre-university courses. 

For the academic staff involved, connecting with talented pre-university students can be a hugely enriching experience: 

“I was truly impressed with the knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and depth of understanding shown by the students. Their comments were so perceptive. I wish them every success in the future!” Dr Diana Popescu, Political Economy.

Summer Programmes will now be able to build on the achievements of the students and all professional services and academic colleagues involved, continuing to pioneer world-class pre-university learning opportunities to a wide market. 

The impact of summer

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Hannah Bond is Associate Director – Learning and Teaching for Summer Programmes at King’s College London. Michael Salmon is Associate Director – Curriculum Renewal.

The impact of a King’s Summer education can often stay with our students long after the season ends. King’s summer programmes are immersive educational experiences, a moment to connect with students from an enormously wide range of countries around the world, experience cultural exchanges, and learn new skills for life, work and study. It’s a chance to study a topic in greater depth or learn about a new subject for the first time, or take a step towards further studies at a more advanced level. In many cases, as with Aditi Sangal who joined us for a summer course more than half a decade ago, it can be the launching pad for a high-profile career. 

A photo of Aditi Sangal

Of her time studying International Relations with King’s in her home country of India as well as Journalism on a scholarship to London in 2014, Aditi recalls how the experience opened up the world for the first time:

“I learned what makes a good story, how to cover international stories and observed what I could learn from journalists like Christiane Amanpour. I acquainted myself with journalism vocabulary – lede, nut graph, angle, sourcing and such. But more importantly, the course introduced me to the essential rules of news-gathering and reporting for the first time, such as being off the record, reporting on death, and reliable versus unreliable sources.”

Fast forward seven years, and Aditi is now an Associate Producer for CNN, based in New York, where she has covered US news stories like presidential elections, President Trump’s impeachment, natural disasters and mass shootings, as well as global events including the coronavirus outbreak.  

“It’s quite surprising to think back and realise the point at which I began my education in journalism, but it’s comforting to know that the King’s summer programme had me covered. It opened my eyes to what I needed to learn before I could consider myself a strong candidate for any journalism job. I went on to study at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where I further built on the basics I learned at King’s.”

More journeys like Aditi’s 

In 2020, due to the global pandemic, our summer schools went online for the first time. The online summer school experience gave students a taste of a King’s education, with collaborative project work, guest speakers, expert King’s faculty and insights into King’s cutting–edge research.  

We would expect there to be many more stories similar to Aditi’s among the hundreds of participants in 2020 summer courses. One student on our Pre-University programme spoke of how she felt sure that the course would help her become a knowledgeable and inquisitive scientist – we will have to check back in with Carlotta in a decade’s time and see how she has got on! 

These moments of learning and discovery which shape us as people and guide our career paths will increasingly take place online. The process has been accelerated by the pandemic, but was firmly in motion long before. For university summer schools, we need to provide high-quality education and learning experiences available online for those who prefer to study in this mode. After all, it is coming together and connecting with experts and peers – whether in person or online – that creates a long-lasting impact. 

Cultural exchange session – Mexico, South Korea and Britain in dialogue

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Dr Brian Wallace teaches two modules on British governance to South Korean and Mexican students on King’s Summer Programmes.

This July, King’s College London Summer Programmes hosted students from Mexico and South Korea for parallel courses on governance in the United Kingdom. A highlight of both courses was a joint session between the two cohorts, in a cultural exchange to facilitate reflection on the themes they had been exploring. One of the key aims of both programmes is encouraging students to use our learning sessions and the experience of residence abroad as a vantage point from which to consider their home countries via a series of themes applicable across borders. The students could both reflect on what they had learned about Britain and apply these reflections to their respective homes.

The session was designed primarily to spark dialogue and the exchange of ideas and experiences among our six mixed student groups, each composed of five South Korean and four Mexican students. After a brief introduction laying out their shared course themes and the shared London experiences they had all likely been encountering as tourists, our first ice-breaking conversation session asked the students within their groups to simply introduce themselves, their home town or city, and their favourite or least favourite thing about London. Our second strand explored the idea of common ground. Drawing on the ‘cultural exchanges’ theme, I gave our students a brief presentation on cultural and political links between Britain and their home countries, introducing cultural products such as art and food along with official occasions such as state visits, with their political rhetoric stressing the shared history and values of the nations. The second breakout conversation session asked the students to respond to this idea of common ground – was this reflected in their experiences visiting London? Did they feel their nation’s culture was familiar in Britain? What were the greatest similarities and differences? As these discussions were ongoing, I toured each group’s table and sampled their conversations and conclusions. There was a wide range of opinion, but one common theme which emerged among the students was interest in the ‘export versions’ of their national cultures they had encountered in London.

Our final conversation session asked the students to produce a more formal response in the form of a lesson plan poster presentation. Each group was assigned one of the common themes of the two programmes – national identity, monarchy, the empire and Commonwealth, government and Brexit, the British press, and cultural ‘soft power’. We then asked them to take on the role of teachers, composing a lesson for their fellow students back in Mexico and South Korea. How would they explain these themes? What case studies, objects, or sites would they use? What did they think their students would find most surprising about these themes in Britain? With one Mexican and one South Korean ‘teacher’ as co-presenters, the session encouraged students to not only demonstrate the knowledge they had acquired in our learning sessions, but to translate it for a home audience as well as considering it in an international context. The student groups responded creatively and thoughtfully, using diagrams and illustrations to lay out the similarities and differences between the three nations. Common features between the three nations were identified in the shared structures of government, while the greatest differences were identified in the realms of journalism and soft power.

The idea of cultural exchange is central to the aims of our summer courses and this session proved to be an invaluable venue for putting it into practice, offering a space for our student cohorts to respond to the themes of the course and give their own reflections on their London experiences. At the culmination of our students’ learning sessions on British themes, it productively reversed the student-teacher roles and encouraged them to discuss and delineate how these issues resonated at home. Finally, introducing the Mexican and South Korean cohorts to each other in order to engage in this reflective work generated a creative energy and excitement within the session which was reflected in the enthusiasm of their conversations and presentations.

The way we learn on summer schools

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Thais Russomano, MD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre of Human & Applied Physiological Sciences, part of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine’s School of Basic & Medical Biosciences.
Thais teaches summer school students about body systems and how humans adapt when exposed to hostile environments.

 

If asked at the age of 16 what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’, the answer university professor would never have crossed my mind. I knew what I wanted to be, it was simple – for as long as I could remember I dreamt of becoming an astronaut. This would be a difficult career path for anyone to follow, however, coming from a country (Brazil) that didn’t at that time even have a Space Agency made the task as difficult as climbing Mount Everest blindfolded! I wish at that stage of my life I’d had the opportunity to experience a course like the King’s Summer programme.

Exposure to material taught by an international professor in a ‘university-type’ form would certainly have given my confidence a boost and allayed many of the doubts I had about studying abroad and at a higher level. Nonetheless, I planned my journey, completing medicine in Brazil, then facing my fears and going oversees for a 2-year MSc in Aerospace Medicine in the US, and a PhD in Space Physiology at King’s College London, before working at the German Space Agency (DLR).

My academic career began at a university in Brazil, where I established the Microgravity Centre, a pioneering Space Life Sciences Research Centre, but my links with King’s always remained strong, and I eventually became the Deputy Course Director/Senior Lecturer of the Space Physiology & Health MSc course. Another constant in my life was dedicating spare time to teaching school-aged students about the life and works of astronauts during space missions.

Therefore, when asked to participate in teaching for the King’s College Summer Programmes, I was delighted to accept, as, from my own student experience, I knew the benefit this kind of interaction brings – I see it as a two-way win-win situation for both students and professors, both of whom encounter different learning styles and gain from an exchange of cultural values, which broadens perspectives and adds to personal and professional growth.

The design of the Summer Courses fosters this interaction of tutors/students and provides an enriching learning environment. Students gain a great insight into what life would be like studying at university level, and possibly experiencing for the first time a British way of delivering knowledge. This opportunity also gives a special experience to us as professors, entering a highly multicultural environment, bringing with it challenges as to how best to engage these young minds, but at the same time making the teaching-learning process more stimulating and special.

Given the short length of the courses, they can be no more than simply ‘taster’ experiences for both sides, however, the enthusiasm and curiosity of the students is evident from their willingness to participate in activities, and from their questions, which become more probing and frequent as the week progresses and confidence grows. And it is exactly this growth in confidence, this exposure to professors of a different culture, and this opportunity to mix with a different way of doings things that is the most invaluable lesson of the week for students, opening their eyes to potential new horizons.

Likewise, teaching pre-university students, and especially those from a culture for whom English is not their native-tongue, provides lecturers with a reminder that sometimes we must adapt our skills to better communicate the content of our classes, making the language we use more accessible, building on logical reasoning and employing good analogies that help in the understanding of more complex ideas. I am reminded that these skills are important within our practice at King’s, which is by its very nature, a very international university, with more than 40% of its student population drawn from 160 countries.

For me, the experience of teaching young students on King’s Summer Programmes is gratifying and enriching; something new to add to my lifelong learning portfolio. For the students, I hope they find their pre-university programmes inspiring and motivational experiences, bolstering their self-belief and turning the first page of their academic journey.

Personifying the King’s experience

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The teacher’s role in summer business education

Dr Andrew McFaull is a Teaching Fellow in Accounting and Finance in the King’s Business School. In the Summer, Dr McFaull teaches Business Management, International  Business, Accounting and Finance in London and Hong Kong.

Over the past few years of delivering summer schools here at King’s, it has become clear to me that the role of the tutor is much more than just teaching and is about delivering a memorable learning experience. The challenge for us as tutors and those who support us as we seek to offer a great summer school is to be aware of what kind of learning experience we want to offer.

To answer this question, I believe we need to view it from our students’ perspective and ask ourselves why would someone be willing to travel great distances, often at considerable expense to enrol for only two to three weeks in one of our short summer courses? As a business tutor, I would put this in business speak and term it our value proposition. Yet, what is it? In essence, why do large numbers of students come from across the world to our summer schools each year? It seems to me the only way to deliver the best possible programme of summer learning is to exceed our students expectations and to do that, we must first understand why they enrol on a summer school course.

It’s clearly not us personally as tutors that attracts the students. Regardless of our doctorates and other various learned credentials, it is safe to assume that none of our students will have heard about our teaching and/or research prior to enrolling upon our courses. Instead, it is almost certainly the opportunity to gain an education from an esteemed institution with a global reputation that attracts students in their hundreds year upon year. Therefore, we can perhaps conclude that the role of a summer school tutor is to personify the anticipated experiences and related expectations that comes with receiving an education from somewhere like King’s College London.

“I notice how much more heterogeneous the expectations of our summer students are.”

What complicates this process further is that this personification of a King’s education is not the same for all students and this is something I have increasingly observed of as I have been delivering summer schools on behalf of the business school. When I contrast my summer school teaching with our conventional undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, which I also teach upon, I notice how much more heterogeneous the expectations of our students are and we only have two or three weeks to fulfil and
hopefully exceed these expectations.

“Helping achieve long-term personal and professional goals”

As a broad generalisation, some enrol on our summer school programmes to advance their CVs and ultimately their future careers. Others are visiting us to be challenged intellectually and want a scholarly experience from one of the world’s leading universities. Then there are those enrolled on our summer school programmes who might be termed educational tourists, who are attracted by studying in different city or country for a few weeks. All these expectations are perfectly reasonable. Yet, the predicament we face when seeking to meet students’ expectations and hopefully exceed them to deliver a good summer school, is how do you deliver one course which meets many expectations?

The answer hopefully lies in the fact that each of these expectations mentioned before are not directly in conflict with each other and therefore by delivering in one area, we are precluded from delivering in another. Ultimately, in my mind, our goal in the summer school is to build a programmes of learning which is intellectually challenging, but simultaneously brings in both the King ’s and wider London experience and allows students to achieve their long-term personal and professional goals.

This brings me back to my original point that the role of summer school tutor is much more than teaching, it’s about cultivating a memorable learning experience both inside and outside of the classroom and this needs to be co-produced with the student, because ultimately it’s their learning experience.

Addressing the Signs of the Times

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Dr Huw Dylan is a Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies and International Security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Dr Dylan is also a Visiting Research Professor at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School, Oslo.

 

One of the most exciting things about the King’s Undergraduate Summer School is the variety of approaches to teaching and learning that students will experience. This reflects both the scope of subjects on offer, but also the energy tutors put into creating engaging learning environments. This entry, building upon our colleague Dr Diana Bozhilova’s blog post on teaching international relations in this series, offers a brief introduction to our approach to teaching Politics and the Media.

For those of us interested in politics and international relations it seems that not a day goes by without some controversy or other concerning what is the truth of a particular situation making the headlines in the press. From the competing narratives offered to the electorate in the BREXIT referendum, to the myriad debates concerning President Trump and words and deeds, to the running series of debates between Russia and the West over a number of issues, including the shooting down of MH17 to Russian involvement in east Ukraine, matters of strategic communication, allegations of propaganda, and charges of ‘fake news’ have come to dominate several areas of our political discourse. This course aims to place many of these issues in a deeper historical context, and to consider carefully how information and messages have been utilised by political power throughout history to further their goals.

Our teaching is based on our experience in the Department of War Studies. This department encourages an interdisciplinary and creative approach to studying conflict and war and all associated phenomena. We aim to combine teaching of core concepts and ideas, such as exploring the main theorists or thinkers of propaganda and strategic communications, in tandem with the conflicts or issues that they sought to influence at the time. And then to examine how these ideas resonate today in our contemporary debates. So, we will begin with the ideas of Gustav le Bon, and propaganda in the age of the Two World Wars, before moving on to the Cold War and the post 9/11 world. Students will engage deal with theory and practice, setting the scene for many of the issues we the class will consider during the latter part of the course.

The learning outcomes for this short course on Politics and the Media are centred upon the development of an understanding of key subject matter and fostering critical thinking. The class will consider the core components of propaganda and strategic communication narratives in various case studies. Many of these case studies involve campaigns that aimed to convert or entrench the political stance or the voting intentions of a large body of people, and have become contentious. Analysing the construction, delivery, and impact of these various campaigns will leave students equipped to more effectively engage with such campaigns in future, in particular with regard analysing and challenging the competing claims of ‘truth’. A key component of developing these critical skills will be an active consideration of the modern information environment and information technology, and how they both facilitate the propagation and the challenge of key messages.

Dialogues on Disability

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‘In many areas of the globe, opportunities for disabled students to meet, study and advance thinking on disability and inclusion beyond the confines of national borders are nearly non-existent.’ To change this institutions are developing programmes and working collaboratively to face the worldwide discrepancy of this subject.

An example of innovative short term programming, the Dialogues and Disability programme started life in 2013 between Delhi University and King’s, as a collaboration between international Summer Programmes and King’s Disability Advisory Service. The programme focuses on improving the university experience for disabled staff and students and explores topics from inclusion across aspects of university life, mentoring and pathways to success after graduation. This annual programme brings together disabled students and disability professionals, from around the world, to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by disabled people with respect to accessibility and inclusion.

‘This is an example of internationalisation and disability services have entered into a symbiotic exchange of perspectives and best practices.’

Please visit our webpage to know more about the Dialogues on Disability programme.

What distinguishes a Summer School student?

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Dr Nicola Kirkby is a ‘Literature in the City’ tutor on King’s Undergraduate Summer School.
In SummerTimes she is sharing her observations as an academic who this year taught on a summer school for the first time.

 

It’s a habit among critical thinkers to look for comparisons and contrasts. Throughout the King’s Summer ‘Literature and the City’ module, I prompted my students to explore differences between urban and rural experience, between London and their home town, between Dublin in the 1900s and Paris in the 1920s. From a pedagogical perspective, I was also drawing my own comparisons. Having taught a similar module, ‘Writing London’ in the Department of English at King’s for several years now, I found leading this summer school course for the first time in 2018 a refreshing counterpoint.

How do summer school cohorts differ from their term-time counterparts?
While there is much overlap (these are high-achieving undergraduates and alumni from universities across the world), I found that our lectures, seminars, and site visits had their own distinct dynamic that has impacted my teaching practice all year round.

Curiosity

Because they are open to students from any academic discipline, one of the most significant unifying pre-requisites for King’s Summer Programmes participants is curiosity about the course itself. English Literature majors were working alongside scholars with backgrounds in psychology, policy, modern languages, health science, and physics. This was invaluable in a course that interrogated what it means for people from all walks of life to live intersecting, interconnected lives. Our discussions may have focused predominantly on London, but such diversity in approach and experience meant that we were always bringing this city into dialogue with other global capitals, other networks, and other ways of understanding and organising shared space.

Thanks to such curiosity, the Summer School provided an ideal environment for exploring experimental ideas. At first, I think that students coming from more didactic learning environments found opportunities to challenge established theoretical approaches a little disorientating. But this approach fits well, both with the primary aim of literary studies: to encourage independent critical thinking, and with summer school learners themselves, who, in their choice to up sticks and study overseas for three-to-six intense weeks are more than equal to taking initiative.

Commitment

There’s nothing quite like leaving your life behind to embark on a few weeks of focussed study in a new place. Attendance throughout the summer school was sky-high in a way that is unparalleled in full-year courses where students often juggle responsibilities to home and work throughout the teaching semester. What I had not anticipated, and what I was utterly delighted to find was the tireless motivation of this group in our daily seminars, lectures, and site visits to places have changed London’s literary landscape. ‘Literature and the City’ is a fast-paced and thought-provoking module, and this year’s cohort impressed me by exploring London, Paris, and even Dublin on their own alongside our Monday-Friday classes.

Togetherness

The final distinction is a simple yet important one. Working alongside one another in an intense, discussion-led course helps summer school students build collaborative closeness in a way that would take much longer in a regular undergraduate module. By the end of the programme my ‘Literature and the City’ cohort had expanded their network, forging lasting connections with peers from across the world.

Teaching International Relations for dynamic audiences

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Dr Diana Bozhilova, Teaching Fellow Summer Programmes, brings her lively discussions on the theory and practice of International Relations to our London programmes through her annual contribution to the King’s Summer School Programmes. 

 

Political events “crowd” our lives with increasing dynamism. This leads to greater interest in the study of International Relations (IR) as a means to explaining ethical questions, consequentialist and deontological reasoning. As a result, normative IR is still very relevant but how do we teach it within short courses for highly mobile and technologically astute young audiences for whom time is of the essence?

Core concepts

My experience of teaching IR has been one of focusing on core concepts and methods. Short courses allow for selecting “relevant” blocks on which to scope attention in order to critically appraise a particularly impactful development in international relations. Take Brexit, Russia or China for example – separately, they challenge aspects of the liberal international order established during the “American” century and contribute to the sense that something rather big is afoot. For normative IR, this means a conceptual and methodological shift being under way.

Roadmaps

The learning outcomes for short courses in IR centre on developing critical thinking and analytical capacities that enable students to transform information flows into knowledge. I would never forget how on one of my travels to India and whilst occupied with thoughts about the impact of technology on the study of IR, a friend from Mumbai remarked: “Google cannot help find your slippers in the temple.” Technology is an information enabler but normative IR provides roadmaps that transform data flows into meaningful building blocks.

Application

Games and simulations increasingly infiltrate IR pedagogy. On the one hand, those opposed to such dynamic teaching models emphasise their inevitably reductionist approach to understanding normative IR through diminution of variables, thus confining discussions to basics at the expense of the vastness of paradigms and approaches that exist in the discipline. On the other hand, their great utility lies in adapting static theories to dynamic teaching models. This has a particular advantage for international audiences who would like to see how theories apply within different geographic and institutional settings. Simulations can involve structural constructs from diplomacy and negotiations, economic development and governance reforms, management of warfare and environmental crises. They are well suited to short courses, dedicated sessions, and blended learning models.