Erasmus+ BOOST Training on Marketing and Internationalization Held in Lisbon, Portugal
LISBON, Portugal – From June 18 to 22, the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon hosted a training workshop on Marketing and Cultural Challenges in the Internationalization within the Erasmus+ “Boosting Strategy and Marketing for Internationalization of Armenian Universities”/BOOST/ project. The training aimed to introduce the marketing strategy of HEIs from the perspectives of European best-practice and know-how approaches.
The project consortium partners from Armenian State Pedagogical University after Kh. Abovyan, American University of Armenia, Shirak State University after M. Nalbandyan, Vanadzor State University after H. Tumanyan, Komitas State Conservatory, RA Ministry of Science and Education, National Information Centre on Academic Recognition and Mobility, had the opportunity to acquire useful and effective skills on boosting international visibility, preparing communication and marketing strategies, conducting international market analysis and networking with international universities.
On the first day of the training the consortium’s Armenian partners came up with five-minute pitch sessions on their universities from the marketing point of view. After the sessions the training facilitators provided feedback to the presentations by each institution and made recommendations on their further improvement.
It is remarkable to mention that the partner country representatives from IST, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain and Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia have shared their interesting experiences on Internationalizations marketing models including marketing institutions via university staff and students; Academic Rankings as marketing tools, the impact of the projects on the marketing process; International Marketing and Recruitment models, e.g. International Ambassadors programme; Market analysis media and communication strategies; MOOC as a fostering strategy, etc. Not only were the presentations immensely useful to all participants, but also advantageous for the RA National Internationalisation Strategy that is being developed as one of the major project outcomes together with the Ministry of Education and Science as a consortium partner.
The training programme was concluded with a project management meeting where the consortium members discussed project results and achievements as well as shared their views on further planning activities in accordance with work packages. It has been agreed that each Armenian university will come up with a draft marketing and communications strategy for their own university as per their local priorities which eventually will reflect the existing Internationalisation processes in the country.
IST was honored to welcome all the participants of the BOOST Training and share with them information, practices and knowledge, in a week filled with visits and presentations. The training main note goes to the very active participation of the trainees that with their accurate questions and relevant comments made the sharing and learning process even more effective and relevant. The training occurred in a very dual and interactive way that benefited the understanding of the Armenian partner’s needs and the most accurate answers that aimed to provide support in finding the fit solutions to the breakthrough of the HEI’s Internationalization process in the partner Armenian Institutions. In a final note, IST would like to thank all participants for their presence and true commitment with the BOOST Project activities and goals; it was a pleasure to show our best practices but mostly it was a pleasure to share with all this unforgettable week.
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Erasmus+ BOOST (www.boost.aspu.am) is a three-year project which aims to foster and promote international dimension of the Armenian Higher Education (HE) through the development of national and institutional policy framework and tools.