Developing High School Long-Term Student Exchanges

<< Background >>Our collaboration on reciprocal long-term student exchanges began in 2019 with the “Arctic Tropics” program. Although the pandemic interrupted our exchanges for two years, we successfully resumed them in 2021. We applied for this project to enhance and streamline our student exchange processes, ensuring they run smoothly and efficiently. Our goal was to establish a sustainable and well-integrated exchange program that would become a permanent fixture in our schools for years to come as well as address the need for cultural immersion and educational collaboration. << Objectives >>Our primary goal was to develop and enhance the overall exchange program. Specifically, we aimed to:• Refine Student Selection Processes: Improve and test our student selection methods across all three schools, gathering feedback from both teachers and participating students. This was to ensure a motivated, suitable, and favorable student selection, minimizing mental and cultural distractions during the one-month exchange.• Develop Feedback Mechanisms: Create an online feedback questionnaire for long-term exchange students and their host families to complete at the end of their exchanges. This would help identify weaknesses and areas for improvement in our program.• Support Independent Studies: Arrange independent studies for exchange students, negotiated with subject teachers, to ensure they do not fall behind in their home studies and to alleviate stress.• Enhance Marketing and Communication: Produce brochures, tools, and marketing materials to better design, publicize, and promote the long-term exchanges to students, parents, and other high schools locally, nationally, and across Europe.• Implement Exchanges: Successfully design and carry out 19 long-term student exchanges between our three schools during 2022-2023.<< Implementation >>With this grant and the consent of our NA, we organized 10 long-term reciprocal exchanges. The grant was mostly split between the two Finnish partners' exchange mobilities as our French partner already had resources for their mobilities. To facilitate student selection, we created a blog providing detailed information on the process, including criteria such as motivation, parental support, open-mindedness, self-reliance, academic ability, learning agreements, host family selection, insurance, crisis management, and rules of conduct. We requested video introductions and posed specific questions to enhance the student selection process. We collaborated with subject teachers and tailored independent studies to ensure students did not fall behind in their home studies. We produced brochures and tools to better design, publicize and market the exchanges. Additionally, we developed an online feedback questionnaire for our students and their host families.Beyond our blog, we established Instagram pages for our project. We also introduced Genially, an online tool, for students’ educational thematic teamwork.<< Results >>Web pages: Arctic Tropics Exchanges Blog: https://arctictropicsexchanges.blogspot.com/ Erasmus Long-term Exchange Student Questionnaire: For students and host families at the end of their exchange.Marketing Brochure: Available electronically and on paper on our blog.Arctic Tropics Erasmus+ Exchanges Hoodies: For all participants.Marketing Video: YouTube (24 minutes): https://youtu.be/lV3xJzpSRt0 One-Day Orientation Education Package: Created by Tiina Fredriksson for the City of Oulu and the Finnish National Agency, preparing Finnish students for 2024-2027. More info: https://shorturl.at/yNpaz Newspaper Articles:Article 1: https://shorturl.at/jP6tm Article 2: https://shorturl.at/N2egTArticle 3: https://shorturl.at/pP3KrArticle 4: https://shorturl.at/wMq1BArticle 5: https://shorturl.at/5nr1A Finnish Team Promotion: Promoting and consulting on long-term exchanges for high schools in Oulu and Europe. More info: https://shorturl.at/SRzvJ New Partnership: Finnish partners have started a new long-term exchanges partnership. More info: https://shorturl.at/TFqr0