Body
Due to the restrictions caused by coronavirus pandemic, many foreign students had to cancel their exchange period in Haaga-Helia. However, we wanted to give these students an opportunity to enrich their studies with Haaga-Helia’s courses while strengthening our international student body and the relationship with our partner institutions. Already before the pandemic, virtual exchanges have been a hot topic and are seen as an eco-friendlier alternative to traditional student mobility periods.
Therefore, we decided to pilot Haaga-Helia’s virtual exchanges in the autumn semester. We offer altogether ten study modules in our Virtual Exchange programme, and students can choose freely 5-15 credits from our virtual course offering that includes business, tourism and IT studies. All the study modules that we offer are conducted 100% online and allows students to participate equally no matter of their time zone.
Many of our partner institutions expressed their interest in the programme and promoted the opportunity to their students. As a result, we are going to host six exchange students in our Virtual Exchange programme during the autumn – five students from Estonia and one from Thailand. They will start their exchange period next week with a virtual orientation.
We are very delighted to see that the programme has raised so much interest. With this pilot, we hope to receive feedback from Haaga-Helia’s teachers and students as well as from our partner institutions, which will help us to develop the programme and, in the future, offer even a wider selection of studies for a larger number of students.
For further information, please contact our Incoming exchange team (exch@haaga-helia.fi).
