NICE Training Programme
Welcome to the NICE online experience! NICE, the Network for Intercultural Competence to facilitate Entrepreneurship, is a collaboration between the 8 European universities who created this innovative experience for their students: you.
Part online course and part virtual exchange, NICE is a flexible programme without traditional assignments or deadlines… but plenty of individual work and milestones to reach along the way, and of course a final project!
Using the NICE online modules
NICE is an accessible, innovative way for you to engage in intercultural and entrepreneurial learning. Through this Training Programme, you will discover new ideas and gain knowledge about intercultural communication and entrepreneurship by working on 7 thematic chapters called modules. You can work through these individually, but the programme is specifically designed to be used by intercultural teams. At the end of the course you will complete a final project, a business model canvas, which demonstrates how your team chose to respond to its Global Challenge.
What will your experience be like? Well, that’s up to you. The more you engage with the online modules, your team, and your Global Challenge, the more you will gain from the experience. Let’s get started!
Objectives
You will develop theoretical knowledge about intercultural communication and entrepreneurship, practice these skills in the context of your team, create a collective solution to a Global Challenge chosen by your team, and reflect on the experience to make the most of your learning.
Online modules
You will follow the modules sequentially by yourself, starting with Module 1: Introduction, and complete all the exercises and activities prior to discussion and collaboration with your team.
Module 3: Identifying entrepreneurial opportunities in your Global Challenge
Module 5: Asking for resources
Module 7: “Now then… Did it work?”
Every module has the same structure:
Themes & learning outcomes – what you will learn in this module
Introduction – some background and context for this module’s core concepts
Warm-up – an exercise to get you started
Advice & “know-how” – the theory behind the concepts and ideas
Resources – references and bibliography
Challenge – an individual or group activity you need to complete by yourself or with your team
Team assignment – a group activity you need to complete with your team
Reflection – a series of prompts which guide your individual and team reflections on what you learned and how you collaborated in this module
The work on each module ends with a facilitated online discussion that you and your team sets up with your facilitator.
Teamwork
NICE gives students the experience of working across countries without leaving their home university. Throughout the course, you will meet online using a videocall tool of your choice – face-to-face and live – and collaborate with your international peers, learning from each other as well as with each other.
You should set up a collaborative workspace, such as an online document for all the members of your team to access and edit together, to add the results of your individual and group exercises, and to capture your journey towards the solution to your Global Challenge and your final team project. Creating a group using a messaging app to communicate is highly recommended. We also recommend you choose a team name early in the process!
Teams will progress at different speeds and that’s entirely ok, NICE is designed to be flexible and adapt to your life as well as your teammates’ lives – if you’ve got exams for example, or a few members of your team cannot make a regular session, feel free to discuss together when would be best to reschedule. Your team will journey at its own speed and reach the end of the course in its own time.
Facilitated sessions
The NICE Training Programme has been designed around the use of online team sessions, which are intended to offer participants a safe online community to take part in facilitated discussion, increase intercultural awareness, and build global citizenship skills while developing an innovative solution to Global Challenges.
For the best results, you and your team should be assigned a facilitator whose job is to lead discussions during the regular facilitated online sessions, monitor your team’s progress, and remind you of the milestones along the journey. There should be 7 facilitated sessions in total, one at the end of each module.
It is important to point out that a facilitator is NOT there to be an expert in Entrepreneurship or Intercultural Competence, but rather to support the collaboration process of your team. They are not teachers but will help you capture evidence of the completed activities, make decisions as a team, reflect on your work, and share feedback with each other.
During team activities you will find it helpful to assign different roles, such as a chair (in charge of asking questions and keeping the discussion on track), a timekeeper (in charge of checking the time and reminding the team about the deadlines it set for itself), and a notetaker (in charge of taking notes and collecting the results of the team’s project work). All other members of the team must actively participate during the activities, and roles are expected to change each session so you all have a chance to practice each role.
Final project - Business Model Canvas
At the end of the programme your team will complete a Business Model Canvas outlining your team’s idea. You will be introduced to this template format during the NICE course and use it to develop and map your solution to the Global Challenge. You will learn more about what the Business Model Canvas is, and why it is useful to aspiring entrepreneurs to refine their idea, whether your solution takes the form of a product or a service, for profit or non-profit.
In completing a Business Model Canvas on a relevant solution to a Global Challenge, you will build self-efficacy and a sense of global citizenship and belonging. Empowered with these skills and attitudes, you will be better prepared to live and work in an increasingly globalised world.
Partners
The NICE partnership brought expertise from all over Europe together in one multi-university project designed to enhance the employability and skills of our participants. Each of the partners below has significant experience in entrepreneurship, intercultural competence or delivery methodology and has contributed to the content found within this training programme.
University of Amsterdam
University College Dublin
University of Edinburgh
University of Göttingen
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi
Lund University
University of Padova
University of Salamanca