Enhancing Intercultural and Digital COmpeteNces oF MobIle StuDENTs in Times of Crisis

The main objective of the CONFIDENT project is to address the needs of mobile students signaled in times of crisis and equip them with proper instruments and tools in order to enhance their confidence, their readiness to take on the world and enrich their personality. The project will allow mobile students to consolidate and expand their soft skills which are most of the times neglected and tap into these competences whenever they will need them in their work and personal life. The newly acquired transferable skills will be of much use in the new world the students will live in and will help them better cope with future challenges.

In response to the COVID-19 unprecedented crisis schools and universities closing down almost immediately and simultaneously, education all around the world needed to change its course of action and move the majority of the class interaction online. The project partners noticed that the cohort of students most affected by the consequences of the global health crisis was made up of the mobile students (both incoming and outgoing). Apart from the need to adjust to online teaching and learning, the mobile students also had to adapt to the new conditions of living in lock-down in a foreign country with little to no cultural background/information and sometimes isolated from other students with whom they could connect and share. The psychological impact of the COVID-19 crisis on mobile students cannot be denied and nobody can predict the extent in which their academic and personal development track has been shaken.