Collaboration: Personal And Professional Development

Collaboration is another major skill that is both valuable to the writer’s personal and professional development. Within the period of study, group work was something that was very prominent and this has been a major area of development from studying at UCC. Danish education has a very collaborative and active learning style in which pupils are taught to work together from a very young age. Every single class throughout the three modules attended at UCC required the writer to become involved in group work which ranged from working in pairs right up to large group activities and whole class exercises. This has been of great value in developing new methods of teaching. Group assignments and projects can help students develop various skills that

It is stated by Hadis (2005) that a study abroad program is a greatly contributes to taking responsibility for making one’s own decisions and thus learning to do so with pleasure.In a further study conducted, the statement “The experience of studying abroad has taught me how to make my own decisions” elicited 79.6% of agreement or “very much” agreement. Furthermore, Hadis (2005) highlights that with a development in independence comes a development in decision-making skills which has a direct effect on academic focusing. The writer can use these decision making skills throughout personal and professional experiences as our decisions can determine the outcome of events or situations. Self-management and self-reflection is an important aspect of independence which the writer acquired particularly within the classes of innovation lab. This required a lot of self-management and self-reflection for the assessment of the module. It required that a blog is up kept every week for self-reflective purposes. Dewey (1991) had defined reflection as active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends which essentially highlights that this helps learning and therefore is highly

Therefore studying abroad provides this experience as it is very different to travel or holiday in another country than to live in it for a semester. It requires a lot of adaption and also confidence to explore and meet new people. It is these small changes that results in a huge change of character and within professional development. It can help with employability as it provides an alternative experience in which methods are gained and they can be used to help with the development in education at home and in other countries. According to the European Commission (2014) 92% of employers are looking for the transversal skills that are developed during Erasmus such as, problem-solving, curiosity, tolerance and