Ten students and two professors from the Kharkiv National Vasyl-Karasin University were guests at The Hochschule Niederrhein to take part in an international project week.
The students, some of whom still live in the Kharkiv region, but some of whom traveled from Poland, Finland or Frankfurt, came to Krefeld for ten days. Together with students from the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics and students from Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and its Ukrainian partner university from Kharkiv, the National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute", they had to work on a task set by the company Scheidt & Bachmann from Mönchengladbach.
The students had been prepared for the project in advance in an online lecture. At the first meeting in the Future Work Lab at The Hochschule Niederrhein in Krefeld, the participants got to know each other personally and were divided into groups, with one person from each university represented. The intercultural collaboration began with group exercises, small workshops and an interactive quiz.
On the second day, the students were first given a tour of Scheidt & Bachmann in Mönchengladbach before focusing on the topic of "Sustainable Business - Billing for Cloud-Based Applications and Services in a SaaS Model". Over the course of two days, the teams searched for various billing engines that enable automation from the cloud. The students then presented their results to the Scheidt & Bachmann team at the end of the degree, who were very satisfied with the results and praised the students' professional approach in particular.
The students spent five intensive days together, learning not only how to work in a structured and self-organized manner, but also how to work together in international teams with different professional backgrounds. The war in Ukraine was also discussed and the German students gained an impression of the circumstances under which the Ukrainian students are now living.
Anna Tomik is studying Finance, Banking and Insurance in Kharkiv and is grateful for the opportunity to take part in this project: "For me, this project was an excellent opportunity to apply the knowledge I have learned and to meet students from other universities. The task from Scheidt & Bachmann was very interesting and we had to work practically and creatively. The collaboration with the other students was successful and inspiring. I am very grateful that The Hochschule Niederrhein gave me this opportunity."
Two more project weeks are planned for 2025 and 2026. This project was made possible by sponsors from the European Union's Erasmus+ program, which provides financial support for students and staff to stay abroad.
