Browsing by Author "Åkerblom, Joonas Artturi"

With globalization becoming increasingly topical in the modern era, both multilingualism and internationalization have become important topics for higher education institutions. Due to the growing expectations to participate in the global education market to succeed, the institutions create policies and strategies regarding both language use and internationalization to address their goals, visions, and practices surrounding these topics. These policies and strategies have been studied extensively both from a student perspective and policy perspective in various individual universities, also in Finland. However, none of the studies have investigated these issues focusing on student organizations, which this study aims to accomplish. This study examines the topics of multilingualism and internationalization from the student organization and Student Union perspective at the University of Helsinki and seeks to provide a glimpse into the varying beliefs and practices that these organizations have regarding the topics, as well as how the student organizations could be supported by the Student Union. This is accomplished through an analysis of the Student Union’s official documents, data from a group interview conducted with two Student Union officials, and a survey sent to the student organizations’ boards, which garnered 39 responses. This study found that the parallel use of English and Finnish was the prevalent language practice for student organizations, with Swedish used to a lesser degree. The Student Union’s practices were trilingual. Both the student organizations and the Student Union viewed multilingualism and internationalization as important topics regarding their organization’s activities, reported frequent discussions around the topics, and perceived a need for both. Challenges regarding implementation of these topics revolved around various types of resources. The desired and received amount of support from the Student Union varied depending on the student organization, and the survey demonstrated the student organizations as requiring varying types of support.