Representatives of Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy, Iryna Hrytsenko and Olha Yarmolych studied under the academic mobility programme at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten.

During the semester, the students integrated into the European educational environment, worked on projects in international groups, and improved their foreign language skills.

Olha Yarmolych, a fourth-year Journalism student of the Educational-Scientific Institute of Ukrainian Philology and Social Communications, worked within iLab. This is an interdisciplinary and international innovation laboratory, where, over the course of a semester, student teams develop solutions to socially significant challenges within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, together with students from five other countries, she helped to develop a modern ecosystem to promote the reuse of everyday items in local communities. The final product of the project was the creation and launch of a student Repair & Reuse Club, where participants can master practical skills in repair, restoration, and creative reuse of items, while shaping a responsible attitude towards resource consumption and waste management.

“Above all, iLab, like Erasmus in general, taught me proactivity. I realised that if something does not exist – as our club did not exist at the beginning of the semester – I now have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to create it from scratch. My new perspective on criticism and mistakes as opportunities for improvement has become my constant inner driver for growth,” Olha shared.

According to her, the experience of academic mobility is always more than studying abroad and professional growth: it is also a journey towards self-development, because the intercultural environment allows you to look at familiar things from new angles.

Iryna Hrytsenko, a third-year student majoring in Information Systems and Technologies at the Educational-Scientific Institute of Informational and Educational Technologies, studied within the framework of the European Project Semester (EPS). This programme is based on interdisciplinary teamwork, where students from different countries jointly develop technical projects – from the planning stage to the creation of the final product or prototype. Iryna’s team worked in the university’s modern laboratories on developing an educational data-visualisation escape room. The plot is based on a story about an abandoned laboratory and a virus that turns people into snails, where the creative inspiration was Franz Kafka’s novella “The Metamorphosis” and the aesthetics of steampunk. In addition to the exciting plot of the escape room, the team implemented an important educational goal: while playing the game, teenagers have to correctly interpret graphs and diagrams in order to obtain the “keys” to the antidote.

“This was my second Erasmus experience, and it brought no fewer emotions and adventures. Austria impressed me first and foremost with its landscapes and architecture. During this period, I significantly improved my soft skills: teamwork, leadership, Scrum Master skills, presentation skills, and my English level. A pleasant and valuable bonus was learning German, which allowed me to better understand Austrian culture and even understand the language to some extent in everyday life,” Iryna Hrytsenko said.

International Relations Office