Faculty of Commerce, Hospitality and Tourism

The BBU FCHT Department of Languages for Business Communication created a series of exercises between 2015 and 2017, entitled "Language Without Borders - Internationalisation Efforts in the Everyday Practice of Teaching Languages for Specific Purposes", and it won third place in the 2015 Award for International Development in Higher Education. In line with the plans for further development of the 2015 award-winning programme, the ICCAGE international European project, coordinated by the Prague University of Technology and running from September 2015 to August 2017, has enabled the pooling and broad expansion of various individual initiatives at institutional level, with one of the key elements being to make student-led, inter-university telecollaboration an integral part of the university's language teaching practice. You can find the ICCAGE international project website at: http://iccageproject.wixsite.com/presentation

A grant from the EEA Fund Scholarship Programme, awarded in 2016, provided the opportunity for two years for instructors at the Faculty to undertake teaching mobility to higher education institutions in Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, as well as to participate in conferences, seminars, workshops, or training courses at the respective higher education institutions in Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. It was also possible for lecturers from Norwegian, Icelandic or Liechtenstein higher education institutions to come to our University as part of the mobility programme. 

The acronym of the project - CORALL - stands for Coaching-oriented Online Resources for the Autonomous Learning of LSP (languages for specific purposes). As main applicants, we are working together with five European higher education institutions - the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, the Haaga Helia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, the University of Economics in Bratislava, the Czech Technical University of Prague, the Polytechnic Institute of Guarda - and the Portuguese Association of Vocational Teachers. The description of the project can be read here.

The INCOLLAB (Innovative interdisciplinary collaborative approaches to learning and teaching in higher education) project was submitted by the Department of Foreign Languages of the Czech Technical University of Prague. They were also the main applicants of the ICCAGE project implemented between 2015-2017, in which our university also participated as a partner, and which won the 2018 Czech Best Higher Education Project Award. INCOLLAB is a two-year project in which teachers of languages for special purposes and colleagues teaching vocational subjects can collaborate internationally to develop modules that can be used in both vocational courses and language courses for specific purposes. A description of the project can be found on this website.

Project description

The Experiential Learning, Interactive/Intensive European Brand Management Course (brandY) is a 36-month Erasmus+ project supported and funded by the European Union with the main objective of designing, implementing, and testing an innovative experiential learning module to train management (more specifically marketing) students so that they can better succeed in the labour market. One of the main values and important features of the project is its interdisciplinarity, which, in addition to group spirit and high level of expertise, ensures a multi-faceted approach and, through this, a complex common European way of thinking. The interdisciplinary approach is reflected in the professional content, in that it involves not only highly qualified and experienced professors from the 11 participating universities, but also corporate experts, independent researchers and talented students from the partner institutions in the joint thinking and creative process in the fields of international marketing, brand management, new technologies and gamification. The tangible outcome of the project will be an experiential, interactive international brand management study module. It will use the game-based scenario – available on a web-based platform - to increase the effectiveness of teaching and enhance and increase student engagement in the teaching-learning process. The teaching module brandY will strongly impact the teaching of brand management strategies giving students and teachers the possibility to improve the skills needed on the labour market.

The specific goals of the project are:

• Incorporating experiential learning based on gamification into formal course offerings as a tool for student competences and labour market integration
• Enhancing the pedagogical tools and effectiveness of marketing researchers and lecturers
• Improving student competences and knowledge, especially in the disciplines of international brand management and intercultural management
• Involving SMEs in university curriculum development projects
• Improvement of student mobility and knowledge sharing between the consortium partner universities and dissemination of project results
• Taking cooperation between partner universities to a new level

Main results and outputs of the project/research

Project activities:

• The main activities undertaken in the project are described in the form of 4 work packages
• Work Package 1: Developing innovative and interactive teaching materials and content.
• Work Package 2: Learning Instrument Guidelines, Procedures and Handbooks for students and teachers to easily implement the course into practice.
• Work Package 3: IT platform and interactive game interface – gamification of the teaching materials.
• Work Package 4: External communication, dissemination, and scientific promotion

The benefits and expected results of the project:

The beneficiaries of this project are on the one hand the university students (in terms of learning and chances on the labour market) and teachers (in terms of developing an online curriculum using this new model of online teaching/learning brand management), on the other hand employers and public institutions interested in employing young European brand management experts.

Partners

University of Economics in Katowice, Poland – the project’s professional leader, main tenderer, and coordinator. The consortium consists of 11 high-prestige institutions of higher education:

1. Université Savoie Mont Blanc (France),
2. Budapest Business University (Hungary),
3. Universitatea din Bucuresti (Romania),
4. Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Russian Federation),
5. Universitaria San Pablo-CEU-Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera (Spain),
6. Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen Howest (Belgium),
7. Universidad de Leon (Spain),
8. Università degli Studi di Trento (Italy),
9. Haute École Specialisée de Suisse Occidentale (Switzerland),
10. Bauhaus-Universitaet Weimar (Germany)
11. University of Economics in Katowice (Poland).

Other

Website of the project: under development

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

The European Commission's support for this project does not imply endorsement by the Commission of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The Learn and Change: Collaborative Digital Storytelling for Sustainable Change (2021-2023) project builds on and further develops the good practices adopted during the online education period following the necessary shutdowns in March 2020. Among its goals are incorporating digital storytelling into education, developing further methodologies to assist teaching and learning, and undertaking student projects together with members of the tourism and hospitality industry. This strategic partnership program is coordinated by Haaga-Helia University in Finland, and -- besides BBU-FCHT -- includes Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco from Portugal, University of Chemistry and Technology from Czechia, and Saxion University from the Netherlands. The coordinator of the project at BBU is dr. Ágnes Pál, and the project-management team includes dr. Réka Asztalos, Éva Schultz, and János Debreceni. The project is implemented with the cooperation of other members of the the FCHT faculty.

In partnership with a Slovak, Turkish, and Portuguese university, Budapest Business University was successful in receiving a joint EU grant. The project aims to assess the current allergen management practices in the HoReCa sector and the relevant common as well as country specific regulations. Together we develop a short-term training to prepare our students for managing food allergies (and intolerances) in their future work. Our training, available in both traditional and electronic forms, will also be available to external stakeholders (hotel and restaurant managers, employees, and other interested parties). Furthermore, we aim to build a professional network that involves practical experts, authorities, and civil organisations to make our educational and research work more effective in this area. The 26-month project has received a grant of 250,000 euros.

Following the successful debut of Blended Intensive Program 2022 (BIP2022) at FCHT in 2022, the programme was organised again in October 2023 (BIP2023) with the title Behind the Scenes of Urban Tourism. In 2023, we welcomed students and lecturers from six European universities, as well as from all the three faculties of BBU, hosting a total of 48 students and 16 lecturers. With the active participation of the numerous international lecturers, a forum was organised to share experience, challenges and best practices related to the tourism and hospitality education, as well as to discuss further joint projects and research collaborations.