Student Report
University: Université Laval/Laval University
Fall semester 2012
1. Practical information
Before Leaving Norway:
The host university started to make contact with me by email just shortly after I
had confirmed my exchange offer with BI Norwegian Business School. In the
beginning the information was mainly given by students volunteering for
responsibility of the exchange students’ integration (buddies) into the university
environment, both academically and socially. I received mail from the faculty
administration itself in mid-April.
In the preparation for the departure there were some difficulties with the
selection of courses, since BI has a few requirements on which business courses
to undertake. It is required to take one strategy-course as well as an applied
science business course. This was difficult because Laval is officially a
Francophone university, with only a few courses held in English. The university
cancelled the two courses in English that satisfied these requirements due to low
attendance. The guidance from BI’s on this subject was not too satisfactory either
when help was asked for or when these occurrences happened.
Applying for Visa:
Since the fall semester lasted for less than four months, acquiring a visa/study
permit was not necessary, the university sent me a letter before embarking
containing an admission letter as well as a “green card” and both documents
together worked as a “sort-of” visa that one could apply at the border customs to
gain entrance when living in Canada for less than six months. However this got
hectic when crossing the American border for the sake of travel in the weekends.
The American government did not recognize the documents provided by the
University and therefore it could be helpful for the next prospective exchange
student to acquire an additional document by the University which one could
present at the American border if the student wishes to go there during his/her
semester abroad.
Travel:
Traveling to Quebec is fairly easy, one can just get a plane ticket from Europe to
Montreal and hop on something that is called “Amigo Express” which is a carsharing service where people go online and post that they are going to drive
from one destination to another. They have room for a stated amount of
passengers. Using this service one can get from Montreal to Quebec City and
Laval University for $15. Myself, I traveled with my parents since we were
having a summer vacation in the United States, so I was dropped off by them at
the front porch of the Administration Faculty.
Housing:
The University provides every student with the option to on-campus housing,
and international students are prioritized to get a room on the campus if this is
to the student’s wish, but it is important to reply to the invoice and pay the first
month’s rent by the first deadline given, since the university doesn’t guarantee a
room being available after this date.
The location of each student’s room is organized upon arrival, however I believe
one can make requests to the university housing service before arrival and I
would recommend to all prospective students to request a room at the residence
building named Pavillon Alphonse Marie-Parent or just “the Parent” for short.
This is the largest residence building and the most fun place to hang out for
exchange students since this is the residence where all of the social
arrangements are held. I lived in the neighboring building which could be very
solitary at times since all of my friends lived in that residence.
Costs:
An estimate for my monthly budget would look like this:
Rent
Books
Food
Transport
Other
1700
500
2000
50
1500
Purchasing monthly transportation was not necessary and one can live without
it if one lives on-campus since distances are short and all of the facilities
belonging to the university are located inside the campus, I only purchased oneway tickets if I traveled into the city during weekends. Books are also not
necessary since most of the educational literature used for classes could be
found online or in lecturers’ notes for free.
Culture and Language:
Understanding faculty students was usually easy, since most students pursuing a
career in business administrations embrace English, however students from
other faculties and especially people from outside of the campus was nearly
impossible to understand at all. I went to Quebec with some basic knowledge in
French so I was able to read signs and ask around for certain things at for
example the supermarket. But maintaining a prolonged discussion with a
Quebecer is very difficult even for people from France since they speak a
completely different French accent. It doesn’t help either that the people from
Quebec are usually very patriotic and proud of their French heritage which
makes them hesitant to speak English, even those who actually can, refuse to
speak English purely because they do not want to.
However if prospective students are open to take a language course while
staying there, one can benefit largely and be able to do more than just simple
sentences.
The buddy organization held weekly events where those who wanted could
attend different class trips or social arrangements that explored the country and
culture. These were for example hiking trips, guided historical tours, weekend
trips to other cities, dinners, food- and wine tasting, sports activities, pub-crawls
or other festivities.
The opportunities for experiencing the country itself and the culture were
plenty, and I rarely got bored because there were always several new
arrangements like these every week that I had not tried earlier.
Cultural and social effects from the exchange:
I strongly believe I have benefitted greatly from the exchange experience in the
aspect that we all have courses that show how different ways of doing business
vary in different countries due to cultural differences, but without having any
real idea of how this really means due to a lack of hands-on experience on the
matter. I have up close seen these differences because of all the different
nationalities I have encountered at the host university during my stay abroad,
and really noticed how different their perspectives are from my own.
Exchange experience will aid me significantly in the pursuit of a future career in
international business because all these impressions gained from it have made
me more tolerant and understanding of other people and their customs
compared to mine, which is important in a constantly globalizing world.
2. About the school
The school campus is located on a hilltop inside a green lung in the city of
Quebec. All streets are boulevards with trees and grass fields on the sides of the
road. The outer facilities of the campus are usually residences and
administrational buildings as well as student services and a campus bank.
Further inside are all the faculty buildings circling each other, and finally in the
heart the sports center, formally known as the PEPS consisting of one
underground training center with different branches for each floor, two football
fields (American Football), one stadium, one hockey arena and one swimming
hall with Olympic Games measures. The campus itself is very large in size,
hosting 35 000 students in total. Since I did not have much contact with other
faculties than my own Faculté des Affaires/Faculty of Administration I am not
entirely sure of all faculty branches overall of the school itself. However those
that I am familiar with are Pharmacy, Medicine, Architecture, Forestry,
Engineering and Applied Sciences, Biology, and Art. I can’t give an overall
estimate of all exchange students at Laval University but my faculty hosted about
300-350 exchange students at the time I was enrolled there.
The study structure in Canada is very different from what we are used to in
Norway. The contents of each course are not as complex as what we know from
studying in Norway, but the workload is considerably heavier. Furthermore, the
course results are not entirely dependent on the final exam as it is at BI, but
rather spread out on different tasks and tests throughout the semester such as
home assignments, class presentations, term projects, mid-terms, quizzes and
class participation! Also when studying, the professors put a lot of emphasis on
theory rather than hands-on learning. Reading the course literature is preferred
instead of working on exercises as I was used to do at BI.
Course registration
I registered for courses before the end of the last semester before the exchange,
however difficulties occurred upon arrival since one of the required courses
(Applied Science/Business Methodology course) was cancelled due to a low
amount of participating students, thus forcing me to choose the only alternative
course that could be approved as a business methodology course. This new
alternative course clashed with the lecture hours of another course in which I
personally wanted to participate in and was left with no choice but to cancel and
replace with another. This particular process was quite stressful and could have
been avoided if administrational measures on both parts coincided.
The University had a period of two weeks for dropping and adding courses.
Academic Calendar
Arrival date:
First day of the semester:
Last day of classes:
Examination period:
Any
special
events/holidays:
27.09.12
07.09.12
08.12.12
10 Days
Reading Week: Break
end
October,
beginning November.
Other:
Arrival
The administration and faculty was very well prepared for our arrival, they even
arranged for complementary transport for those having trouble at the airports
whether it was Quebec or Montreal. There were vigorous information meetings
held the first two days making sure we didn’t miss out on any important notices.
We were also given free meals the first week of integration.
The school’s integration week of the international students is basically the very
same as the one we have at BI, however here the students/buddies worked more
closely with the faculty administration and made sure that messages from the
school administration itself go out to the new students. The introduction week
did also however focus more on overall activities, not only partying as we
emphasize at BI’s “Fadderullan”. Daytime activities involved hiking trips, rafting,
mini-golf, guided tours around the city, sports and a night cruise. Evening
activities were quite similar to the introduction week at BI.
The International Office
The school has an international office which is open every day with two
professors who solely in charge of the international students at the faculty, as
well as an international office in the administrations offices which handles the
entire international environment at the University.
Usually if one had questions, one would have to visit these offices or write to
them for questioning and information, because they rarely sent out emails by
themselves. The University’s administration is very thorough with handing out
emails with useful info, but these are usually in French.
Promoting BI and Norway
Halfway through the semester I participated in an exchange cocktail with the
faculty administration where the exchange students met local students who
were prospective exchange students for the coming semester. This was the only
official event on this matter so attendance was very important. No other chance
for promotion of Norway at my host school was given.
Social Activities
I developed close ties with the other exchange students from very early on; the
local students took a little more time. However the students were usually very
outgoing and open towards newcomers such as myself at the time so making
friends in Quebec was the easiest challenge I encountered during my semester
abroad. There were several student organizations on the campus related to the
different establishments. The one I was closest to was the CAI (Centre d’Activies
Internationales), which was the international student organization at my
particular faculty. This is managed by international full-time students at Laval in
general. The organization plans weekly social events for the exchange students. I
can’t single out any special events since gatherings were arranged constantly; we
even received a pamphlet in the beginning of the semester with a full overview of
every week from start to the end of the semester stating 3-4 activities every
week.
3. Academics
In the classroom
The teaching style was usually by slides on PowerPoint with local real life
examples every now and then. Since I selected English courses, the lectures were
entirely in English. Some of the professors were even Americans, making
communications easier.
The level of individual work hours after lectures is not as intense as in BI,
although the workload is considerably heavier per week due to consistent
amounts of assignments throughout the semester and not just studying for a
final exam. The lectures themselves are theoretical in general. However the
lecturers involve weekly casework intended for outside of class where the
emphasis is teamwork. In fact, Laval University is known for its rigorous
employment of teamwork practices in classes. The professors are very open to
help individual students and usually have their offices open for visits five days a
week. This helped give a good learning environment as well as a good professor
to student relationship. Since there is so much schoolwork depending on abilities
to work in teams, the relationships among students in class were strengthened
significantly.
Course Materials
The course literature was in general similar to what I was used to at BI, since BI
employs a lot of books by Canadian publishing companies. The only differences
was some online simulation course exercises as the American program called
Country Manager, and the social network Jellyfields.com two of the courses I
enrolled in. All learning material had English language. Since we had wide range
of course material, they were mainly used for broad overview analyses in the
course. Some courses spent more time in lectures employing some knowledge of
the books to solve cases, and thus using more time on the cases themselves
rather than in-depth theory of each subject.
Exams
The exams were solely based on what the professor had covered throughout the
lectures.
Each course was evaluated by a multiple-choice final exam with some written
exercises, mid-terms (multiple-choice test, class presentation or home
assignment), monthly quizzes (both in, class and home), home
assignments/hand-ins, team presentations, class participation and attendance.
Infrastructure
The campus library is open for all students and usually 24 hours a day
throughout the semester, and all campus institutions have computer-labs
available as well. Outside of class, all teaching, information, messaging was held
electronically.
Description of Courses
Course code & Master/
name
Bachelor
ADM-3104:
Bachelor
Strategic
Management
Exam form
Prerequis
ites
3-hour mixed None
Multiplechoice
and
written exam
Approved
as
Mandatory
GSF-4038:
Venture
Capital
3-hour
Multiplechoice exam
Financial
Manageme
nt 1 & 2
Elective
MRK-2111:
Bachelor
Sales
Force
Management
3-hour mixed Marketing
multipleManageme
choice
and nt
written exam.
Elective
MRK-3102:
International
Marketing
Bachelor
3-hour
written exam
Elective
MRK-3107:
Simulation:
Bachelor
Written team Internatio
assignment
nal
Master
Marketing
Manageme
nt
Mandatory
Comments
Very
relevant
course. Has been
useful in other
courses enrolled in
as well.
Interesting subject,
however a little
difficult to grasp in
the beginning, as I
had not enrolled in
any Entrepreneur
courses previously.
Was not my first
choice of course due
to
the
mix-up
between courses in
the beginning of the
semester, however
very relevant and
academically
satisfying
subject
for those pursuing a
business career.
Not by choice, I was
obliged to take this
course in order to
be approved for the
simulation course
which
I
was
required to take by
BI.
Very
timeconsuming
and
Development
of
Global
Markets
with follow- Marketing
up
class
presentation
difficult subject that
requires a lot of
work weekly. The
simulation applied
in this course rolls
throughout
the
semester and can’t
be paused, it is
therefore necessary
to work with up to
8-10 hours every
week, in order to
not fall behind. This
could at times affect
the necessary time
spent on other
courses.