Our studies in Avans

The main objective of an Erasmus placement is the studies in a foreign school. Here, in Avans, there are several courses that we follow. During three months, we study with first year students and also with second year students from the Environment wing of the university.

We participate at 3 of the first year students' courses : Environmental geography, Fate and transport of pollutants and Project Water Quality.

• The Environmental geography is a course about geology and the environment, where we study the plates tectonic, volcanoes...
• Fate and transport of pollutants is a very scientific course, where we work on pollutant spills by using physics, chemistry and mathematics.
• The Project Water Quality is the most important part of our studies in the Netherlands. All the franch students are separated in pairs in different group of students, and all the groups have to work on a project about the water quality. The subject of the project is that all the holiday-makers spending time in a vacation park are sick, but nobody know why, maybe because of the water. So, in each group, we are again divided in three groups working on a specific subtask : microbiology or chemistry, where we analyse the water of the Lake of the vacation park, and modeling, where we make models on the treatment capacity of a wastewater treatmant plant. Also, we do several 2 meetings per week during 8 weeks in order to communicate with our fellow students.

Second year students have also three communal courses : Environmental communication, Soil sciences and Biodiversity.

• Environmental communication is a course where we learn how to communicate with people in order to solve an environmental issue. During the Quarter (half of a Semester), we manage a project in which we have to create a survey and a message design (video, poster...) to convince people to act differently on a specific behavior that they can have in Avans.
• In Soil sciences, we study the same general domain as in Environmental geography, but more accuratly about minerals, Earth's components, how to manage a pollution...
• In Biodiversity, we study the biology, so we learn many things about animals, plants, micro-organisms, and on humans' body.

We have a last course, but in this one there are only ESAIP students, none foreigners. This is an English course. We have this course scheduled because we are french so our english skills are known to be poor, and because an Erasmus placement is lived to learn english better. So, in this last course, we did several oral presentations and a meeting on a professional subject in order to improve our professional skills if we would have to lead a meeting or to speak in front of people better.