Motivations and Expectations of Students’ Mobility Abroad: A Mapping Technique

Internationalization of higher education is a rapidly rising phenomenon and it has become a priority in the European education policy. At the same time, research in this area is expanding with the aim of understanding motivations and potential benefits of international students’ mobility. Within this context, the purpose of our contribution is to analyse students’ motivations and the fulfillment of their expectations about the mobility experience abroad. To this aim, we have conducted an on-line survey addressed to a sample of about 1300 Italian students enrolled in a medium size university (the University of Bergamo) with outward mobility experiences during the six academic years from 2008/2009 to 2013/2014. To assess the results of the survey, we propose a mapping of the answer variables using the VOSviewer software.