The German Academic Exchange Service has funded more than 2.8 million students, researchers, and artists in Germany and abroad since 1950. Unfortunately, these classical mobility schemes are facing - and partially aggravating - global challenges like climate change, the pandemic, or providing equal opportunities to receive quality education throughout all social layers across the globe. Diversifying international exchange through the development of digital learning and teaching scenarios as well as the digitalization of cooperative processes therefore becomes more and more important for a sustainable future.
With funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, DAAD’s digitalization programs International Mobility and Cooperation Digital (IMKD), International Programmes Digital (IP Digital) and International Virtual Academic Collaboration (IVAC) IMKD, IP Digital, and IVAC have contributed to the digital transformation of Germany’s higher education sector on various levels. 147 projects have been conducted in these three programs and enabled German universities as well as their international partners to digitalize administrative processes, international master study programs, and curricula.
After a short introduction of the three programs, we will reflect on the learnings we acquired from single projects. What challenges did they face? In which areas do universities require more support? Which structures and funding mechanisms could help universities in reaching their internationalization and digitalization objectives? We rely on knowledge and best practices derived from networking and community building activities of our funded projects, which have been collected over the last 18 months. Furthermore, we can share preliminary study results of our comprehensive study on IMKD, IP Digital, and IVAC.