2022-12-01 –, Stage 2, Einstein-Saal, BBAW
Virtual exchange and blended mobility allow international educational formats which have been impossible or inefficient with only physical mobility, e.g. concepts with several short interactions or with high numbers of students. Within the DAAD programme “international mobility and cooperation – digital (IMKD)” universities implemented and evaluated such new virtual or blended formats. The panel will discuss examples and best practices.
Five universities participating in the DAAD-program International Mobility and Cooperation through Digitalisation (IMKD) present examples of how they lead students into an international virtual exchange using didactic, technical & administrative means. They will give insights into their individual approaches, explain underlying considerations & assess their results from different perspectives.
Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences will present their course "Social Work in Times of Crisis" in which Bielefeld UAS collaborated with Gothenburg University. Students from both universities learned and blogged about international challenges for social workers in their countries, comparing their different approaches to the covid pandemic.
Dortmund University of Applied Sciences conducts students’ projects as virtual cross-border projects with internationally mixed teams, using agile methods and digital tools. This creates work-related team situations while inherently training digital and project skills. Such projects can last from one week to one semester, including also physical mobility.
The University of Göttingen has implemented interdisciplinary courses in Life Sciences where students from the liveSciences³ partner universities prepare online in mixed international teams for later on-site excursions in Chile and Bosnia-Herzegovina. During the excursions and as part of the exams, students are encouraged to report in blogs and guided to prepare educational videos.
Technische Universität Berlin has conducted two interdisciplinary and international schools "Smart Sensing" & "Smart Cities" including a hackathon within the IMKD project. During various repetitions in both fully online and blended formats, the schools have been carefully evaluated and constantly further developed.
Since 2011, the Ludwigsburg University of Education and Helwan University (Cairo) have been offering a joint blended learning study program. The creation of online teaching materials requires attuned sense-making processes within the producing and the teaching teams.
Juana Salas is a project coordinator working at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences (UAS) where she takes care of the DAAD-funded project „Digital Mobil @ FH Bielefeld“ that seeks to systematically combine the cross-cutting issues of internationalization and digitalization to incentivize digitally supported transnational teaching and prepare students for an increasingly globalized working environment.
Before working at UAS, she coordinated an extensive first-year program focused on mathematical, literary and data competencies as well as Peer Learning approaches, counselling, didactic courses for university teachers and student data analysis. Her scientific background is in conference interpreting and computational linguistics.
Since 2020 liveSciences³ IMKD project coordinator at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen; passionate about designing open international learning opportunities and facilitating student mobility with digital services.