ERASMUS+ short-term mobilities for the expansion of international teaching at the Faculty of Business and Economics

New ways back into the presence! In the summer semester 2023, the Chair of Information Management offers for the first time an international project module "Case study development for COIL projects" in English for the acquisition of 5 ECTS in the Master and Diploma programs at the Faculty of Business and Economics, in which "the best of 2 worlds" - presence and online - is arranged in an innovative blended learning format. Together with 15 guests from EPOKA University in Tirana, Albania, students of the faculty will complete two one-week workshop blocks in internationally mixed working groups, once in Dresden, once in Tirana, which will be linked by a longer online collaboration phase. The task is to develop case scenarios for collaborative online learning, to make them available as OER (open educational resources) and to test OEP (open educational practices) in the process. 

Initial situation 

At the latest since the pandemic-related lockdown in recent years, there has been an urgent call for change in the way we learn and how higher education didactics must therefore evolve. For example, as early as 2008, Coyne urged, "Universities: think about what jobs your students can get if they follow your courses." (Coyne, 2008). With a view to the Nomadic Knowledge Worker (Perez-Sabater et al., 2015), Trilling & Fadel called for the development of so-called 21st Century Skills as early as 2009, currently provided in detail and in a structured manner by the European Union as the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.2; Vuorikari et al., 2022). For the targeted further development of higher education didactics to ensure digital competencies in the context of the ongoing transformation of society, organizations, business models, and business processes, the European Union proposes the DigCompEdu Framework (Redecker, 2017) as a framework for action.  

Presence or online? 

With the offer of interactive, self-directed online learning formats aimed at the development of digital competence to complement digitally provided learning materials and purely videoconference-based lectures, good experience could be gained at the Chair of Information Management during the lockdown based on the previously established VCL framework (virtual collaborative learning) (Schoop et al., 2021). However, many aspects of an Academia in Presence cannot be replicated online and cannot be compensated by new potentials (e.g., forming ad hoc group workspaces, working collaboratively on whiteboards, recording meetings via mouse click, etc.).  

The question thus arises as to how the path back to presence in everyday academic teaching can be designed without leaving behind the experiences and advantages of digitality that have been gained. The project module presented here is intended to combine both perspectives in an innovative blended learning arrangement and additionally provide new impulses for the internationalization of teaching at the faculty. 

Goal 

In a formal, learner-centered socio-technical arrangement, ECTS credits and grades are acquired collaboratively, both in presence and online. The focus is on collaborative learning processes among students. The instructors do not so much impart content, but rather provide impetus and are to assist the students in a moderating/advisory capacity in their problem-solving. The primary learning goal is the independent further development of competencies in the areas of teamwork, interdisciplinarity and internationality/interculturality, as well as digitality on the basis of a constructivist learning theory (Connectivism: Siemens, 2005). 

Concept 

Students from different disciplines and of different nationalities take up the perspective of teachers on student learning processes. They work together in international and interdisciplinary mixed working groups to develop artifacts. These shall be made available as OER (open educational resources) for case-based learning. Realistic, authentic case scenarios (cases) are to be created with tasks derived from them, which are to be fulfilled in mixed learning groups in specified periods of time (usually weekly) with the help of tools deemed suitable. These artifacts are used in COIL projects (collaborative online international learning) lasting several months as an interactive, tele-tutorially accompanied format supported by learning analytics. 

Implementation 

The course will be implemented for the first time in the summer semester 2023 as a formal, international blended learning project based on alternating physical and virtual mobility of students. It enables the acquisition of five ECTS credits through group work. About 30 students (Master/Diplom) will be divided into six mixed learning groups, 15 from TU Dresden and 15 from EPOKA University in Tirana, Albania. The financial support is based on an Erasmus+ contract which has been in place since 2022, including so-called short-term mobilities (about one week). In the first week of April, workshops are held at the TU Dresden in presence to familiarize the groups with the COIL concept to be addressed, where the students get to know each other, develop initial idea sketches and agree on their work plans for the following collaborative work steps, which are to be carried out online using Microsoft Teams, Miro and other suitable digital apps. After eight weeks of their own COIL experience, the 30 students will meet again, this time in Tirana, and present their work results in further workshops, conduct mutual peer reviews, and make their final cases, tasks, tools, and proposed solutions available as OER on a shared repository. In the process, a specially designed OEP sprint (open educational practices) for promoting "participation and self-organization in teaching and learning processes under the conditions of digitalization and digitality" (OEP Guide, 2019) will be tested. 

Expectation 

The change from physical to virtual and again to physical mobility should, in addition to the motivation to get to know another country with a different (learning) culture, in particular exploit the respective strengths of the formats: 

• Presence: rapid establishment of mutual trust, creation of commitment, alignment of individual competencies and interests, intensive coordination of goals and processes "at the round table", targeted use of methods to support group work. 

• Online: Expansion of digital competencies, especially in project management, self-direction, active familiarization with the COIL format for which the case scenarios are designed, with feedback on the joint design process of the case scenarios, preparation for the OEP sprint in the final week, which again takes place in presence. 

Accompanying evaluation will assess the achievement of objectives and the cost-benefit ratio of the new event format and draw conclusions for future adaptations in organizational, didactic and technical respects and document them in the context of suitable publications. 

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) 

Literatur/Literature 

Coyne, D. (2008): Employability: The Employers’ Perspective and its Implications Bologna Process Employability. In: Bologna Process Seminar. Online verfügbar unter http://www.aic.lv/bolona/2007_09/sem07_09/Luxemb_employ/Plenary1_DavidCoyne.pdf (Zugriff am 07.03.2023). 

OEP-Guide (2019). https://oep.guide/wp-content/uploads/OEP-Guide2019.pdf (Zugriff am 14.03.2023). 

Perez-Sabater, C., Montero-Fleta, B., MacDonald, P. u. A. Garcia-Carbonell (2015): Modernizing education: The challenge of the European project CoMoViWo. In: Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 197, S. 1647–1652. 

Redecker, C. (2017): European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. Hrsg. v. Y. Punie. Luxemburg: Publications Office of the European Union. Online verfügbar unter https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC107466 (Zugriff am 07.03.2023). 

Schoop, E., Clauss, A. u. A. A. Safavi (2020): A Framework to Boost Virtual Exchange through International Virtual Collaborative Learning: The German-Iranian Example. In DAAD (Hrsg): Virtual Exchange. Borderless Mobility between the European Higher Education Area and Regions Beyond. Selection of Conference Papers, Berlin 12/2019. Online verfügbar unter https://www.daad.de/kataloge/epaper-daadkonferenzband/#18 (Zugriff am 07.03.2023). 

Schoop, E., Sonntag, R., Altmann, M. & Sattler, W. (2021): Imagine it’s ”Corona“ – and no one has noticed. In: TU Dresden, Proceedings zur Lessons Learned 2 – Spin Offs digitaler Lehrerfahrungen, S. 107-115. https://doi.org/10.25369/ll.v1i1/2.33  

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2 (1) 

Trilling, B. u. C. Fadel (2009): 21st Century Skills. Learning for Life in Our Times. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. 

Vuorikari, R., Kluzer, S. and Punie, Y., DigComp 2.2: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens - With new examples of knowledge, skills and attitudes, EUR 31006 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2022, ISBN 978-92-76-48882-8, doi:10.2760/115376, JRC128415.