Virtual Student Interaction

Digital competences of employees are essential for the modern workplace. In addition, the ability for virtual collaboration in teams with intercultural background is highly demanded by employers all over the globe. Thus, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) offer their students the ability to study abroad to gain intercultural competences.

In recent years, a rising number of HEIs have embedded virtual exchange modules in their courses, enabling students to collaborate internationally and work together on projects with students from other universities, even when not able to leave their home countries for longer periods. However, when embedding virtual, collaborative modules between two or more courses of different HEIs, lecturers face different incompatibilities and obstacles, often preventing collaboration in the first place.

This work presents two concepts for virtual exchange (peer consulting, expert consulting) and describes how lecturers can embed collaborative modules with students from partner universities in their courses, avoiding or at least limiting mentioned incompatibilities and obstacles, with lessened coupling and interdependencies within the students’ projects.

The concluding section provides experience reports of practical applications of these two concepts and will be continually updated.

Read the Virtual Student Interaction concept!