Together apart – how to train intercultural competences in an academic environment

Innovative Project idea

The innovation of this projects is guaranteed by different factors:

• Scalability and inclusivity → Expanding the reach and scope of physical exchange programs.
• Experiential learning in shared classroom environment → Building and enhancing intercultural competencies by experiencing first-hand communication and collaboration with people with different ideas and backgrounds.
• Community of trust → Providing a safe space where people feel heard and respected and develop the confidence to think critically about their own perspectives.
• Learner-led approach → Empowering people to lead the dialogue, seek mutual understanding and co-create knowledge, based on their own experiences.

Added value for students or teaching

The teaching revenue of this project is threefold: first by training intercultural competences and getting fit for the globalized work market, second by enhancing digital competences of the students and lecturers and third by foster an efficient way of internationalization of teaching & intercultural exchange, also by including the idea of Internationalization@home. The concept opens new avenues for internationalization, however, as the format allows long-distance collaboration between students from different universities. We plan one seminar each semester for two consecutive years, starting in spring 2025. Two seminars will be 100% digital, two will be 100% analog. At maximum 25 – 30 students can participate in class. The analog format would allow for 25 students from UZH, the digital format for 15 students/each partner University. Therefore almost 60 students/year could benefit from this collaboration - 120 for the whole project.