Internationalising education – Cross-country co-teaching among European higher education institutions

Abstract

Many lecturers preach teamwork, but they do not practice it by sharing responsibility for classes. Particularly in a transnational context, inputs from lecturers and learners from various countries might be beneficial for students' learning. This paper asks the question: How can higher education institutions (HEI) set up cross-country and cross-HEI co-teaching to facilitate the transfer of host and home country knowledge? The authors provide insights into a transnational co-teaching project that partly relies on virtual distance learning across countries. This real-life project supports small and medium sized enterprises in their international endeavours with the support of lecturers and student teams from the respective host countries as well as their home countries. The authors discuss advantages and disadvantages of cross-country and cross-HEI co-teaching in comparison to traditional teaching methods. Furthermore, the authors elaborate on the impact of virtual distance learning in comparison to in-class teaching at a single physical location. Due to the international nature of the project, it mainly relies on distance learning that can be very effective when implemented correctly. The paper provides lessons learned from the project that might be beneficial for lecturers with and without international components in their teaching.

Team-Teaching in a Matrix Style: Addressing wicked-problems of MNEs in the context of sustainability

“…The first challenge let us to try out a team-teaching approach, as team-teaching contributes to an improved teaching strategy planning (Marzocchi, Druken, & Brye, 2021), motivation and skill learning among students (Minett-Smith & Davis, 2020;Vesikivi, Lakkala, Holvikivi, & Muukkonen, 2019). Two of us had first experience in co-teaching (Wohlgemuth, Saulich, & Lehmann, 2019), but none of us had experience with a full teamteaching approach, especially as our administrative procedures disincentives team-teaching (Wohlgemuth, Lehmann, & Ammeraal, 2020). Each of us would get only a third of the course accredited in her teaching hours, hence, all hours spent jointly in class would be unaccredited teaching obligation for us.…”

Challenges in Higher Education Teaching Collaborations – a CAGE distance framework analysis

“…Although, the European credit transfer system (ECTS) aims to ensure a comparable workload for students, the workload expectations differed substantially across countries. Resolving those situations early on and discussing the progress of both teams and the quality of their work regularly is crucial to avoid misunderstandings (Wohlgemuth et al, 2019).…”

“…The internationalisation of teaching activities is also beneficial for the teaching staff. Besides the learning opportunities that also applies to students, lecturers can develop their networks, tap complementary knowledge, and get inspired through the exposure to different teaching methods across countries (Wohlgemuth, Saulich, & Lehmann, 2019).…”