Students and lecturers from The Hague University of Applied Sciences were guests at FHWien der WKW for the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) final event.
Images: © FHWien der WKW I Holly Kellner
The initiative “Internationalization@home” of FHWien der WKW promotes collaborative online learning and international teamwork in teaching. In so-called Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects, students from two universities work together in virtual teams. In doing so, they learn to deal with intercultural challenges, to include different ways of working and time management, and to develop solutions to improve the team processes.
Teamwork with the Netherlands
The COIL project in the summer semester 2023 took place in cooperation with The Hague University of Applied Sciences. As part of the “Public Relations” lecture, 50 Dutch students from the second-year Business Administration program worked together with our 40 full-time students from the Bachelor’s program in Corporate Communication (full-time, 2nd semester).
In a virtual kick-off event in April, the students introduced themselves, their country, and their university of applied sciences by a short video presentation. Over a period of six weeks, a total of 16 international groups worked together in five additional online courses to develop proposals on sustainability aspects in restaurants. The focus was not only on professional competence, but also on reflecting on challenges in intercultural and virtual teamwork. Throughout the duration of the project, the teams were coached by the lecturers Simone Zwickl from FHWien der WKW and Henk Chin, Carolien van Gent and Ines Marzouki from The Hague University of Applied Sciences.
Restaurants’ value chains under inspection
The groups selected restaurants in Vienna and The Hague that have integrated sustainability aspects into their strategy and picked one product from each. The Dutch students had the task of calculating the CO2 emissions of the two products (production and supply chain), while our students developed concepts for sustainability communication.
Final Presentations in Vienna
The highlight of the project was the visit of the Dutch students at FHWien der WKW. On June 1, all 16 teams presented the results of their value chain research, suggestions for improvement in terms of CO2 emissions, communication measures, and their reflection on team processes. The students from both universities were able to demonstrate not only their professional competence during the successful final presentations, but also their ability to deal with the challenges of working together in virtual international teams.
Simone Zwickl, organizer and lecturer from the Communication Management study programs, is delighted with the results:
“The students from both participating universities have shown that they can overcome cultural differences and have made impressive presentations with suggestions for improvement of sustainability. COIL projects are an important part of Internationalization@home, as students gain first experiences of working in virtual, international teams.”