Prof. Dr. Alexandra Angress
TH Aschaffenburg - Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences
About
Alexandra Angress is a professor of Business English and international coordinator for the Faculty of Business Administation and Law of TH Aschaffenburg. She is one of the initiators of the university's Global Master School and a member of the Institute for Intercultural Communication. She has been expert for the EU and DAAD the field of international education and European integration and has been appointed HEI representative in the ASEM Education Process (as part of the Asia-Europe Meetings (https://asem-education.org/about/asem-education-process/).Sessions
On-line presentation (research report on practice and activities) (30 minutes) Asian-European COIL Revisited: Why think small when you can do BIG X-Culture COIL? more
Sat, Nov 27, 14:40-15:10 Asia/Tokyo
This presentation will deal with a best-practice example of the successful large-scale application of this year’s conference motto “collaboration and leadership in intercultural contexts” in higher education with a special focus and Asia and Europe. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), student teams from a German university were asked to design and pilot COIL (collaborative online international learning) activities with altogether seven Asian partner countries (including Japan) and eleven participating Asian universities (three of these being Japanese ones), targeting students and teaching staff from both regions (Asia and Europe). The COIL’s topic needed to be in line with the master course’s learning outcomes relating to intercultural communication and collaboration such as virtual team work and leadership across cultures in challenging times etc. Regarding the collaborative live online session, student teams were free to choose an approach they considered suitable and which allowed the integration of online collaborative tools encountered in class or beyond thanks also to their peers in Asia (e.g. video, quizzes, games etc.). The students’ seminar papers also built on this practical contribution by drawing on a suitable theoretical body of cultural approaches and frameworks encountered throughout the term. How such a major COIL project can be conducted successfully and to what extent it can serve as a direct contribution to promoting mutual understanding in the area of education and training between Asia and Europa in challenging times will be discussed in this presentation. Project success factors and pitfalls will be outlined and the results of a comprehensive post-COIL survey on the project’s impact on students’ cross-cultural skills in their role of future co-workers and company leaders will be presented.
