NordPath

Network for co-creating new paths for Nordic internationalization in higher education

Students in the Nordic countries need to be better equipped for an international labor market, and the development of a new virtual course in intercultural communicative competences is intended to support that goal.

The University of Copenhagen has therefore participated in a Nordplus-funded project titled “NordPath – Network for co-creating new paths for Nordic internationalization in higher education.”

The project ran from June 2021 to August 2024 and aimed to develop a virtual course in intercultural competences that students from the participating countries could attend together. CIP took part in this work alongside universities in Stockholm, Iceland, and Finland.

Throughout the project, the universities collected and compared experiences with the use of intercultural communicative competences across institutions in order to create the best possible foundation for the new joint virtual course.

The course was pilot-tested in spring 2023 and was offered across the four universities in autumn 2024 under the title: "Interacting across cultures: developing awareness, critical reflection and skills". 

In parallel, the project also aimed to strengthen collaboration and build networks among the international coordinators from the participating universities, ensuring improved opportunities for internationalization across the Nordic region in the future.

After the project’s conclusion, the partners have worked on integrating the developed course into existing educational offerings and sharing experiences with universities interested in creating similar digital opportunities for students.

 

In the first phase of the project, the partners presented and benchmarked each other’s best practices in intercultural communicative competence and collect information to a shared platform.

In the second phase, the partners planned the course building on experience and already existing courses but with a special focus on practical, hands-on collaboration activities taking place in an online classroom. In this phase, partners also defined the scope and structure of the course and the needs for the learning platform where the course was jointly organized.

In the third phase, the partners developed and prepared the course materials as well as an implementation guideline. The partners also planned and arranged the practicalities for the implementation of the joint virtual course, includning when and how the teaching as well as examination could take place. Finally, steps were taken in order to secure materials for further use of the course

 

 

The University of Helsinki was the project manager.

At UCPH, the project was coordinated by the Department for Education & Student Services at the Faculty of Humanities. CIP  contributed to the design of the online course in intercultural communicative competences by sharing experiences from former projects that focused on language and internationalization, such as “The International Classroom” and “The Language Strategy”.

Other project partners were University of Stockholm and University of Iceland.

A range of meetings hosted by each project partner were planned and carried out throughout the project period.

You can follow the progress of the project at the Nordpath site at LinkedIn.