Lecturers' and students' feedback

 

Douglas Johnston

"The Virtual Academy is valuable for doing work in advance to face-to-face interaction. Students get to know each other and discover similarities as well as differences in their experiences as students.  We also are able to do more background work, making the team interactions richer and more productive. The Virtual Academy allows us to have much more interaction than we would have the time or financial resources to accomplish otherwise." 

Elena Teise

"The course sensitized me to compare different landscape arcitectural frameworks, to look at them from different prespectives and to understand them holistically. Unexpectedly, I also gained a deeper understanding of landscape-related strategies in Germany. For example, comparing the different countries showed me that applied measures often have a historical origin. What I liked most was when someone shared informal details such as what they experienced at work or in their studies. I would recommend an international collaborative course to anyone who wants to think outside the box and develop their English and especially their communication skills." 

stefan taeger

"Of course, some aspects are not comparable with a face-to-face event, but there are also clear advantages: For example, we save ourselves a very long journey and costs. These are actually reasons why some students are able to participate at all. That's particularly valuable. The special challenge for a spatial planning discipline such as landscape architecture will be to create a similar virtual immersion effect for the German participants in the following workshop phase in a project area in the USA and to implement cooperative planning in an exclusively virtual environment. The incentive for this is that in the future this format will also enable international experiences for students who cannot or do not want to undertake long-distance travel." 

clemens westerkamp

 "Although all participants had the same technical components, the spatial distance is naturally a particular challenge with a technical topic. But the students got involved with this unusual situation very well and have already come up with exciting results. One might have suspected that communication would be made more difficult, but it worked very well among the students." 

edgar barranco

 "In the beginning, I was worried about the language difference, but I was surprised of how well the students and the instructors dominated the English language. I was also surprised that despite being on a different continent, the embedded applications that the students were developing could also apply to the U.S. I would recommend that other students enroll in international collaboration courses because I feel that it will help prepare them for the global business world where it is common to have to work with teams that are located in different countries." 

nicolas lampe

 "As part of the cooperation between Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences and SUNY, we as teachers had the opportunity to teach the subject of IoT jointly this semester. Through the combination of lectures by teachers from both sides and practical programming tasks, the students themselves approached the topic of IoT in a practical way. In addition, we were able to give the students a first opportunity to present and also to practice interaction with international students. This is a great experience for their future professional career! For us teachers it was interesting how the culture influences the teaching, e.g. in the experimental design." 

 

sima azizi aghdam

"The virtual international course helped me meet new people and broaden my horizons. Through collaboration, I learned new ways of thinking which was very inspiring. I think that a pure theory course is not that effective, but when you experiment with other students, present your results in the course and explain the procedure, it increases the learning process. This activity has encouraged me to learn more about the German culture, education system, and the prevailing industry there, and to travel to Germany to see my new classmates."

patrick strunk

"The joint course is a nice change from everyday study, especially in times of Corona. In addition, learning other ways of working is good preparation for our later professional lifes, where we will certainly often work in an international composition."  

ronja spielmann

"Starting my studies, I was wondering what it would be like to work in the future with colleagues or business partners from other countries while speaking English. Getting to be a part of the COIL-project gave me a taste of what that would be like. At the end of our groupwork we all agreed on how much fun we had getting to know each other. We really liked working together and have invited each other to visit our cities and to spend some time together one day." 

Peter Ries

"The cross-border exchange was enriching for the teaching staff involved, as we were able to maintain international activities and get to know and learn from interesting new colleagues from the fields of teaching and administration. All participants took away only positive experiences from the joint project. From my point of view, nothing stands in the way of us continuining this project. In fact, there is much to be said for carrying out COIL projects outside of pandemic periods as well, in order to enable students who cannot for example afford a study abroad to benefit from international exchange." 

anika meyendorf

"I am really grateful to have been able to participate in this project. It was a great experience to have worked with students from the U.S., deepen my knowledge of the topic and encounter a new type of teaching format. I can only recommend the COIL Project to other students in the future! I enjoyed the COIL project very much and it exceeded my expectations. Especially in the difficult times of lockdown, when you don't have any face-to-face teaching and it is harder to exchange ideas with your fellow students, I found the opportunity to work on a topic with other students really great."

patricia hübscher

"The COIL-project was a great way for me to connect with other students, work together on a case, and share ideas. Each of us had a different perspective on the approach. It was interesting how our views varied and yet we settled on a common solution. The collaboration was constructive, with each individual contributing their share to the process."

yassmin hamade

"I was surprised by how well planned and structured the whole project was carried out by the leaders. The times were very reasonable. The online meetings couldn't have gone any better. It was a pleasure to be part of this COIL-project. I've learned a lot of new things. Above all, I was very surprised how well everything worked digitally and showed me that nowadays such projects can also work digitally and also be fun. I would definitely recommend other students to participate in COIL projects in the future."

xanti robinson alex

"What impressed me most was the willingness of every team member to make great efforts and the flexibility and coolness we showed when dealing with problems regarding the presentation. I had a great time experiencing this relatively new way to meet and work together with people from different universities in different countries. I am very thankful for having had this great chance to be part of the COIL-project 2021!"

Mariam Hamied

"I immediately took up this opportunity because it offered a great opportunity to study with students from another country. Within the project I wanted to expand my knowledge and improve my English skills. I especially liked the “Icebreaker“ activities where we got to know the other students. I would definitely take part in a similar project in the future and do not regret it at all!"

Matthias Rebhan

"The joint teaching with a colleague from SUNY brought large benefit both for the students and for us lecturers. The students realised our different backgrounds and approaches but also that we worked well together and supplemented each other. Within their project teams our students cooperated with international students where they made similar experience. This was great success for the students and it was also encouraging for future projects."

Rita Biswas

"Despite the challenges of the pandemic, students at both Hochschule Bremen and University at Albany were able to participate in an exciting inter-cultural exercise. Through several synchronous joint sessions across continents and a few "practice sessions" students from both Schools formed teams, culminating in the final graded session where they role-played as either the acquiring firm (Blackstone) or the target firm (Celanese) in a challenging Mergers and Acquisitions Valuation Simulation Game exercise. The students surprised us and themselves at how seamless and smoothly their cross-country collaboration worked out and how much fun they had negotiating the cross-border acquisition deal! Let's do this again!"

Piet Schimke

"The course design was very appealing to me and very interesting thanks to interactive assignments. We have been given two exciting tasks: The first was to create a photojournal. The idea was to visit and photograph places where negative or positive effects on air quality can be observed. It's exciting to walk through your own city with a completely different perspective. The second task was a case study on how the air quality changed during the lockdown last year. The results from German cities were compared with cities from the US. Thereby, we explored exciting aspects of the topic and gained intercultural experience in international teams. It's been an enriching experience for me."