BADGE: Global competence for sustainable internationalisation in engineering education

This paper presents a new Erasmus+ funded project, Becoming a digital global engineer (BADGE2020). The project is a three-year collaboration between language and communication teachers at14 technical universities and engineering departments in 12 countries, with partners representingindustry, consultants, educational organizations and students. The rationale behind the project isthe recognition of two facts: the ever-increasing need for global competence among engineeringgraduates and professionals (Parkinson 2009, OECD 2018), and the need to boost and adjustcommunication and language for specific purposes (LSP) teaching to better support sustainableinternationalisation, acknowledging multiculturality and multilingualism.The project was initiated from within a larger network of language and communication teachers attechnical universities in Europe (GELS 2020), established in 2015 to “enhance future engineers’language skills in order to prepare them for the increasingly challenging demands of a globalisedmarket”, and is divided into 8 intellectual outputs: communication course for future engineers,sustainable writing skills for engineers, e-communication skills, global competence andentrepreneurship, podcasting and video casting architecture, soft skills for engineering students,and global competence through IT and serious games.Working in 8 transnational teams, we will develop learning material ranging from course syllabiand exercises, to handbooks and pods, to be made freely available for download and localmodification as open educational resources. Furthermore, the material will be connected to asystem of digital badges that can be used as a supplement to official degree diplomas.

References

BAGDE (2020) The Badge Project www.thebadgeproject.eu, accessed 2020-03-25

GELS (2020) The GELS network www.clic.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/GELS, accessed 2020-03-25

OECD (2018) Preparing our youth for an inclusive and sustainable world. The OECD PISAglobal competence framework www.oecd.org/education/Global-competency-for-an-inclusiveworld.pdf, accessed 2020-03-25

Parkinson, A. (2009) “The Rationale for Developing Global Competence” Online Journal forGlobal Engineering Education: Vol. 4: Iss. 2, Article 2.digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=ojgee, accessed 2020-03-25

Note on authorship

As equal authors and in alphabetical order: Katja Auffret (IMT Mines Albi-Carmaux, École Mines-Télécom,France), Teresa Geslin (Université de Lorraine, France), Ivana Jurković (Veleučilište u Bjelovaru, Croatia), BjörnKjellgren (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden), Freddi Maria (Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy), SaulePetroniene (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania), Jamie Rinder (KTH Royal Institute of Technology,Sweden), David Tual (Cambridge University, United Kingdom).

An essential guide for all students studying for a Master's degree in social work, whether they have come directly from their undergraduate studies or after a period of employment. 

This book focuses specifically on the skills needed to study social work at Master's level, helping students get to grips with the academic rigour required at this higher level of study. This includes research skills, writing style, tone, the emphasis on self-reflection and the need to communicate in both academic and professional contexts. Pedagogical features and activities provide opportunities to explore, analyse and reflect on what has been learnt. The book will help cultivate a social practice approach to writing, raise awareness of the choices available, and aid understanding so that readers can produce the types of discourse required at Master’s level in social work. 

The recently launched KTH Guide to scientific writing in English emerged from the many discussions between teachers in Language and Communication and the wider KTH scientific writing community - students, lecturers and researchers - on the nature of effective scientific writing. As a result of these origins, the Guide is rooted in typical writing genres at KTH, and it draws on examples of these to provide guidance on the areas of sentence structure, punctuation, text flow and scientific style. Much of the focus in the Guide is on helping writers to make more informed choices, rather than simply follow rules. We hope to encourage them to explore their own preferences, and thus develop their own individual academic voice.

The KTH Guide to scientific writing was created with the aim of supporting students and faculty with scientific writing in English. The guide is rooted in the typical writing genres of a technical university, and draws on examples of these to explore sentence structure, punctuation, text flow, and scientific style. Since its launch, the guide has become an integral part of classroom practice in the department of Language and Communication, and an online resource for all students and faculty at KTH. This paper presents our findings from the first stage of our evaluation of the guide. The evaluation consists of a short reflective questionnaire for users. We have begun to collect responses to the questions, and to conduct an inductive thematic analysis (ITA) to identify emerging themes. 

KTH Språk & kommunikation samarbetade med ett företag och andra universitet för att ta fram en nätbaserad kurs som stödjer studenter som ska påbörja en engelskspråkig högskoleutbildning. Resultatet blev en nätbaserad kurs som fungerar mycket bra i en kontext där studenterna kommer från många olika program på olika campus och med begränsat utrymme för valfria kurser.

As a consequence of the Bologna Declaration, many European universities outside of Great Britain have instituted English-language Masters programs, enabling them to recruit not only students but also faculty on a global market.  New hires for tenure-track positions therefore often do not speak the local language. They join research groups whose working language is English, and teach courses in English-language Masters programs.  However, many of them are still expected to learn the local language in order to be able to teach courses also at Bachelors level.

At the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, there is a widespread assumption that two years should be enough time to allow new expatriate tenure-track faculty members to learn enough Swedish to be able to use the language for teaching. These two years coincide with the time they should be establishing their academic careers, publishing prolifically and developing their teaching skills. There is little evidence that any expatriate teachers are actually succeeding with the task of becoming proficient enough to teach in Swedish in the stipulated time period.

This paper presents results from a survey of expatriate faculty hired between 2013 and 2016.  Faculty were asked about what was expected of them in terms of teaching in Swedish, what support their departments provide to those ends, and their own ambitions and strategies for learning the language. The results are used to frame a proposal for a new university policy for support to expatriate faculty on their way to mastery of the local language.

Background and purpose  

The academic job market is becoming increasingly globalized. At KTH, English has become the working language in many environments, and transnationals can no longer rely on natural exposure to Swedish to help their learning process. Furthermore, for many possible reasons, some faculty may make conscious decisions not to spend time and effort learning the language. We have reached a point where departments are finding it difficult to staff courses that should be given in Swedish. Other challenges include a shrinking pool of faculty who can take on leadership positions, and emerging communication barriers between the university’s administration and faculty. Nor can non-Swedish speaking transnational faculty perform their vital mission of outreach to the community without translation services.

It has been perceived by some as a solution to set a time period within which the transnational should be able to perform functions, for example teach, in the local language. Often that time period is two years. From a language teacher’s perspective, this seems like an unreasonably high expectation, especially given that new tenure-track faculty are likely to be in the phase of life where they are building both their research careers and their families. They have in fact little or no free time, and yet it is in their free time that they are to find the hundreds of hours necessary to develop their Swedish to an advanced level.

The purpose of the work reported here was to find out how widespread the two-year expectation is in Northern Europe and at KTH. I was also interested in assessing what kind of progress KTH tenure-track faculty were making towards becoming proficient in Swedish, and what kind of institutional support they were receiving. 

Work done

In spring 2018 I conducted a brief review of job advertisements at top northern European universities for evidence that other employers also had these expectations. I also collected responses from 75 KTH colleagues who had been hired to tenure-track positions in the last five years, asking them about their knowledge of Swedish and what institutional expectations and support they were experiencing regarding learning the language if they were not already fluent. 

Results/Lessons learned

In brief, I found that across the Nordic region there is a widespread expectation that newly hired faculty should be able to teach in the local language after two years. About one third of new tenure-track faculty at KTH speak Swedish when hired.  Most transnational KTH hires were not hired with expectations that they learn Swedish in a short period of time, but at present, a quarter of them are expected to learn Swedish to a high level. They are largely expected to do their learning in their free time and are not making much progress.

Take-home message

Across the Nordic region there is concern about the implications of the fact that an increasing share of university employees are not proficient in the local language (Gregersen et al. 2018). However, placing demands on faculty and then not giving them a reasonable chance of meeting them is not a reasonable way forward. Best practice for adult language learning would indicate that at least a thousand hours of study are required for most adults to reach the skills necessary for professional purposes. If departments seriously expect transnational faculty to teach in Swedish within two years, they should allow the individual the equivalent of six months of full-time study of the language. A more reasonable time frame for learning high-proficiency Swedish would be five or six years. Language-learning plans should be written for all new hires to tenure-track positions, and followed up at regular intervals.

Reference 

Frans Gregersen et al., 2018. More parallel, please! Best practice of parallel language use at Nordic Universities: 11 recommendations. Nordic Council of Ministers.

The new KTH development plan acknowledges that many KTH environments are no longer bilingual, and that efforts must be made to strengthen the position of Swedish. Unfortunately, it appears that many KTH leaders underestimate the time and resources necessary for most adults to learn a second language to the high proficiency level necessary for teaching or for academic leadership.

An examination of job advertisements found that it is at present a common practice across northern Europe to specify that applicants to faculty positions be prepared to learn the local language well enough to use it for teaching within two years. The language expectations placed on newly hired KTH faculty hired to tenure-track positions were investigated to find out what extent this is true at KTH. Of 49 non-Swedish speakers who answered a survey, eight were met with the teaching-within-two-year expectation when hired, and 14 are meeting the expectation at present. The Swedish learning is to take place mostly in one’s free time, and little progress toward adequate proficiency is being made among the faculty. These findings are discussed in light of what is known about the time it takes for adults to learn a second language to a high level of professional proficiency.

If departments seriously expect transnational faculty to teach in Swedish within two years, they should allow the individual the equivalent of six months of full-time study of the language. A more reasonable timeframe for learning high-proficiency Swedish would be five or six years. Language-learning plans should be written for all new hires to tenure-track positions, and followed up at regular intervals.

The field of language learning has gone through considerable changes with the emergence of new technologies, the endless resources available on the Internet and machine translation tools. The digitalization process with a constantly and instantly range of possibilities for online-language learners has led us to reconsider the format of our language courses. This has subsequently had an impact on the course design, the teacher’s role as well as the student’s role.   Language courses at KTH aim to prepare students for their future professional lives and have a strong focus on language for specific purposes (LSP). These courses have few teaching hours and are very intensive. Furthermore, they are elective courses for most of the students, which requires engaging and flexible learning and teaching formats. Our experience has shown that a blended learning course design as well as student-owned learning are especially well suited for these language courses.  We want to present our multi-dimensional format which combines three dimensions of teaching: online/face-to-face, synchronous/asynchronous and teacher-led/student-owned. A course-design that draws advantage from the potential offered by the combination of these dimensions, provides several pedagogical added-values. 

Blended learning (BL) är en etablerad och central del i dagens högre utbildning. Onlinekommunikation änvänds i både studier och arbete, och att lära sig att kommunicera effektivt online bör vara ett mål för språkinlärning (DeMolder et al. 2023). Flera studier visar att 46blended language learning (BLL) leder till ökad interaktion i alla tre led: lärare-student, student-student samt student-kursinnehåll, så-kallad equivalency of interaction (Anderson 2003). För att kunna formulera en mer omfattande model av BL, som kan vara vägledande i kursdesignen, behövs det dock ytterligare forskning. (DeMolder et al. 2023). Denna presentation undersöker och diskuterar BL i språkundervisning för ingenjörstudenter. Vi grundar oss på praktiknära forskning med utgångspunkt i våra egna kurser. Genom en enkätoch intervjustudie undersöker vi studenternas upplevelse av en BL- samt flipped classroomkursdesign i kurser i franska och tyska för ingenjörer. Syftet med studien är att undersöka huren blandad lärmiljö bäst kan gestaltas för språkundervisningen. Vi presenterar hur BL kan gynna olika språkliga färdigheter samt diskuterar konsekvenser för student- respektive lärarrollen. Fokus ligger på aspekterna tid (synkront/asynkront), studentcentrerad lärande samt interaktion. När det gäller tid, frigör BL många möjligheter: asynkront arbetstid kan användas av den enskilde studenten, men även för möten mellan studenter utan läraren. Här öppnas också möjligheter för enskilda eller små-grupp ”check-ins” mellan lärare och studenter. Man kan således skapa en mer flexibel kursstruktur som automatiskt skapar ett studentcentrerat lärande. Vidare är vi intresserade av den språkliga interaktionen: vilka möjligheter för interaktion skapar vi mellan lärare och student och mellan studenter och hurpåverkar dessa studenternas inlärning? Generation-Z studenterna på KTH är digital natives, vana att arbeta i team, självgående och trivs i mångsidiga och interaktiva inlärningsmiljöer. Tillgången till pedagogiskt och autentiskt material online, i kombination med möjligheterna för onlinespråkutbyten, sätter krav på att skapa en attraktiv och meningsfull språkundervisning för våra studenter. Vi har funnit att en BL-kursdesign i kombination med studentägd lärande, flexibilitet och möjligheten att aktivt tillämpa sina språkkunskapereffektivt tillgodoser våra studenters behov. Vår BL undervisning svarar också både mot digitaliseringen inom högre utbildning och mot de krav som studenterna kommer att möta i sitt yrkesliv: BL speglar dagens arbetsplatser, där synkront och asynkront arbete, samt den konstanta skiftningen mellan face-to-face och online är verklighet. Med studentägd undervisning möljiggör man en förändring av den traditionella lärarrollen, där läraren blir facilitators och mentorer snarare än de enda som sprider kunskap. Studenter uppmuntras att hämta kunskap från ett brett spektrum av källor, så kallade communities of practices (North 2020). Det främjar i sin tur kollaborativt lärande som innebär en skiftning från teacher presence till teaching presence (Vaughan et al. 2013). Vårt bidrag, som sätter BL och språk för online-kommunikation i centrum, utgör ett värdefullt bidrag till ASLA 2024 undertemat Språk och kommunikation i en digitaliserad värld: online-kommunikation och onlinesamarbete är färdigheter som behöver utvecklas och tränas. I en bred trend till online-lärande inom högre utbildning är det vidare nödvändigt att utveckla bärande och meningsfulla BLL koncept.

We want  to present an example of how  to integrate language  for specific purposes (LSP) in language courses for engineers through collaborative online international activities (COIL). These activities are implemented in a flipped classroom (FC) and blended learning format (BL) which gives flexibility and enables online projects. COIL activities are particularly well suited for LSP as it offers a student-owned, authentic and engaging way to practice language skills. COIL activities can be defined as project-based learning where the context defines the learning tasks. In that way, students develop deep content knowledge: collaboration, communication skills including e-communication, intercultural competence, which prepare them for professional situations. We  will  share  examples  based  on  COIL  activities  developed  in  courses  of  French  and  German  for engineering  students,  from  A2  to  B2  levels.  By  sharing  these  practices,  we  hope  to  inspire  other teachers and develop more COIL projects.

Multilingualism is an asset in an increasingly interconnected and linguistically diverse world. It promotes linguisticflexibility, cultural sensitivity and cognitive flexibility, as well as the ability to think from various perspectives. Alongsidethe dominance of English, multilingualism is prevalent in many workplaces within the globally operating tech sector. Amultilingual environment requires strategies and skills such as code-switching, transfer, and mediation.The Royal Institute of technology (KTH) at Stockholm, Sweden, offers an international learning environment with a largenumber of international students and academic staff. Furthermore, many students already are multilingual but may notbe prepared to use their multilingual competences in an academic or professional context. Enhancing andstrengthening student’s multilingual competences is an asset, also in the “Anglosphere”. Multilingualism opens doors toa broader professional network by bridging language and cultural barriers. It also enhances problem solving as diverselinguistic and cultural knowledge helps to develop innovative solutions and adapt to different contexts.The department of language and communication at KTH is constantly seeking new teaching and learning methods thatmeet the evolving needs of students and society. This development can entail shifting from more traditional “languagecourses” and offering other ways of learning and practicing languages through skill-based courses, project-basedcourses or workshops and challenge driven education. It implies also new formats of teaching and learning, as blendedlearning and teaching, flipped classroom and collaborative learning (COIL).In this presentation, we will describe our ongoing work with diversifying and renewing language teaching at KTH byintroducing a multilingual course. Our aim is to enhance students’ multilingual competences, preparing them to work inmultilingual, multidisciplinary and multicultural working environments.

The field of language learning has undergone considerable changes with the emergence of new technologies. This digitalization process has led us to reconsider the format of our language courses and has subsequently had an impact on course design, the teacher’s role as well as the student’s role. Language courses at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (KTH) aim to prepare students for their future professional lives and have a strong focus on language for specific purposes (LSP). Our experience has shown that a blended learning course design as well as student-owned learning are especially well suited for these language courses. In this report, we wish to present a multi-dimensional course-design which provides several pedagogical added values by combining three dimensions of teaching and learning; online/face-to-face, synchronous/asynchronous and teacher-led/student-owned. We will illustrate the combination of the three dimensions by presenting how we have integrated international collaborative activities in French and German courses for engineers. Collaborative online international learning projects (COIL) are well suited for our teaching model as they combine online meetings with asynchronous work and are typically a student-owned activity. As a virtual mobility experience, this activity assists students in creating a global engineer profile by emphasizing collaboration and developing intercultural and multilingual competence.

Language teaching for engineering students needs to be engaging and adapted to the specific needs the students will meet in their future professional lives. Our experience has shown that a blended learning course design as well as student-owned learning are especially well suited for these language courses. Further, a language course strongly based on online-meetings and digital resources, is part of a global trend where universities offer an expanding range of online-courses.    In this presentation, we will describe our multidimensional teaching model which combines three dimensions of teaching: online/face-to-face, synchronous/asynchronous and teacher-led/student-owned. A course-design that draws advantage from the potential offered by the combination of these dimensions, provides several pedagogical assets.    We will first develop the pedagogical added-values and will then illustrate how different learning/teaching activities fit in the different dimensions.    As an example, we will also present some international collaborative activities integrated in the language courses for engineers as a virtual mobility experience.    

Todays globalized world demands successful communication with an increasing diversity of people - from different fields, background and cultures. Intercultural competence is increasingly recognized as an essential skill, especially for engineering graduates who, throughout their professional career, will work in global teams and play an important part in international communities.     In the Department of Languages and Communication at KTH, students can opt/take/add for additional courses to develop their core communication skills,  e.g. scientific writing, rhetoric, foreign languages, and Global competence. The language courses focus on language for professional use in the technology sector. For this reason/accordingly the course offerings at the Department of Languages and Communication aim to prepare the students for a professional career in international contexts, hence communicating in different languages and communicating with others is playing an important role in being a citizen of today’s world.   In the language courses for engineers, we have implemented different methodologies such as collaborative learning, tandem-learning, workshops, visits to technological museums and companies, and virtual Industrial Visits. Integrating these learning activities has different impacts on the course, the teacher, and the students. A course with integrated collaborative international tasks implies changes both in the pedagogic approach of a course, the role of the teacher, and the student’s learning outcome. Using methodologies like collaborative learning as a pedagogical approach in language teaching for engineering students enhance the students'' skills in cross-cultural communication while linking their technological knowledge, with being respectful of multilingualism.  In our presentation, we want to map these impacts on students and teachers in relation to our experiences. We also aim to share best practice on how we integrate international collaborative tasks in language courses for engineers, as a virtual mobility experience. Rethinking our teaching practices in order to facilitate cross-cultural communication through students’ discipline-specific academic language and literacy development to meet the challenges of the increased internationalization and diversity in higher education.   We will show a variety of collaborative activities offered in language courses - French, Japanese and German - as well as in courses in professional communication.  These activities provide students with an opportunity to interact with peers at technical universities and professionals, so they can develop intercultural competences and language skills while working together on subject-specific learning tasks.

This paper focuses on an unprecedented government initiative to boost the field of Swedish higher education teaching and learning in 2022-2023, seen from the perspective of Swednet, the Swedish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education. In late 2021, the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR) received a government mandate to coordinate a major initiative in higher education pedagogy in 2022 and 2023 with the aim of improving the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. UHR was instructed to disseminate information and good examples of how higher education institutions work with higher education pedagogy, encourage and help finance co-creation of new resources, and be responsible for the exchange of experiences, not only between the higher education institutions but also involving other 'relevant actors' on the national level. For the initiative the UHR received a total of 30 million SEK (approx. € 2.6 million), of which at least 20 million were earmarked for distribution to higher education institutions and organisations within higher education pedagogy. This was an initiative that had long been asked for by different stakeholders, not least the Swedish National Union of Students, but also by Swednet, one of many active partners in planning and executing the initiative. UHR did indeed rely on the different stakeholder organisations for designing activities and ways of allocating funding for the planning and realisation of the initiative. Calls for ongoing enhancement based on the initiative's projects were, however, curtailed by the new government in 2023.

With the initiative set to officially conclude by December 2023, we will critically outline the range of projects underway, addressing some of the needs most acutely felt by various stakeholders. Participation in the initiative has provided valuable insights into the complex ecosystem of higher education pedagogy. It has also raised critical questions about the impact and sustainability of the initiative’s projects, as well as concerns about the ecosystem itself. Finally, we will discuss the power relations of the stakeholders involved from a more theoretical perspective, an important aspect in a nation where many of the stakeholders involved, e.g., Swednet, are both wholly independent from the state, being Non-Profit Educational Organisations or open and less formally organised networks, and at the same time being fundamentally reliant on the government, the state being responsible for financing both the initiative and the absolute majority of HEIs, and indirectly many of the regular activities of the stakeholders in the pedagogical ecosystems.

This paper describes the background, process and results of two educational change projects at the language and communication department of a major European technical university during 2016-2019. Working in two consecutive steps with the Global Engineers Language Skills (GELS) framework, and the OECD definition of Global Competence, syllabi and learning activities were revised to improve alignment of the language and communication courses offered by the department with the overall technical curriculum of the university, and make them better tools for internationalisation and work toward sustainable development. Apart from improved alignment and quality enhancement, i.e., courses more suited to the needs of engineering graduates, to the university, and to society, the course projects were also aimed at faculty competence development. While overall successful, the projects – as with most endeavours toward educational change – also encountered some challenges and setbacks. The purpose of the paper is both to describe the work undertaken, and to explore what lessons can be learned with a view to similar projects at other technical universities.

Between 2014-16, KTH Royal Institute of Technology set aside considerable resources in its biggest pedagogical project to date, the Pedagogical Developers Initiative. The project has been continuously reported on at recent CDIO conferences. While aimed primarily at CDIO Standard 10, enhancement of faculty teaching competence, the project managed, by design as much as through accident, to strengthen many CDIO standards and syllabus items. With the conclusion of the project, the constructive practices and ideas that emerged from the initiative were meant to be incorporated into the regular operations of the university, a task that was delegated to each of KTH’s ten schools. However, even though KTH officially labelled the project a success, the schools have taken a non-uniform approach to this endeavour, as they indeed had done to the project as a whole during its duration. Following up on our earlier reports, and primarily using data from interviews and our own observations, the paper looks at which of the initiative’s ideas and practices have survived the end of the project, in what forms, by what means, and what insights and lessons one can draw from this when designing mechanisms for continuous and sustainable improvement of pedagogical practices at a technical university.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) must ensure that their graduates possess not only professional know-how, but also the global competence to address the challenges posed in the UN’s 2030 Agenda. This is especially relevant in engineering education, which plays an important role in sustainable development. These competencies are typically thought to be developed in relation to institutions’ internationalisation efforts, but reports on how this is supposed to happen are often vague or built on wishful thinking. In this article, we describe a mixed-methods investigation into how holistic global competence development as a crucial aspect of sustainable education can be systematically enhanced in higher engineering education. Following a design-based research approach, connecting theoretical and practical insights from experts and stakeholders, we present here four dimensions of such an approach. Firstly, we discuss the setup, contents, and implementation of institutional guidelines as the crucial starting point of any internationalisation strategy aiming at integrating sustainable development education and global competence development. Secondly, we stress the role of institutional diversity, and show how institutions can foster inclusive and welcoming environments. Thirdly, we suggest strategies and approaches for global competence training for students, faculty, and staff, and highlight important background considerations for enabling global competence development. Fourthly, we emphasise the importance of assessing efforts to ensure that they live up to their potential and deliver the desired outcomes. The recommendations based on the investigation summarise key considerations that all HEIs—not just those focused on engineering education—must take into account as they strive for holistic global competence development, which is a key aspect of education for sustainable development.

University graduates capable of addressing global challenges require a sense of global citizenship and the ability to understand, communicate, and work effectively and appropriately with people from different backgrounds. Linguistic diversity comprises a crucial cultural asset, yet the Englishisation of higher education and the emergence and development of text-generating tools may drastically reduce the perceived importance of language learning. This paper is empirically based on the analysis of two text-based datasets from course participants in a teacher training course (n=19) and a lifelong learning course (n=52), looking for examples of experiences, plans, and attitudes towards multilingualism in educational settings. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of a specific focus on students’ linguistic diversity as a vehicle for cultural and global competence learning, and offer suggestions for an institutional approach to empowering teachers, staff and students to enable this change. Finally, we emphasise the need for empirical studies to understand how multiculturalism and multilingualism can be effectively integrated into higher education, and we highlight the implementation of a recently adopted policy on multilingualism and multiculturalism by one of the European University Alliances as a promising area for future research.

The need to equip students with the competencies needed to appropriately and effectively communicate and work together with people from different backgrounds – in this paper referred to as ‘global competence’ – is certainly not a new one, but one which has attracted more and more attention in the wake of technological advances, labour market changes, and various globalizing processes.

Yet, for a long time, technical universities tended to turn a blind eye to the need for curriculum development, often tacitly hoping that international mobility would ‘take care’ of this weak link in study programmes heavily dominated by technical subjects. The fact that all but the most ambitious universities failed to include more than a fraction of its students in international mobility made this a flawed reasoning to start with, but by now this insight is also combined with a new awareness of how the coveted linguistic, communicative and cultural (LCC) competence development does not develop spontaneously by itself, in however culturally diverse surroundings, but need to be systematically supported, through curricula design, and by globally competent educators and staff.

To better understand the educational thinking and experiences of the stakeholders most crucially involved, a consortium with researchers from three European universities conducted a comparative study of perceptions and expectations using an internationally distributed survey carried out in 2022 (n=860), targeting educators (n=192), students (n=329), and alumni (n=339). In this paper, we focus on a comparison of students' and educators’ views on programme/curriculum content, resources, and opportunities relevant for developing global competence, and their perceived effectiveness. Apart from a critical look at the current state of affairs, we want to draw attention to perceptual discrepancies between the views of educators and students, highlighting the need for better integration of global competence education in engineering programmes. We will also explore internal differences within these two groups, based on geographical and disciplinary backgrounds.

Our project’s ultimate goal is to formulate well-grounded and practically applicable recommendations for integrated linguistic, communicative, and cultural training in support of optimized global competence education at engineering and technical universities, and we hope with this paper to provide not only an updated understanding of the educational landscape, but also some hands-on recommendations for educational change.

Virtual exchange courses have great potential. They allow students to participate in classes not offered locally, thus extending the available educational offer as well as contributing to educational equality. They are also prime examples of sustainable internationalisation. By allowing more participants than traditional international mobility, they can be a major force in enhancing the integration of the European educational landscape, providing an accessible international experience, benefitting both participating students and their teachers. But scaling up from individual teachers’ usually informal Collaborative Online International Learning projects to a systematic integration in an international consortium of universities, has proven a difficult and far from always successful process. This paper is based on the experience and learning journey of offering virtual exchange language and global competence courses within one of the first 17 European University Alliances projects launched in 2019, made up of seven (from 2022 nine) technical universities. While the literature on virtual exchange has mainly focused on the digital pedagogical competence of the teachers involved, in this paper we will draw attention to other, often overlooked, “educational hygiene factors” (pace Herzberg), crucial for building functional and effective routines across national and institutional borders. Specifically, we highlight three major, interconnected, challenges encountered during the deployment and implementation of the studied European University Alliance's virtual exchange offer: the gap between official aspirations and everyday practice within the alliance; the complexities involved in coordinating and syncing different national and institutional schedules and routines; and the difficulties of reaching out to and retaining students. Data for the study come from course statistics, participant observation, and interviews with involved technicians, administrators, teachers, and students. We believe the experiences and learning trajectory presented in this study are relevant to anyone interested in systematic approaches to introducing virtual exchange courses as an effective means for sustainable internationalisation, be these within the framework of European University Alliances or other forms of international Higher Education Institution collaborations.

With the ultimate aim of finding ways to improve the systematic integration of linguistic and cultural competencies in engineering education, this paper addresses how culture and language competency education is discussed within a technical European University Alliance and how this discourse is translated – or not – into educational initiatives and activities. By doing this, we aim to put focus on the gap between a certain European Union ideology – “united in diversity” – which is at the very heart of the EU project, and the everyday practices at technical universities, where linguistic and cultural competency education are often considered as marginal activities or elective add-ons compared to the hard core of technical subjects.

The paper is based on European University Alliance documents and the observations and experiences made within one alliance’s working group on cultural and linguistic training during 2020-2022. We suggest that the gap between the rhetoric of multilingualism and multiculturalism and the reality of teaching and learning within the alliance has at least two sources: a tendency to engage in magical thinking where global competence develops “spontaneously” in international settings and a tendency to avoid addressing difficult questions, e.g., what multilingualism and multiculturalism actually mean in contemporary engineering education. This paper will provide some of the crucial questions that need addressing if we want to move beyond the empty rhetoric, as well as some practical suggestions for a systematic integration of cultural and linguistic competency education into engineering education.

This article examines the German reception of Swedish classicism in the late 1920s through the lens of several German publications, highlighting the similarities and differences between Swedish and German architecture of the time, as well as the cultural and intellectual exchanges between the two countries. By analyzing the values and themes that emerge in the texts on Swedish architecture in the German publications, this article sheds light on the reception and interpretation of Swedish architecture in a broader European context.

Engineering curricula need to integrate global competence learning to ensure that graduates can succeed in globalised labour markets. In this context, this study examines disciplinary engineering courses, focusing on the key characteristics of globally competent educators and teaching approaches in terms of learning environments and course activities from the students’ perspective. We conducted focus group discussions with 28 students from different engineering disciplines to learn more about their perceptions and experiences. The results suggest that they felt that integrated global competence learning would require educators to demonstrate open-mindedness, a global mindset, and strong social skills. In addition, global competence teaching approaches were associated with learning environments that were described as engaging, inclusive, and student-centered, and with course activities that were related to real-world situations, included collaborative elements, and were facilitated and supported by the instructor. This study contextualises the idea of global competence in engineering education and provides valuable insights into students’ perspectives and experiences with its integration during their studies. It also critically examines students’ ideas and suggestions about opportunities for such learning in relation to educational science, and suggests a way forward for global competence in engineering education.

Global competence has become a popular concept for engineering institutions around the world. Despite its recent emergence and still vague characteristics, it has been widely adopted by institutions aiming to prepare globally minded graduates. However, the concept’s elusive and complex nature requires careful consideration in order to lead to impactful learning. This study provides a comprehensive overview of engineering institutions’ practical efforts to foster global competence learning. Guided by a systematic literature review covering the last two decades, it provides a comprehensive account of work related to the concept. The study first explores institutions’ practical efforts to promote global competence development, highlighting the most popular institutional approaches, including intercultural collaborations, mobility experiences, internationalization at home activities, and virtual collaborations. Furthermore, it critically analyzes how the concept is translated into practice, showing that practical efforts often lack guiding conceptualizations or reliable outcome assessments. To provide a thorough overview of institutional engagement with global competence, the study also highlights the geographical contexts of the universities involved in such efforts, as well as related chronological trends and developments, before concluding with reflections on the future of global competence education.

Global competence is an essential attribute for engineering graduates working in an interconnected and culturally diverse world, and higher engineering education needs to adapt to ensure that their students will acquire it before entering the labor market. For universities, the only way to ensure comprehensive global competence learning for all students is the holistic integration of related learning outcomes throughout curricula – which requires engineering educators to be able to (re)design their courses and programs accordingly. Considering that most engineering educators are subject experts of their discipline – but lay people when it comes to such competencies – we set out to compile a practical guideline for those wanting to integrate global competence learning within their disciplinary courses. Following a participatory action research approach, we connected our own insights as global competence educators at a technical university with those of several cohorts of engineering educators and students enrolled in global competence courses. Synthesizing these insights, we could identify four essential lessons for integrated global competence learning: 1) learning opportunities can be found (nearly) everywhere, 2) relevance and authenticity must be emphasized, 3) theory and practice need to be integrated and 4) global competence cannot be taught, but it can be learnt. These lessons are illustrated with practical examples for fostering global competence learning in regular engineering courses.

Upon graduation, engineering graduates will find themselves in diverse, interconnected, and fast-paced work environments. Global competence, which encompasses different types of knowledge, skills and attitudes, is what will help them navigate successfully through the variety of situations they may encounter. Accordingly, its development should be an integrated core aspect of today’s engineering education. Acknowledging the problems with current approaches to doing so – in particular, the vagueness of the concept and the issues of prioritizing learning content in already crowded curricula - this paper compares the perceived need and value of specific competencies according to key stakeholders. Based on a previous literature review, a survey focusing on a set of 15 frequently mentioned competences was developed and distributed internationally. The perspectives of three types of stakeholders - engineering professionals (n=339), educators (n=200), and students (n=331) – were collected and broadly analyzed according to the perceived importance of the competencies. Overall, we found agreement among the stakeholder groups, and the majority of our proposed competences were perceived as either important or very important by the respondents. Among the competences, teamwork and collaboration and English language skills stood out, while other language skills were perceived as less important. Comparing the groups, we found that professionals tended to value several social competences more highly and subject-specific competences less highly than academic stakeholders. In our discussion, we offer possible explanations for these findings, which allow inferences for educational change towards a more globally competent higher engineering education.

The repetition of words, lexical repetition, can be an important marker of cohesion in writing, especially in domains where precision and clarity are valued. Contemporary writing in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a such a domain. Nevertheless, lexical repetition is sometimes instinctively misunderstood as a feature of an exaggerated style or simplistic language use. 

Using a classification system inspired by both previous research on lexical cohesion and the specific needs and characteristics of STEM writing, I have analysed 15 project proposals written by STEM students at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. The sample is small but representative of KTH’s student population in terms of gender, linguacultural background, and years of academic experience. I examined the students’ ways of using and avoiding lexical repetition when referring to key concepts and also reviewed each text with its author(s) in a semi-structured interview. My aim was to understand the students’ perceptions of lexical repetition as STEM writers and English users. 

 Results of the text analysis show that the more experienced student writers frequently chose lexical repetition to refer to key concepts, and that the less experienced student writers tended to use more paraphrases and pronouns instead. This finding challenges the notion that lexical repetition is a feature of inappropriate or simplistic language use. Results of the interviews show that some students were previously discouraged from repeating lexical items in writing. However, they mostly recognised the value of lexical repetition in STEM writing to avoid ambiguity and ensure inter-sentential cohesion. 

 A second round of text collection and interviews will begin this summer with a focus on newly arrived international students. For the WRAB VI conference, I would like to compare the results of the two rounds of data collection and share some insights from the interviews.

This study is an empirical investigation of both the distribution of the specific direct object marker rā in restrictive relative clauses in spoken Farsi and the degrees of acceptance of different patterns of this structure among 50 Farsi speakers. Examples of the target structure are taken from modern films and a spoken translation test and then used in an acceptability judgement test. The findings show that there is a considerable disparity between the written relative clauses studied in previous research and spoken versions of the same structure. More specifically, the findings in this study show that the omission of the rā marker is common, that the use of rā-marked referent pronouns no longer seems to be an acceptable feature of spoken Farsi, and that the use of the rā marker and the judgement of its acceptability change according to the syntactic function(s) of the head noun phrase.

LSP teachers working at KTH Royal Institute of Technology have created a guide to scientific writing in English. This is an online resource that aims to raise awareness of what constitutes effective scientific writing.

The guide emerged from interactions between LSP teachers and their students and faculty colleagues on the nature of effective scientific writing in English. As a result, and in contrast to many other university writing guides, the KTH guide is rooted in the typical writing genres and conventions of a technical university, and draws on examples of these to explore sentence structure, punctuation, text flow, and scientific style. 

Since its launch, the guide has become an integral part of classroom practice, and it has drawn a number of comments from students and faculty colleagues in anonymized surveys and course evaluations. Our analysis of these comments suggests that users appreciate the focus on scientific writing (as opposed to more general academic writing), but that some struggle to find answers to specific questions. 

In this paper, we introduce the guide, present a thematic analysis of the evaluations, and discuss the impact of these on the development of not only the guide, but also on scientific writing practices at KTH.

In 2015, three language teachers working with student engineers at different European universities founded the Global Engineers Language Skills (GELS) network. The teachers’ aims were to investigate and categorize necessary and desirable language and communication skills for engineers and ensure that these findings actively support the teaching and learning of additional languages in technical universities and engineering departments. We presented preliminary results of our work at CDIO’s international conference in 2016. In this paper, we summarize the network’s development since then, interpret the results of our investigations, and describe our work to disseminate our results and promote effective language and communication skills for engineering students. We also summarize our more recent work on enhancing the GELS framework of skills, applying for Erasmus+ KA2 funding, developing the GELS network from three to thirty universities through training events, integrating intercultural communication skills in our work, and teaching and learning through the medium of English.

Case Method is a learning methodology to develop a problem-solving mindset through discussion and self-reflection while simulating intercultural conflicts that occur in the real world. In this presentation, I will define the case method and show how it can be used in the classroom to hone students’ communication skills, and in particular conflict-resolution skills, in their learned language and/or in culturally diverse groups. Examples will be taken from Japanese-language classrooms.