Partner Recruitment

There are various ways that you can find a suitable partner for a joint teaching project. Very often, you’ll strike lucky and find someone from among your personal contacts or even from a chance encounter in an quite unrelated context. The important thing is always to remain open-minded, especially when considering colleagues from disciplines that may not be completely congruent with your own or who come from countries with which you have had no previous contact.

We recommend bearing the following tried and tested options in mind:

• Networks that have emerged from conferences or other activities: these often provide great opportunities to approach enthusiastic colleagues and explore any common bases of interest.
• Joint research projects such as publications and externally funded projects: this provides an opportunity to initiate projects with colleagues you already know from previous research collaboration.
• Ask the International Office: In the field of distance learning, the FernUniversität has various institutional contacts with universities and networks abroad that have experience in online teaching and can be useful for a potential cooperation.
• Partner search via SUNY COIL: The FernUniversität is a member of the SUNY COIL Center Global Network hosted by the State University of New York. This provides support structures and expertise for those implementing international teaching projects. The network publishes partnership bulletins at regular intervals and holds “partnership fairs” that bring together interested teachers from all over the world.

The following points provide guidance for assessing your compatibility as a consortium:

• Objective: Internationally designed, digital teaching is not easy to implement and requires a certain level of commitment. However, there are a number of good reasons why it is worthwhile: It makes a valuable contribution to the academic quality of teaching by integrating new perspectives and content and exposing students to new and different teaching and learning practices. It is important to agree with your partner(s) on the overall objectives and to determine the concrete added value of the cooperation. You should also clarify whether you need to create new content or whether you are going to use existing content for your collaboration and also what kind of teaching formats are goinf to be used (see: Teaching Formats).
• Pilot Project: It can be a good idea to start out with a smaller-scale cooperation as a trial project in order to strengthen personal contacts and build a basis of trust. This could be a summer/winter school or a joint MOOC.
• Resources: In academia, the question of resources is often a tricky one to answer. It makes good sense to be open – both internally and also to your partner(s) – about who can reliably contribute how much time to the project and whether the project can be realistically implemented based on these resources. Contact the International Office for advice on possible funding opportunities – e.g., from the Internationalization Fund.
• Curriculum: It is advisable to include your teaching project in the curriculum and/or course offerings at all participating partner institutions. This makes it more attractive to all participants and helps to guarantee the sustainability of the cooperation.
• Scope/Credit Points: Bear in mind when calculating the size of a course in terms of workload that criteria may vary internationally and that the assessment of ECTS or other credit points may differ.
• Varying Semester Times: Often, widely varying international semester times and curricula pose a significant challenge when it comes to jointly implementing courses. This is where designing a modular offering can be a good solution. A jointly managed and, if possible, simultaneously executed core phase can, if required, be supplemented by separate, independently conducted preparation and follow-up phases. Alternatively, you can organize different student cohorts or groups.
• Student Level: Discuss with your partner(s) what prerequisites and academic level students should have (bachelor’s vs. master’s, higher semester, etc.).