On May 27, at 4:00 p.m., a session of the ISEP Webinars will take place, organized by Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP).

This webinar, presented by Eithne Knappitsch, is titled “Designing virtual exchange for the future of work. Lessons learned from the Global Case Study Challenge.”

To access the webinar, please click here.

Abstract

Today’s graduates rarely become international by moving abroad; instead, they become global by connecting online. Global virtual teams are now the professional reality across engineering, technology, and most knowledge-based professions, yet many degree programmes still treat international experience as optional and mobility-dependent. Virtual Exchange (VE) can bridge this gap, but only when it is intentionally designed and facilitated for that purpose.

This talk draws on eight years of evidence from the Global Case Study Challenge (GCSC) - an award-winning VE initiative that has engaged more than 2,200 students, 485 teams, and 70 facilitators across over 40 universities in 25 countries. Three key themes run through the session: the Global Work competency framework as a design anchor (including intercultural competence, digital collaboration, and sustainability skills); the design choices that enable virtual experiences to effectively develop these competencies; and the facilitation practices that help global virtual teams succeed through trust-building, asynchronous work, intercultural friction, and shared outcomes.

This session is intended for educators, learning designers, and international staff who wish to prepare students for the workplaces they will enter after graduation, with particular relevance to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics contexts, where global virtual teamwork is increasingly becoming graduates’ first professional environment.

Short Bio

Eithne Knappitsch is a Professor of Intercultural Management at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Villach, Austria. She is a learning experience designer and co-founder of the GCSC, an award-winning VE programme that prepares undergraduate and postgraduate students from multiple disciplines for global virtual teamwork through real-world business cases developed in collaboration with industry partners.

Her work focuses on the pedagogy and practice of effective virtual collaboration, intercultural competence development, and the design and facilitation of VE in higher education. She is currently involved in several Erasmus+ projects focused on capacity building in Virtual Exchange and leads training programmes for higher education institutions worldwide. She regularly contributes to the Transcultural Leadership Symposium of the World Council on Intercultural and Global Competence and to the International VE Conference, where she serves as a Board Member of the International Consortium. Eithne also provides consultancy on Virtual Exchange design, facilitator training, and the sustainability and institutional integration of VE.