Each semester, more than 400 students participate in cross-border exchange programmes within the Greater Region. Within the political space of the Greater Region, made up of the border regions of Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg, UniGR is an academic group seeking to establish a common realm of higher education and research. Among others, this group fosters research that transcends borders. Thanks to UniGR and Université Franco-Allemande mobility funds, Greater Region students can take advantage of courses being taught at six different universities within a radius of 200km. Despite this, the bilingual French/German potential of this experience is still not emphasised enough. As a result, the six Language Centres of the universities of the Greater Region plan to collaborate on a common educational pathway. Their goal is to heighten students’ individual language and intercultural competencies, to foster student mobility and to develop a community of Greater Region students. This strategic partnership aims to establish the following concept: an online pathway with two retreats. We will bookend the exchange semester with a retreat at the start and finish. The short distance between the six universities of the Greater Region facilitates a variety of study modes. By using the secure open-source Moodle platform, we ensure that any posted content of the learning pathway designed by the Language Centres teams stays among the participants. Students will also post their “intercultural and language-driven productions” on the platform. In order to ensure an efficient display of events and news happenings on Moodle, Facebook will be used as an interface tool. Online and on-site meetings will motivate students to get to know and learn from one another. The short-term impact will be an increase in the exchange students’ language and intercultural skills as well as the creation of a Greater Region student community. The medium-term impact is the promotion of mobility within the Greater Region through the development of a student network. In the long run, our model system will contribute to the devel opment of a flexible, structured, comparable and assessable learning pathway among European cross-border universities.
A study carried out in early 2017 by the universities of the Greater Region (Luxembourg, Lorraine, Liège, Saarland, Trier and Kaiserslautern) revealed that students regret the lack of preparation for their university exchange and the absence of contact between exchange students – especially given that the exchanges take place within a small geographical area. Between October 2017 and December 2019, the six language centres at the universities of the Greater Region therefore worked together to develop a hybrid (online and instructor-led) course offering linguistic and intercultural preparation for student exchanges to meet this need. The course is composed of two parts. A first online section hosted on the University of Luxembourg’s Moodle platform, based on a lesson plan available in French and German, invites future exchange students to simulate an exchange at their future host university/city by exploring five main themes: preparation before the exchange, preparation on arrival, life as an exchange student, studying, and coping with exams. Students explore these topics through a variety of linguistic and cultural activities. The course was initially developed with six different “city” versions (one version for each city/university in the consortium), with specific destination-related content for each version. Since some students choose to study at a broader range of destinations, two new “country” versions of the course, one for France and one for Germany, are currently being developed. Partners at the University of Liège have also developed a separate version of their “city” course aimed at Erasmus students, since the university is a popular Erasmus destination. In addition to the course, again via the platform, students were put into contact with a student at the university – or at the least in the country – where they were planning to carry out their exchange. The students worked together remotely to complete a set number of tasks related to cultural issues and/or academic situations. Finally, two two-day exchanges were organised so that the students could meet before and after their exchange and strengthen the links developed during the tandem work via the platform, thereby fostering a community of students within the Greater Region. All the consortium partners were involved in different aspects of the development of the course according to their specific expertise: some contributed more to the technical side, some to the teaching and learning materials, and others to the production of aids and guides for users of the tool. By late December 2019, a total of 80 students had completed the LCGR course. At the same time, the partners at the six language centres in the Greater Region achieved their aim of creating a new network, having developed effective methods for working and producing resources together. They met ten times all together and on several other occasions in French-German pairs to produce educational outputs over the 27 months of the project. In September 2019, a three-day training course was held for teachers at the six language centres so that they could familiarise themselves with the principles of the LCGR course. The aim of these three days was to ensure the long-term viability of the course by creating a community of “LCGR teachers” responsible for monitoring students and updating the course as needed each semester. The research community and political leaders in the Greater Region also met at two dissemination events in Luxembourg and in Pau, France. Following these two events and a presentation of the LCGR project at the Ranacles conference for language centre professionals in France in November 2019, we received proposals from international relations managers (Grenoble and Pau) and Spanish lecturers (Lorraine and Pau) to join our group with the aim of developing a course for France, a course for Germany and a new course for Spain. These new partners are also keen for their students to make use of the joint course and the tandem created on Moodle.