Carousel: A study on collaboration within a small international design community of practice and its impact on delivering 'one week' exchange experiences

Abstract

To prepare students for their future careers in a globalizing society, several large-scale higher education student and staff exchange programmes focus on international collaboration. The organisation and duration of such programmes can often be a barrier for students and staff hoping to engage in global educational opportunities. This case study of Carousel, a recurring one-week exchange workshop, explores the potential and benefits of this shorter, international collaboration programme as compared to the longer-term Erasmus programme. The study shows that small-scale, repeated cooperation between a limited number of partner institutes can have a large impact on international and cross-cultural awareness and professional competence for both students and staff. Short communication lines between teaching staff from each Carousel partner makes the organisation of visits and workshops flexible, easy, and fully adaptable to the educational needs of students. As a result, students become much more internationally engaged and are introduced to different design cultures and methodologies. In some cases, participation in a Carousel workshop has led to a subsequent longer period of institutional exchange. Carousel also offers an opportunity for academic staff to collaborate in the workshop with their students and host an academic team and to experience different approaches toward design practice and educational delivery . Due to the informal character of Carousel, working re lations between staff have tended to be of a much more personal nature. This had lead, in some cases, to a collaborative ‘ongoing’ research culture between participating academic staff and has generated new teaching and learning methodologies.