This session is relevant for educators, programme coordinators, and university administrators seeking innovative, hands-on methods to enhance the onboarding experience for international faculty in higher education.
With the increasing internationalisation of German universities, effective integration of faculty with teaching responsibilities from diverse cultural backgrounds is crucial for academic success and institutional innovation. However, traditional onboarding processes often fail to address deeper cultural, personal and pedagogical differences. This workshop introduces experiential and intercultural learning strategies that can support intercultural, possibly also transdisciplinary collaboration and thus help universities to deploy internationalisation processes successfully on the level of teaching and learning.

Central questions for the workshop are:
- How can we support the integration of international teaching staff in German Higher Education?
- Are experiential and intercultural learning strategies a relevant methodological approach within internationalisation processes?
- What are the challenges when using and implementing experiential and intercultural learning strategies?

This interactive workshop follows an experiential learning approach, incorporating hands-on activities, small-group discussions, and guided reflections.
After a quick warm-up and introduction to the challenges concerning the onboarding of international teaching staff, participants will take part in an intercultural simulation exercise.
After the exercise we will debrief and discuss possible applications for intercultural and experiential learning activities in higher education with a special focus on onboarding processes for international teaching staff.

Learning goals:

By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- understand some of the challenges international faculty with teaching responsibilities face in German higher education
- experience and reflect on intercultural and experiential learning activities
- take away at least one idea on how these methods could be applied in participants' own institutional contexts