Abstract:

The Intercultural Design Camp (ICDC) as an innovative collaboration of four European higher education institutions, developed from a former cooperation for development of a joint post-graduate programme, is taking the next steps. Starting in 2009 as a one-week summer school, the main focus of the project was to strengthen internalization between the partner universities, by enhancing the student and staff exchange. The main approach was to create personal relationships by bringing teacher and students together while working on an interdisciplinary media project. What emerged from this pilot was a clear sense that this brief but intensive collaboration – within the context of longer established institutional relationships – has lasting benefits and has already acted as an effective catalyst for further innovative developments in learning and teaching within the individual institutions and between institutions.
But the partners want more regarding the original aim to create a joint post-graduate programme. In the consultations it became obvious that the cooperation has to be intensified and the duration of the project work should be extended in order to establish the summer school as a test bed for a joint post-graduate programme. A new conceptual approach for the ICDC was needed: The design camp was extended from an one week to a two week programme, what offers the opportunity to strengthen the bonding between the participants and to set up a more demanding project work. While the past camps were mainly focused on conceptual work, the concept of the new design camp aims to integrate conceptual and productive activities, so that at the end of the camp each group has to come up with a prototype of a media production. Another change in the concept is to supplement the camp by a pre-camp and a post-camp phase. In these additional phases, where the teachers and students stay at their home universities, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) become very vital. A learning management system was used to allow communication between the international groups and to spread and collect the different assignments, which the students are expected to do prior to the camp. ICT was also used for the communication within the organizing team. An internet-based video conferencing system replaces the need for frequent meetings and therefore lowers the travel costs. But the costs for realizing such a extended concept are still high. As a consequence it was decided to submit an application for funding within the EU Life-Long-Learning-Programme and luckily the application was accepted. After Muensingen (Germany, 2009) and Dumfries (Scotland, 2010) the third run of the Intercultural Design Camp, utilizing the new concept, could take place in Grebbestad (Sweden) in August 2011.
In the full paper we will describe the new concept in detail, especially the camp structure, the project brief and the evaluation of the results of the camp. We also will comment on our experiences on measures taken to improve the working in international teams. So for example the participants were asked to send in their communication profiles. These communication profiles were taken as a basis for the grouping of the international teams. Finally we will describe the ICT tools we use in the pre- and post-camp phase and do some evaluation how the Design Camp has promoted the student and staff exchange.

Keywords:

Intercultural Design Camp, international cooperation, summer school.