International

Which international trends and topics are shaping the digital transformation in the higher education landscape? How can we promote exchange and cooperation across national borders and transfer best practice examples to the German higher education landscape? The HFD addresses these and other issues as part of its international activities.

In recent years, many countries and higher education systems have stepped up their efforts to successfully implement the digital transformation of teaching and learning. HFD-funded delegation trips or “peer learning journeys” aim to familiarize our community with these different approaches and frameworks in other higher education systems in order to better understand the respective success factors and take the lessons learned back home. Further details and the 2025 call for tenders can be found here.

The ‘International Roundtable on Digital Transformation in Higher Education’, initiated and co-organised by the HFD, brings together experts from national projects and organisations as well as political bodies. Its main objectives are to share knowledge and learn together about challenges and solutions. Participants discuss how best to support and promote digital transformation, best practices and institutional visions at national levels. This will include showcasing successful examples from different communities. Since 2023, representatives from more than 10 countries have regularly been part of roundtable discussions on a variety of topics. For further information, please contact channa.vanderbrug@stifterverband.de.

The HFD participates in and organizes digital and in-person events for and with international stakeholders and community members on topics of international relevance.

From panels at conferences such as DAAD’s “Moving Target Digitalization” and the Academic Cooperation Association’s “Digital Pedagogies through International Cooperation” to keynotes at DINI’s annual conference, the European University Association and various European university alliances such as Euroteq’s course catalogue’s launch event: we share and contribute international expertise.

The topics on which we have given numerous presentations include overarching international trends and strategies as well as specific recommendations for achieving Europe-wide interoperability and student participation.

Blog posts on international best practices are published here.

The following links lead to selected publications: Issues of our annual magazine Strategie Digital and the study “Making interoperability work”. The latter was read carefully by the European Higher Education Alliances in 2023 and the recommendations have been incorporated into the work of the European Commission’s Digital Education Hub.

Representatives of international networks and institutions as well as members of our German community are welcome to contact us for more information and to actively participate in our activities.