IVAC Festival

From the 23rd of August to the 3rd of September 2021 „Change of Perspective“ hosted the international IVAC Festival, allowing students and teaching staff from Göttingen and our international partner universities to participate in numerous disciplinary and transdisciplinary events and take part in social activities.

In the spirit of international virtual academic collaboration, the IVAC Festival was designed as a virtual/hybrid event. It included formats such as keynotes, workshops or panel sessions, which focussed on issues of global learning and teaching and emphasised the integration of an intercultural perspective. The individual projects that shape “Change of Perspective” offered a variety of workshops, where participating students had the chance to learn more about discipline-specific and transversal topics while encountering the diverse viewpoints of their international peers. Moreover, we presented learning experiences and ‘lessons learned’ from international virtual courses across the projects and jointly reflected on the implementation and up-scaling of Virtual Exchange (VE) Scenarios.

The IVAC Festival also allowed students and teaching staff to get to know each other and enjoy informal activities together. A social programme, featuring e.g. music performance, complemented the virtual academic exchange.

Review the festival and find out about events you may have missed. For this purpose, we provide you with presentations and workshop materials from various events on this page. In addition, the most important highlights from the keynotes by Betty Leask and Elisa Bruhn-Zass as well as from the introductory session and the concluding panel discussion have been captured in graphic recordings. You are also welcome to watch (again) the Pecha Kucha presentations of our IVAC projects.

Welcome and Introduction to the IVAC FestivalWelcome and Introduction to the IVAC Festival

This session offered a glimpse of the two Festival weeks and it was explained how you could earn a digital badge during the IVAC Festival.



Introduction to the IVAC initiatives of the University of GöttingenIntroduction to the IVAC initiatives of the University of Göttingen

Get to know the four IVAC initiatives of the University of Göttingen in three dynamic Pecha Kucha presentations. The project managers of „Fokus Balkan Online”, „Global Shakespeare 2.0“, „Virtual Supply Chain Management Teaching in Germany and Italy“ and „Transatlantic Virtual Academic Collaboration“ introduced the goals and main activities of their projects and look ahead to some of their most important learnings from the IVAC project.

Virtual Supply Chain Management Teaching in Germany and Italy (VISTA):


Global Shakespeare 2.0:


Transatlantic Virtual Academic Collaboration (TVAC):



Virtual Internationalisation: From a Niche to the MainstreamVirtual Internationalisation: From a Niche to the Mainstream

In her talk, Dr. Elisa Bruhn-Zass (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)) presented the concept of Virtual Internationalisation and offered an analytical perspective on the spectrum of ways to utilise information and communication technologies (ICT) in higher education international contexts. She also discussed the relevance of maintaining a comprehensive view on ICT use in international contexts in higher education beyond the pandemic.



Decolonising the Curriculum and Cognitive Justice – Whose Knowledge counts and why?Decolonising the Curriculum and Cognitive Justice – Whose Knowledge counts and why?

The way we think is critical to the way we understand the world. The curriculum in universities today is limited insomuch as it is dominated by ways of thinking rooted in the Western world and the colonial past. Cognitive justice, the idea that knowledges are intimately connected to people’s cultures, practices and beliefs rather than being objective and independent, has important implications for the way that we think about program content, teaching, learning and assessment. In this keynote, Prof. Betty Leask (Pro Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia) discussed curriculum change from the perspective of cognitive justice, decolonisation of the curriculum and the formal, informal and hidden curriculum.



Preparing to "build back better" – Virtual Exchange and Internationalisation at Home after Covid-19Preparing to "build back better" – Virtual Exchange and Internationalisation at Home after Covid-19

In this panel discussion, we asked our colleagues from the Change of Perspectives, liveSciences³, Internationalisation of the Curricula, and BESTExchange projects as well as from the ENLIGHT network to share their visions and insights regarding virtual exchange. What vision do they have for virtual exchange after the pandemic? Which lessons learnt can help us as we set out to design accessible learning formats for non-mobile students?