Participation in the University Future Festival 2024
The University:Future Festival (U:FF) is the biggest event in Germany on the (digital) future of academic education, where topics like the artificial intelligence, future skills, didactics and strategy processes are enlightened. The U:FF 2024 was organized by nationwide initiatives as the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre, and supported by the Stifterverband.
In 2024, this hybrid festival took place from 05. to 07. June in German and English. The program offered 300 contributions from more than 600 speakers to over 4500 active participants.
To emphasize the importance of diversity in the digital transformation process, DigiUGov project members have successfully joined the U:FF with an Input on the 05. June 2024. Speakers from Universidad de Caldas, Universidad de Guadalajara, Universitat Jaume I and the University of Potsdam titled their input “Shaping digital Transformation through International Cooperation”.
Summary
How can digital teaching in HE be improved through an international cooperation? What kind of joint actions are future-proof? What are the key components and factors of success? We want to give some food for thoughts by introducing DigiUGov, an Erasmus+ Capacity Building project among Latin American and European higher education institutions.
DigiUGov combines collaborative work in a diverse consortium, digital skills development for various status groups and sharing of best practices. They can act like a catalyst for the digitalization in higher education institutions. Meanwhile, it’s challenging to manage diversity in international cooperation projects among the higher education institutions.
To promote digitalization in higher education jointly, a mutual understanding of preconditions, frameworks and laws is essential for the project design and implementation process, since different cultural and institutional backgrounds, status groups and languages lead to different understanding, approaches and viewpoints. It’s also demanding to anchor the project impact in a sustainable and structural manner.
In the light of this context, we presented the Diversity Workshop for the project members and our lessons learned from the multinational collaboration, by not sugarcoating the challenges.
We also believe that a sensitiveness on diversity, an efficient coordination, low-threshold tools and formats are the keys to success. As an exclusive take-away from our input, we will also share a self-assessment tool for digital competences as a preliminary project outcome.

You can access the conference here