First PIONEER Festival: Info Fair, Mobilities, Workshops on COIL and Challenge-Based Education

At the PIONEER Alliance Info Fair, students and staff from TH Köln had the opportunity to connect with representatives from PIONEER partner universities and learn more about exchange and collaboration opportunities. Around 80 participants visited the Info Fair in the foyer of the Südstadt Campus to gather information. In addition to this on-site offer, several online sessions on Erasmus+ student mobility and Erasmus+ staff mobility were held, some of them including live experience reports.

COIL Network Meeting

Several gatherings of the university alliance were embedded within the festival. The COIL network, initiated and led by TH Köln within the PIONEER Alliance, met for a two-day workshop to collaboratively develop strategies for partner matching and raising awareness of COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning). During a matchmaking session, project proposals were presented and connected with faculty from the PIONEER partner universities. Afterwards, participants formed international teams of faculty and higher education didactics experts to design an online platform for partner matching as well as shared communication materials, such as a poster on COIL. One participant described the working atmosphere as follows: “Very nice starting point for further collaboration between PIONEER. The sessions were really well prepared and led to constructive outcomes.”

Event Notice: On February 6, 2026, Prof. Jacqueline Bürki from Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH) and Susanne Glaeser from the Center for Academic Development (ZLE) at TH Köln will offer an online workshop titled “How do I teach a COIL?” for all faculty members of the PIONEER Alliance.

Joint Workshop with the PIONEER Challenge-Based Education Working Group

At the meeting of the PIONEER Challenge-Based Education (CBE) work package at TH Köln, the results of a previously developed mapping were presented. This mapping makes visible existing teaching and learning offers at the ten partner universities—from projects on sustainability to modules addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities.” This overview is intended to be expanded into a cross-university course catalog that will consolidate all CBE offerings of the alliance in the future. The development of a CBE toolbox was also a focus of the meeting. This toolbox will support faculty in guiding students to work in international and transdisciplinary teams on real societal challenges.

In a LEGO® Serious Play session, the COIL team worked together with the Challenge-Based Education work package to develop new ideas for innovative teaching offerings that meet both the methodological demands of CBE and COIL and focus substantively on SDG 11.