Comenius Teaching Fellow Grant for Georgette Coffeng and Rina de Vries

Georgette Coffeng and Rina de Vries have received a Comenius Teaching Fellow Grant of € 50,000 from the National Knowledge Institute for Education (NKO) for their project "Enhancing student employability through intercultural skills: developing a student-driven intercultural dilemma game for Study Abroad.” The project focuses on driving educational innovation by developing a game to enhance students’ intercultural skills.

At the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), students have the opportunity to spend part of their studies abroad. One of the intended learning outcomes of studying abroad is the development of intercultural skills for an increasingly international labour market, in which working in diverse teams is essential. In a special Study Abroad course, students receive training to support this process, gaining experience that can be transferred to future jobs. However, they often fail to apply the theoretical frameworks provided in the course. They also frequently stay in ‘cultural silos’ while abroad, interacting mostly with fellow nationals or other international students. As Coffeng and De Vries point out, this means that, instead of exploring intercultural differences in-depth, students may only gain surface-level knowledge of the host country.

Coffeng is a trainer and coach at FEB who specializes in professional and intercultural skills and personal leadership. De Vries is an educational developer and trainer at FEB and a grant advisor at the Teaching Academy Groningen (TAG). Their project introduces a new training tool in the form of a student-driven intercultural dilemma game. Following a designated format, students collect authentic experiences outside their cultural comfort zone, which inform the content of the game. They then vote on which intercultural dilemmas can be added to the game. The game itself is an electronic world map on which dilemmas are hidden beneath clickable tiles.

Interdisciplinary collaboration

The game will be developed in collaboration with experts in gamification from the University of Groningen's Community of Practice Gamification and Hare Software. Daniël Vullings – assistant professor at FEB and creator of the EOR game – will help with the game design and development. Nienke Renting –  assistant professor at the UG’s Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, specialized in Educational Sciences – will provide pedagogical advice. Sophie Laemers - teacher and trainer professional development at FEB – will assist with the implementation of the game in the Study Abroad course. Together, the project team will ensure that the game is user-friendly and digitally accessible.

The game will evolve into an interactive tool that consolidates theoretical knowledge and motivates students to engage actively with the host country while studying abroad. The project’s co-creative approach promotes self- and peer assessment, giving students more ownership of their learning. The game’s implementation will include the assessment of students' intercultural progress using a multicultural effectiveness test before and after they go abroad. An adaptable version of the game will be shared with third parties.

NKO and Comenius Teaching Fellow Grants

The Dutch National Education Institute (NKO, Dutch abbreviation)  – part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) – coordinates and funds educational research, and makes the results of this research accessible and useful for educational practice and policy. The aim of the Comenius programme is to stimulate educational innovation and improvements by professionals in higher education. Comenius Teaching Fellow Grants are meant for small-scale innovations in educational institutions.

Questions? Please contact Rina de Vries.