2 June 2026

Collaborative Teaching: A Win-Win for Students and Teachers

TU Graz teacher and tenure-track professor Daniel Fruhwirt on collaborative teaching and how it broadens horizons for teachers and students.

“What really defines international teaching goes beyond language skills and international networking.”, says Daniel Fruhwirt, a tenure-track professor at TU Graz who has been involved in international teaching collaborations since 2022.

Since then, four joint courses have been developed with Unite! partners in the field of traffic safety and impact: 

• Tunnel Ventilation and Safety (TU Graz, Politecnico di Torino and external lecturers from industry) 

• Summer School on Safety of Underground Transport Infrastructure (Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, TU Darmstadt, Politecnico di Torino and TU Graz) 

• Hydrogen Safety in Mobile Applications (Politecnico di Torino, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and TU Graz) 

• Environmental Impact of Road Traffic (TU Graz, KTH Stockholm) 

Benefits of collaborative teaching 

Intercultural competence: As a teacher, Daniel finds it inspiring to accompany young students as they work together on projects. Their different personalities, previous experiences, approaches, and cultural differences highlight the different requirements of students, provide invaluable feedback for his own teaching and promote understanding of diversity.

Improved teaching: Exchanging ideas with the teachers from other Unite! universities has also given Daniel valuable input and different perspectives, especially regarding his own courses and has often led to new project ideas and innovations.

Career-ready skills: Daniel’s experiences with students in international courses clearly showed that learning together makes students much more open-minded and receptive to new challenges and new contacts, and enables them to adapt more quickly to a new working environment. These are qualities that every internationally active employer is looking for.

From online learning to hands-on teamwork 

Daniel conducts the courses he offers either entirely online or in a hybrid format. Based on his experience with collaborative courses so far, both the student teams’ project results and student feedback indicate a preference for the hybrid format.

For his hybrid approach, the theoretical input is provided in online sessions, while the practical part takes place on site at a partner university. This increases the efficiency of on-site activities and saves resources.

“In general, a stay abroad is always a special highlight and, in addition to attending courses, naturally also offers the opportunity to get to know new people, cultures, and cities. I find working together on site to be much more efficient, as direct personal communication within and between teams is easier”

“An important element of the group work is that each student is assigned a specific responsibility (e.g., overall project manager). This has proven to be extremely effective.” states the tenure-track professor. The project work concludes with a mutual presentation of the projects by all teams, followed by a discussion round.

Another aspect that students particularly appreciate is external guest lectures by industry partners. These break up the theory-heavy input phases and at the same time highlight the highly practical orientation of the course.

What does it take to teach internationally?

According to Daniel’s point of view, developing a new international course requires four essential elements:

• Enthusiasm for teaching

• Personal commitment

• An idea for an innovative teaching concept

• A like-minded counterpart at a partner university

In Daniel’s case, he already knew a colleague from the Politecnico di Torino through his former stay abroad in Torino. The idea for a joint course was quickly born, and the jointly developed didactic concept immediately proved its worth and has already been transferred to other courses.

Funding opportunities with Unite!

The Unite! university network offers the perfect platform for establishing international courses. It provides exclusive access to nine Unite! universities and their faculty and staff. Both the joint summer school and the “Hydrogen Safety in Mobile Applications” course were financed by the Unite! Seed Fund in the first year. In subsequent years, the courses were held as Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programmes.