Announcement of the GIPE Conference from 27th to 29th September 2023

On 30th September this year, the GIPE project funded by the DAAD and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research comes to an end after four years. Despite the particular difficulties caused by the COVID19 pandemic and the associated contact and travel restrictions, each year a team of students from Peru, Namibia, Indonesia and Germany were able to work together on a new project and successfully complete it.

From 27th to 29th September 2023, the project will be reviewed during a conference at the Gelsenkirchen campus of the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences. For this purpose, the project leaders of the four universities involved will meet on site to evaluate the last four years of „Global Intercultural Project Experience (GIPE)“ and discuss possibilities for further such projects or a different kind of further cooperation. But in the run-up to the event, it is clear that all participants would like to see the GIPE idea continue in the same or a similar form.

On each of the three days, there will be hybrid sessions for two hours each with participants both on-site and online from all over the world. The individual sessions of this „GIPE conference“ will each focus on a different aspect of the GIPE experience.

The first day will focus on the intercultural and personal perspective, the second day will focus on the transdisciplinary and professional perspective and the third day will discuss the academic impact of the project at the participating universities. For this purpose, students, teachers and project partners (clients) from all GIPE years will give talks and/or present self-produced videos. There will also be time for talks and discussions in all sessions.

At the end, in addition to the pure experience reports, the concepts for this special form of project-based learning that have been tested in the project will be clearly formulated, their effects analysed and recommendations for action for future GIPE projects derived. The results of the conference will also form the basis for a final, then already fourth, scientific publication on GIPE, the outlines of which will already be sketched during the conference.

Since „project-based learning under the special conditions of international exchange“ is a rather unwieldy term for an action, the verb „to gipe“, which has the same meaning, was already coined at the beginning of the project. With this in mind, the organisers of the conference hope that it will be said again as soon as possible:

„Let’s Gipe!“