Where Theory Meets Reality: How International Visitors Transform Student Learning

Last week, the Global Culture & Management classroom in Rheinbach run by Eileen Küpper (Language Centre) & Karsten Heinrich (Department of Management Sciences), became a space for discovery. 10 visitors from partner universities in Ghana, Jordan, Kosovo, and Vietnam, representing both academic colleagues and administrative professionals, joined the students for an intensive session that fundamentally changed how they think about culture.

The catalyst was a simple framework: a cultural spectrum, and the question "Where does your country sit on each one?" For each dimension, our international visitors and students placed their country on the spectrum as a point on a continuum - acknowledging that culture is nuanced, that there are variations within countries, and that understanding comes from seeing where a culture sits in relation to others. This nuance is what separates cultural knowledge from cultural intelligence.

"Our students spent weeks learning cultural frameworks, but everything crystallized when they sat with our international visitors. Suddenly, the theory had faces and stories. That's when real learning happens - when textbooks meet lived experience“ Eileen Küpper.

The students will carry these insights forward. They're now designing escape room games based on what they've learnt - teaching tools that encode cultural learning into interactive experiences.