CIVIC +

Taking today’s globalized world into account, aspects such as intercultural sensitivity and international contextual knowledge are important to be integrated into the study curriculum to enable students to participate in international experiences.

The project Collaborative International Venues on Impacts on Cittàslow (CIVIC+) aims to combine international specialist perspectives and innovative, virtual, and blended collaboration formats. CIVIC+ aims to transfer a jointly acquired, new understanding of teaching and learning in the digital age into a methodical and didactic teaching and learning concept and thus to create the opportunity for international blended mobility within the framework of architecture studies. Together the professors from the partner universities of the architecture departments of the SRH University Heidelberg and Università degli Studi di Perugia conduct a collaboration and field study with and in the city of Homberg (Efze).

Students from the partner universities address questions of urban development in rural areas. From the perspective of dealing with existing buildings, climate friendly urban development and increasing the attractiveness of rural, decelerated cities concept, they will jointly research and test future models in rural areas with special focus on Cittàslow.

The joint course CIVIC+ is planned in a blended mobility format. The event is divided into three phases: CIVIC+ START, CIVIC+ LEARNING and CIVIC+ CONCLUSION.

Participating students receive tutorship from professors from both universities in joint online lectures and workshops and implement project work in multinational teams as part of online meetups and online tutorials. Various virtual collaboration and communication platforms as well as digital tools are available to students for this purpose. According to the topic-centered teaching/learning concept CORE (Competence Oriented Research and Education) principle followed by the SRH Hochschule Heidelberg, professors support the students as they learn, while the students learn actively and responsibly.

At the end of the CIVIC+ learning phase, the teachers and students meet for a face-to-face workshop on site, conduct field research and present their project results to the public in Homberg/Efze. 

After the workshop, the project results and experiences will be summarized in an E-book in which project results and concepts are being published. Some results will also be published on this website and continuously via Instagram.

The project is supported by the DAAD with funds from the BMBF and a cooperation with the Università degli Studi di Perugia and the city of Homberg (Efze).