Enhancing Intercultural Learning in Student Mobility - Recommendations from the PADMICA project

This set of recommendations focuses on strengthening the operationalisation and implementation of intercultural learning within mobility, by promoting a shift towards mobility as a structured, supported, and recognised learning process. This shift is to be supported through the use of the ready-made PADMICA modules. Recommendations are formulated at two complementary levels. At the strategic level, recommendations address key stakeholders across the wider ecosystem, including funding bodies, policymakers, and leaders of higher education institutions. These focus on creating enabling frameworks, aligning incentives, and embedding intercultural competence more explicitly within programme requirements, quality assurance mechanisms, and institutional strategies/policies. At the operational level, the focus lies on implementation within higher education institutions, including the design of preparatory and reflective activities, the integration of intercultural learning outcomes into curricula, and the provision of targeted support for both students and staff. Together, these levels aim to ensure that intercultural learning is not treated as an implicit by-product of mobility, but as a deliberate and high-quality educational objective. * The recommendations were developed within the PADMICA project, which aims to enhance outgoing students’ intercultural competences and improve the quality of their mobility experiences.