International digital learning, its purpose, and pedagogical framework built upon the creation and development of a contemporary environment, offered learning and research experiences to learners in their own classrooms. The educational value of international digital exchange, which took advantage of ICT resources, was gained by enlarging a classroom with connections and access to a broader research community. By recognizing technology not as a replacement for educators but as a possibility to offer exposure to an international audience and peers, a wide range of skills were developed in learners as well as educators. These skills, such as writing, speech, the use of digital media, presentations, and communication with learners and educators from different countries, were critical in building a proper educational journey for young people of that time. These skills could be successfully transferred later in their academic or industrial careers. As the massive change to digital learning due to the current pandemic showed, digital learning provided its own set of problems, such as finding a balance between synchronous and asynchronous teaching or the higher concentration problems during synchronous teaching in comparison to classroom teaching.
Furthermore, digital learning combined with international exchange promised a low-cost, high-reach approach to expanding education opportunities, particularly in areas where the current knowledge was specialized on a national or even European level. Currently established criteria and strategies for digital learning and evaluation of digital learning were rather generic and did not take into account the specific requirements of Civil Engineering or even Engineering in general. The aim of IO2 was to understand the pedagogic value of international digital exchange by considering the lessons from comparable HEIs' existing digital curricula, goals, and program designs, as well as by observing benefits among learners, educators, and HEI's culture. This also included covering advanced variables that made the curricula effective in order to answer what would make an internationally competent learner and educator. Therefore, the strategy of conducting benchmark tests was to observe, reflect, and link them to existing curricula and approaches, and understand how these affected learners and their learning within a challenging international environment.
A first step was executed by means of thoughtful inquiry to identify characteristics for a successful initiative in digital learning environments by recognizing current and future learners' and educators' expectations. The topics that emerged from Intellectual Output 1 provided crucial guidelines about ensuring adequate digital media, professional development, and broad support from educators to the administration, as well as attention to clear curricular goals and selecting a model that aligned with the requirements of each HEI. In addition, it wrapped up and evaluated the recent experiences (due to the Covid-19 restrictions) from lecturers who had to transform ad hoc standard lectures into digital/virtual formats and students who had to change their study routines. Furthermore, students' feedback was collected for evaluation of the effectiveness of the ad hoc transformation.
The following issues were addressed:
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