tionalization on the individual’s learning process might be negligible. This could
even be the case for universities with a high number of student and lecturer ex-
change programs, many international research projects, frequent international pub-
lications, and mission statements with strong commitments toward university in-
ternationalization. The actual numbers of international activities are only partially
relevant for success in university internationalization. The impact of internationali-
zation on the individual’s learning and reflection, which is in reality the success of
university internationalization, depends mainly on the internal readiness of a uni-
versity system.
Based on this system approach, evaluation of success in university internationaliza-
tion has to contain two main elements. First is the quantitative part, such as count-
ing the number of guest students, guest lecturers, exchange programs, etc., and
developing quantitative ratios. This task should be easy to do because it is mainly
the collection of explicit knowledge which is already documented in paper form
and therefore easily attainable. However the second part of evaluation is measuring
the impact of guest students, visiting professors or international research projects
on the individual’s learning process in regard to the three system interrelations
(student-to-student, student-to-lecturer and researcher-to-researcher). This re-
quires much more effort. It is a matter of generating system internal qualitative
information and therefore implicit, so called “tacit” knowledge. Referring to the
principle of knowledge management, explicit and implicit elements of knowledge
are complementary to each other and are not considered mutually exclusive.12
The problem with implicit knowledge is that it is not yet documented and hence
the information is not easy to collect. Any evaluation of success in university in-
ternationalization has to go into the system itself to measure the frequency and
intensity of interactions between the two core elements of lecturers/researchers
and students. In part, information could be generated by self-assessment of indi-
viduals who answer questionnaires or write self reflection reports. Furthermore
evaluation has to focus on the university’s general organization of the three core
interrelationships. For instance, information should be relevant if guest students or
visiting professors are embedded in cooperative or collaborative learning or re-
search projects. Another question is how is communication between students
themselves and a researcher institutionalized by regular meetings (formal and in-
formal) in the university system. The organization of core interrelationships in a
university system concerns the administration-to-students or administration-to-
12 Nonanka, Takeuchi, 1997, p. 8.
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