erate, or even to collaborate, and whether the general environment supports and
stimulates such interactivities.
Here the university comes into play as an institution which establishes frequent
contacts between the individual and the “foreign other”. The individual could be a
student, a lecturer, a researcher or a university employee who comes into contact
with guest students, visiting professor, guest lecturers, foreign researchers or for-
eign administration officers. However it is not simply the pure number of relation-
ships and contacts between the “I” and the “foreign other” which counts. The
quality of the interactions is much more important.
For example a foreign visiting professor invited by the university is not solely by
his presence a benefit for the university in which he is visiting. What makes his
stay during a semester period beneficial for students, the faculty, staff and for him-
self is the quality of the relationships he develops to his new colleagues and stu-
dents. Attending a lecture of a visiting professor could be a highly valuable experi-
ence for students if he lectures a specific content in his style, from a different per-
spective, using different didactic methods and textbooks and grading students with
a different evaluation system. For this to happen, the host university has to pro-
vide the foreign colleague with the liberty to do things his way. One current prob-
lem is that most curriculum modules are highly standardized in regard to content,
textbooks and grading. Therefore, host universities often request that the visiting
professors fit their teaching into standardized teaching processes. In this case the
guest professor actually becomes a second best substitute for home- based lectur-
ers instead of being beneficial for the learning process of students. The same ap-
plies for the relationship between the academic visitor and the faculty. The guest
faculty could be isolated or he could be integrated in regard to research and social
activities of colleagues.
The more intense the interactivity between the individual and the “foreign other”
is, the higher the educational benefit for both individuals could be. The task of the
university is to institutionalize frequent contacts between home-based students
and guest students, or between own faculty and visiting professors. To explore the
full benefit of these contacts the interactivity process between the individuals
should have these characteristics:
• a high frequency of communication,
• the context of communication within the university sphere should be
linked to learning and exchange of knowledge