The covid-19 pandemic served as an accelerator to prioritise local internationalisation activities at many higher education institutions (HEIs). Internationalisation of formal curriculum at home is one of such activities that has the power to bring the benefits of internationalisation to all students, not only the mobile ones. To make this happen, university teachers need the expertise to become capable of designing and facilitating international practices in their disciplines.

The view of teaching staff as key players in internationalisation at home/internationalisation of the curriculum (IaH/IoC) is well established. However, even though teachers, in theory, may be aware of their role, research shows that there is great uncertainty about how to carry out their responsibility in practice. HEIs stand in front of the important task: equipping their teaching staff with the competencies to manage the challenges and opportunities that the international classroom brings.

This presentation will give an example of meeting this demand by introducing an ongoing initiative in creating a staff development course driven by the network for Strategic Internationalisation for Swedish University Colleges (HÖNSI).

A group of researchers, teachers, curriculum developers and international officers representing six Swedish HEIs have planned the joint course with the aim to increase the awareness of academic teachers about their role as intercultural educators and to support them in how to integrate an international, intercultural and global perspective in their own practice to increase their students’ intercultural competence. Our session will present the course plan, its learning objectives and contents. In addition, the dialogic planning process and its challenges will be discussed, for example, the balance between theory and practice and the didactic/educational issues: what is internationalisation, why internationalisation and how to ‘do’ internationalisation?