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home. Virtual mobility enables students to study at a university abroad without physically

leaving home. Lecturers can teach to an international audience, supervise students and
collaborate with colleagues, all without leaving their office. Somewhat paradoxically, virtual
mobility in Europe is leading to a revival of traditional mobility. Students from different
European countries, working together virtually, enhance their collaboration with short term

physical mobility. It may be that the availability of low cost flights between cities becomes an
important factor in forming partnerships. Existing short term mobility is made more effective

by complementing it with longer term virtual collaboration between students and lecturers.
As this type of short term mobility is part of the formal curriculum and its outcomes are being
assessed within the curriculum, they can be considered elements of Internationalisation at

Home. They fall outside the original definition of IaH and highlight a conceptual shift in
response to changing conditions. IaH has changed its focus and character slightly in

response to the changing environment and diversity of contexts within Europe itself.

UK and Australian universities are well known for their focus on the recruitment of fee-paying
international students. This strategy has obvious economic benefits for institutions and national

economies. For some time it has also been a commonly held belief that by increasing the
diversity of students on campus, bridges of tolerance and understanding and lifelong
friendships between international and local students will be formed, transforming the learning

of all. Bringing the world to the classroom was seen as a key strategy for internationalisation of
the curriculum. It has become increasingly clear, however, that this is not the case.
International students in both the UK and Australia have reported difficulties in connecting

with local students, returning home after extended periods of study without having made any
local friends (although they had made many international friends). UK and Australian
students report both willingness and reluctance to engage with international students.

Outbound mobility numbers did not improve as had been hoped. Concerns emerged that
government leaders, university managers and curriculum designers and teachers have been

too narrowly focussed on the recruitment of international students as the primary means of
internationalisation of the curriculum (Leask, 2003). Responses to this have varied across
Australia and the UK, and within institutions in the same country.

Today all Australian universities, and some UK universities, include international

perspectives and global citizenship in general statements of the qualities of their graduates.
At the same time that IaH was developing as a concept in Europe, in Australia there was an
attempt to refocus internationalisation of the curriculum on the deliberate and strategic use of
what were often termed ‘graduate attributes’ as a driver for embedding the development of

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