International student mobility has traditionally played a central role within higher education institutions’ (HEI) strategic internationalization. Positively impacting students (Mittelmeier et al., 2024), supporting domestic students’ outgoing mobility (Marinoni & Pina Cardona, 2024), and acquisition of intercultural competence (Meridha, 2025) have long emerged as institutional aims considered worth pursuing.

Physically cross-border mobility has thus become one of the most visible and established dimensions of internationalization. However, the advent of digitization and its uptake within higher education teaching and learning have challenged these established notions of mobility: Pedagogical designs including virtual exchanges (O’Dowd, 2021), collaborative online international learning (Rubin & Guth, 2015) or open virtual mobility (Rajagopal et al., 2020) now enable students’ participation in international exchange and allow for international academic experiences—without physical cross-border mobility. Mobilities combining virtual and on-site elements (O’Dowd & Werner, 2024) further constitute a hybrid approach that complements extended mobility with shorter, targeted initiatives. Not only do these formats offer a new and distinct form of mobility, they also challenge and extend existing understandings of internationalization at large (for example, Bruhn-Zass, 2020; Mittelmeier et al., 2021).  

In light of the digital transformation, HEI’s strategic internationalization has included diversified mobilities as part of teaching and learning (Ferreira Santos, 2024). Digitization now constitutes a distinctive dimension in internationalization plans (Marinoni & Pina Cardona, 2024), with digitization strategies likewise including internationalization as a field of action (Getto & Buntins, 2021). As an institution’s strategy serves as a point of reference and shared understanding of the aims and means of internationalization (Childress, 2009), strategic documents also make explicit the institutional understanding and aims associated with international student mobility – be it physical cross-border, online or hybrid mobility.

Within German higher education, the current sectoral internationalization strategy explicitly includes the potential that digitization holds for mobility within teaching and learning (BMBF & KMK, 2024); affirming earlier educational policy recommendations (Wissenschaftsrat, 2018). However, despite educational policy making on the hand, and extensive research on the international course level on the other, we know little about how HEI positions themselves as institutions towards international student mobility impacted by digitization.

In order to address this perceived research gap, we used the concept of virtual internationalization (Bruhn-Zass, 2020)—“the process of introducing an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the delivery, purpose or functions of higher education with the help of information and communications technology (ICT)“ (p. 49, italics in original)”—to investigate how international student mobility is considered across internationalization strategies of German higher education institutions against the backdrop of digitization. Focusing on the dimension “student mobility”, we therefore posited the following research questions:

• How do internationalization strategies of German higher education studies conceive the nexus of international student mobility and digitization of teaching and learning?
• How do different conceptions relate to one another in terms of ascribed strategic importance and associated educational values?

In order to answer the research questions, we conducted a qualitative content analysis (Stamann et al., 2016) of internationalization strategies of German higher education institutions that explicitly mention digitization in the realm of teaching and learning. Our sample was derived from a web search of openly available internationalization documents in February 2024, issued by publicly financed German higher education institutions conferring doctoral degrees. Within the initial corpus of 137 HEI matching these criteria (HRK, n.d.), we then manually searched for the internationalization strategies, inserting “Name of the institution AND Internationalisierungsstrategie” into the search engine. In case this search did not yield results, we searched “Internationalisierungsstrategie” on the respective HEI’s webpage. Subsequently, we found internationalization strategies for 69 HEIs. Screening them for references to digitization in relation to internationalization of teaching and learning, we identified 41 documents. In our analysis, we proceeded through an explorative and a focused coding phase. In the first phase, two of us inductively coded the passages referring to international student mobility and digitization, paraphrased extracted passages. Following individual familiarization with the material, in the second phase, we subsumed codes into larger themes, also applying deductive codes provided as part “of “student mobility” in Bruhn-Zass (2020). Both of us reviewed all coded passages and we established consensus in each case through discussion. In support of adherence to credibility and trustworthiness as indicators of quality in qualitative research (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), we placed importance on discussion and clearly defined steps of analysis.

Out of 41 strategies in the corpus, 36 made reference to an aspect of international student mobility in relation to digitization at least once. The coded passages are subsumed under five core categories directly related to our research questions, and including topics such as “alternative to physical mobility” or “bridge to physical mobility”. However, we also identified the themes “digitization of administration” and “support services” as adjacent topics of interest. In reference to research question one, we preliminarily found that international student mobility is conceived across the strategies as occurring physical, blended or online - thus being more fluid and multifaceted than prior to the wave of digitization. It was noticeable that blended and online mobility were strongly linked to pedagogical design, exemplified in the “virtual classroom”, whereas physical mobility was less associated with pedagogy but rather with the overall experience of being abroad and established ideas of international competences and personal growth. For research question two, across numerous strategies a line of argument emerged that posited physical mobility as the overarching aim, with online mobility being relegated to an addition, an alternative in case of impossibility to participate in physical exchange, or as an enabler and bridge to physical mobility. Online mobility was more strongly associated with students with care responsibilities, special needs or affected by financial constraints or health issues. Thus, despite this social stance, it was perceived only as a second-best option for international experiences. Mobilities blending physical and online formats were addressed in support of sustaining mobilities, but making them more inclusive and aligning with questions of sustainability. Our presentation will depart from these findings, locating them within the broader discourse on the changing patterns of international student mobility and discussing possible repercussions in the realm of research and practice on internationalization strategies of higher education institutions.

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