Speaker at the Center for Higher Education Futures, CHEF, Aarhus University, Denmark

While not wanting to overstate the homogeneity of the university student body of the past, it is evident that Danish universities like many others have become more diversely populated within the last two decades. This diversity, and its implications, can be conceptualized and explored in many ways. In this paper, I focus on what I term ‘academic diversity’, which zooms in on students’ different academic backgrounds, and how it plays out in collaborative learning contexts. Specifically, I explore collaborative learning in several Master’s programs at one Danish university where collaborative project-work constitutes a significant learning activity (50% ECTS). By drawing on five focus group interviews with Master’s students, I undertake a discourse analysis of their experiences with group-work with peers of different academic backgrounds. I ask how they make sense of these differences and what implications they have for the ways in which the students work and learn in the group.