In this online course, you will familiarise yourself with Virtual Exchange as a pedagogical activity for engaging students in authentic intercultural collaborative projects with international partners.

Virtual Exchange means the engagement of students in online intercultural interaction and collaboration with students from other cultural contexts as an integrated part of their coursework under the guidance of their educators. The educators are planning a Virtual Exchange in a teaching cooperation.

The purpose is to practice how to co-plan and teach with elements of Virtual Exchange. Especially the transfer of the concept into your disciplinary teaching conventions, the integration into your course plan, the construction of tasks and the support and mentoring of your students during a Virtual Exchange is focused on during the course. You will meet educators from different universities all over Europe in this course.

Inclusion of online exchange activities in the teaching does not mean that there must be a change in the course description or curriculum.

Learning outcome

After completing the course, you will be able to:

• explain the potential learning outcomes of Virtual Exchanges, for example, be able to tell others, e.g colleagues and leaders in your department about the benefits of virtual exchanges
• do the steps for setting up and running a Virtual Exchange in your course(s), for example, be able to design activities and choose technologies
• use a collection of materials and examples as inspiration for your activities, for example, use inspiration from others in the design of your own activities
• network with educators from other countries in order to establish potential Virtual Exchange partnerships, for example, talk with others who are interested in Virtual Exchange and find out if you could do international co-teaching together in the future

Content

The course prepares participants to organise and deliver online exchange activities in university teaching.

Autumn

• Session 1 (1,5 hours): What is VE and integration in the syllabus
• Session 2 (1,5 hours): Task design – getting your students to work together
• Session 3 (1,5 hours): Mentoring and support of students
• Session 4 (1,5 hours): Potential partnerships, reflection

Spring

• Session 1 (3 hours): What is VE and integration in the syllabus + Task design – getting your students to work together
• Session 2 (3 hours): Mentoring and support of students + Potential partnerships, reflection