FRAMES 2021 Year in Review

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2021 has been a year full of uncertainties and great concerns which have led to reshaping the new normal or some new versions of the old normal, but it has also been a year highly exciting when we have started working together on the FRAMES project, facilitating the integration and accreditation of Virtual Exchange in Higher Education.

It’s been a truly positive year for FRAMES, full of developments and major achievements. In 2021 we have:

  • published a report on Scenarios for the integration of Virtual Exchange in Higher Education, which is available in English, Italian and Spanish
  • delivered a pilot online training programme on integration and accreditation of Virtual Exchange and blended mobility running from 18 October to 14 November 2021 with 37 participants from the Universities of Girona, Limerick, and  Siena
  • Presented the finding of our analysis on the scenarios for the integration of VE at the IVEC2021 conference
  • raised awareness on ways to integrate Virtual Exchange in Higher Education during our Launch Event, which was held online on December 10th, 2021 with +100 participants
  • run a policy consultation meeting with global experts in Virtual Exchange to inform the UNESCO WHEC2021 and the next steps of the project

We have also had insightful discussions with the FRAMES colleagues, during our monthly meetings and continuous exchanges.

We are grateful to the many educators, experts, VE practitioners and everyone who has contributed to our activities and enriched our notion of Virtual Exchange along the year. Thank you to Anna Turula, who keeps an external eye on the quality of our products, providing us with insightful reviews and recommendations to constantly improve our activities.

Thank you to everyone who tweeted and blogged about us. We loved your posts, in all languages.

Thank you to Erasmus+ for making all these things possible.

We are enthusiastic about the strong foundation and results of our collaborative work. We wish 2022 will be a great year to make even more people aware of the benefits of Virtual Exchange, and even enable more people to participate in our activities by:

  • sharing insights or cases of Virtual Exchange through this survey or by writing a blog post for our website
  • learning with us through our upcoming open training in May 2022
  • participating in any of our upcoming events
  • joining the conversation on Twitter or getting in touch with us directly

We look forward to sharing with you another year of FRAMES. Search through the website and get in touch with us, we are eager to receive feedback from others on what we are doing.

We wish you a serene holiday period, and a very Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating!

Collaborative online Training on Virtual Exchange and blended mobility integration

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The Pilot ‘FRAMES Collaborative online Training on Virtual Exchange and blended mobility integration’, running from 18 October to 14 November 2021, has proven to be a successful experience for participating staff, i.e. IRO staff and related offices (mobility officers, educational offer, career offices), management and educational leaders as well as academic staff of the 3 FRAMES partner HEIs. Organised by UNICollaboration, in cooperation with Sharing Perspectives Foundation, the course aimed to develop the participants’ capacity to design, implement, assess and multiply relevant mobility schemes enriched by Virtual Exchange (VE).

The experiential, connectivist and project-based approach adopted by the training course enabled participants to be exposed to an innovative and interactive way of learning how to successfully integrate and accredit VE within their HEIs through tasks and activities that were both asynchronous (fora, materials to read and watch, and weekly tasks on Moodle) and synchronous (weekly meetings via Zoom), and which committed participants for approximately 4 hours per week.

37 participants participated in the pilot course, of which 14 from the University of Granada, 13 from Limerick University, and 10 from the University of Siena. During the course, participants were able to explore, through 4 Modules: 1. What VE is and what it is not, and why it differs from Virtual Mobility; 2. How to integrate VE at HE level; 3. How to accredit VE; and 4. How to draft a project plan on VE integration. 

After the end of the Training Course, a MASTERCLASS was held on 19th November from 10.00 to 12.00 CET, addressed to educational leaders and the top management from FRAMES Partner universities for them to become familiar with VE and be informed about the main take-aways of participants in the FRAMES Pilot training.

Upon completion of the course, 25 participants have been awarded an Open Badge.