Archive for category: News

Framing Virtual Exchange and Blended Mobility in Higher Education

Date: 30 March 2023 

Venue:

University of Siena

Aula Magna Storica, Rectorate

Via Banchi di Sotto, 55 – Siena, Italy

Registration: http://www.congressi.unisi.it/frames/

On 30 March 2023, FRAMES is organising its final event onsite at the University of Siena in Italy. The theme of the event is “Framing Virtual Exchange and Blended Mobility in Higher Education”.

During the event, we will look back on the past two years of FRAMES, an EU-funded project working on the integration and accreditation of blended mobility and Virtual Exchange (VE) in Higher Education, and we will look ahead at the wider role and value of VE integration within the Higher Education context.

The keynote speaker will be Francesca Helm, a leading expert in the field, who will share insights on the impact of Virtual Exchange on student learning and engagement. The event will include panel discussions and working groups on various topics related to strategic coordination, resources, quality, accreditation, recognition and sustainability of Virtual Exchange and blended mobility, as well as opportunities for networking and sharing of experiences among attendees.

The event addresses academic staff interested in VE, officers in charge of mobility and internationalisation, IT staff, as well as top management, senior staff with internationalisation roles, and anyone interested in exploring the opportunities VE can offer to innovate mobility in Higher Education.

The one-day event will be held at the University of Siena (Italy) on 30 March 2023 starting at 10:00 am, with registration opening at 9:30 am. The event will end at 5:00 pm followed by a farewell cocktail at the Rectorate.

The programme of the event will follow shortly on the event website at http://www.congressi.unisi.it/frames/

As part of the online conference “Digitalisation. Education. Connection. Education.” organised by Technische Universität Braunschweig on November 30 – December 2, 2022, FRAMES was featured in the Digital Fair of Possibilities with a contribution by Sara Pittarello focused on how to use FRAMES to improve Virtual exchange experiences in Higher Education.

If you missed the digital fair, or would like to watch our contribution again, this is the link:

Virtual Exchange as an educational practice has been shown to work as a complementary component of physical exchange programmes, allowing more students to benefit from meaningful international and intercultural experiences as part of their higher education. Now it is time for Higher Education Institutions to mainstream this approach into their institutionalised mobility activities. 

To support educational professionals with this mission, the FRAMES consortium is happy to present the ‘Toolkit for Integrating Virtual Exchange in Higher Education’. This one-stop-shop provides key information, inspiration, tools and case examples of the approaches that Higher Education Institutions can take to integrate and accredit Virtual Exchange.

Whether you are an administrative officer curious to explore what Virtual Exchange integration can bring to your institution, or a teacher willing to find ways to accredit and sustain your Virtual Exchange activities in the curriculum; this product will help you with essential tools, activities and best practices. Visit this webpage to download the digital or the printer-friendly version of the toolkit, and explore additional multimedia assets like the FRAMES podcast 

The toolkit has been externally reviewed by Professor Anna Turula, Head of the Technology Enhanced Language Education Department at the Pedagogical University of Krakow, who said:

“The Toolkit … has every chance of serving the purpose it was designed for and to live up to the expectations of both the project authors and prospective users. [T]he Toolkit is a good, effective means of devising ways for integration and accreditation of virtual exchange in the institution of the user.”  

The Toolkit has been created in the framework of the FRAMES project, a Strategic Partnership funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union spanning over 2 years (March 2021 – February 2023). The project is implemented by a consortium composed of UNIMED – Mediterranean Universities Union (coordinator), UNICollaboration, Sharing Perspectives Foundation, Universitat de Girona, University of Limerick, and Università di Siena.

This special issue of the Journal of International Students, Virtual Exchange: Evidence and Analysis to Advance the Field, co-editors Melissa Whatley and Taylor C. Woodman and international teams of researchers explore the complex realities and provide new directions for the rapidly growing field of virtual exchange and its continually evolving models and modalities.

Our FRAMES-related paper Scenarios for the Integration of Virtual Exchange in Higher Education” describes the results of the analysis carried out within FRAMES which collected and analysed Virtual Exchange (VE) case studies building upon desk research and through an open survey, so as to identify and describe various scenarios of accredited VEs. By using a qualitative methodology based on pattern matching analysis, collected cases were aggregated into four scenarios to be potentially used by a variety of European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): VE as a preparatory or follow-up activity to physical mobility (blended mobility); VE as an intertwined component of physical mobility (blended mobility); VE as a stand-alone learning activity; VE as a component of a course. The main conclusions and recommendations revolve around the need to expand the number of potential scenarios across all disciplines and contexts and the urge to  train  academic  as  well  as administrative  staff  to facilitate the integration of VE in HEIs.

The open access article is available here.

The JIS Special Issue is available here

Published: 2022-09-09