Virtual Exchange as Innovative Practice across Europe: Awareness and Use in Higher Education. EVOLVE Project Baseline Study

This report presents the findings of a survey conducted by the Erasmus+ KA3 project EVOLVE (www.evolve-erasmus.eu) on the awareness and use of Virtual Exchange (VE) in Higher Education across Europe, primarily on the basis of data from universities belonging to the Coimbra Group and SGroup university networks.VE is an educational practice based on sustained, technology-enabled communication and interaction between individuals or groups of learners from geographically separated and/or different cultural backgrounds. This type of online collaborative learning, which can be either in the form of class-to-class exchanges supported by university teachers or in the form of group exchanges facilitated by external exchange providers, is promoted by the EU as a tool for inclusion and to offer more young people an international experience. It also links up with institutional strategies and policies of ‘internationalisation at home’ and internationalising the curriculum. Finally, it is regarded as a tool to enhance students’ employability in terms of transversal skills which employers seek, including foreign language proficiency and intercultural competence, and digital and collaboration skills.Our study found that VE is not yet widely known as educational practice by key stakeholders in implementation, such as educators, educational supporters, internationalisation officers and policy officers and managers. Policy officers and managers show a slightly higher degree of awareness, but this may partly be due to the fact that they associate VE with virtual mobility or online learning more generally.VE is not yet used on a large scale by respondents in our sample. The main disciplines where it is implemented and understood are in Education; Arts and Humanities (especially languages); and Social sciences, journalism and information. Implementation, however, is not restricted to these areas and covers most other disciplines distinguished by our study.Support, when it is provided, is normally in the form of technical and pedagogical assistance; institutional recognition and incentives appear to be generally lacking; and data about inclusion at course or curriculum level by allocation of credits, incorporation in course descriptions and reservation of class time are inconclusive due to the small number of participants reporting on this. Finally, VE is not yet widely referenced in strategies and policies for eLearning, professional development and internationalisation, but a group of 10 to 15 universities appear to be moving towards further integration at strategic and policy levels.Conversely, the potential of VE for educational innovation, skills development and internationalisation are widely acknowledged. More specifically, educators and educational supporters rate VE highly as a tool for teaching and learning innovation, development of intercultural competence, language and digital skills, as well as subscribing to its role in teacher professional development. Overall stakeholders also highly rank its potential for internationalisation, linking it to educational as well as economic benefits.In response to the alleged benefit of VE as a low-cost solution to internationalisation, we point out that VE is not an activity that bears no cost at all. Learning to use it, running and maintaining it requires structural training and support facilities, for which institutional policies and infrastructures are generally not yet in place. In view of the unique characteristics of each exchange, it is not a tool that is easily standardised as a one-stop solution for all.It is promising to see that there is substantial interest from each of the stakeholder groups to learn more about VE by participating in training. Training programmes such as those offered through EVOLVE and Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange respond to this need. Through follow-up studies and interviews in institutions seeking to implement VE, we will try to find out more about factors of success and failure in this promising field of educational innovation and share these with the community at large in future publications