September 17, the PNU-EcoSystem Centre hosted a regular training on ‘Virtual Exchanges: Opportunities and Challenges for Students and Teachers’ as part of the project ‘University of the Future: Secrets of Successful Management in Education’. The meeting, attended by nearly 50 people, was dedicated to the opportunities and challenges of virtual exchanges for students and staff.
The Centre’s specialists delivered the training: Victoria Gnezdilova, PhD in Biology, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and Kateryna Fomin, PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Foreign Languages. They shared the experience gained during their internship at the summer school AMU Summer School ‘Internationalization and Internationalization at Home through Virtual Exchange: Creating a Motivating Environment for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)’ at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland).
The theoretical part of the event included an overview of the general requirements and features of engaging in virtual mobility. The trainers explained the opportunities of finding international partners through the UNICollaboration platform on COIL, adaptive formats for integrating virtual mobility projects into the university context, joint international online learning with/without physical mobility (Virtual Exchange), and blended intensive programs (BIP). In the other part of the training, the participants took part in a practical workshop where they modeled indicative strategies for implementing virtual mobility at the university at different levels (students, teachers, administration).
Olena Budnyk, Director of the PNU-EcoSystem Centre, noted that involving students in international virtual mobility will enhance the university’s image and interest of applicants, and open up new opportunities for project activities in the current military realities. Iryna Piatnychuk, Dean of the Faculty of Management, highlighted the importance of including international virtual mobility in the current University Regulations and the necessity of adapting the documents to the new realities. Oksana Kondur, Dean of the Faculty of Pedagogy, focused on the importance of transitioning from virtual exchanges to mixed intensive programmes, as well as on possible difficulties and prospects for overcoming them to expand the scope of intercultural communication and cooperation.
The training was organized by the Centre for Innovative Educational Technologies ‘PNU-EcoSystem’, the Faculty of Management, and the Faculty of Pedagogy.