 So, hello everyone and welcome to another webinar within the project, Child Education in Central Asia titled International Training Program on Medical Training and Education in Digital Era Perspectives and Challenges. This is the training program for postgraduate participants who are dealing with medical training and education and would like to improve their skills and knowledge in use of digital technologies for modern medical training and education. Today we are with the last of the webinars within these training programs. Just briefly, the Child Central Asia project has aimed to support modernization, professionalization and internationalization of postgraduate training in eight universities of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in field of pediatric pediatric surgery and child neuropsychiatry. Also, these webinars are organized in collaboration with European distance and e-learning network. Just allow me to briefly say that this year we are celebrating 30 years of serving modernization in education in Europe and we are very happy to be able to continuously share knowledge and improve understanding among professionals in distance and e-learning and to promote policy and practice across whole Europe and beyond. The title of today's webinar is collaborative online trusted relationships for multicultural exchange. The issue of virtual mobility and virtual exchange is not new. It's definitely present for number of years but maybe we can say that pandemic has fostered these two possibilities on the higher level than before and internationalization is something definitely which is important for all educational institutions. Today we have experts who will talk about this and give their expertise and practice on this topic. I can only say that maybe internalization and virtual mobility has been given the positive end and push actually with pandemic which served as a kind of catalyst for their improvement. And why the presence. And today's speakers, we have Irina Volngevichene, president of Eden Digital Europe, director of Institute for Study Innovation at Vitatus Magnus University in Lithuania. We have Elena Cardiola, director of e-learning center of University Pavia in Italy. We have Francesca Helm, researcher at Department of Politics Law and International Studies at University of Padua in Italy. And Vim Lampetta again professor at Leuven from Belgium and also editor and chief of E-Rodol, the research publication which is in the field of distance learning and also part of the Eden. So I wish to thank my speakers today. I will stop sharing my presentation and each of them will have an introductionary session. So now I'm inviting first Irina to start and you can share your screen. So Irina please. Dear colleagues, dear participants of this webinar. It is my pleasure to discuss today with you the topic of virtual mobility and internationalization. Actually two very important topics for research and practice that opened in a new context, in a new paradigm and are going through the shift. And the reason for that is of course the last two years working online. But at the same time the potential that high education institutions see for international, inter-institutional collaboration. I will start my short presentation to share with you the research that has been going on about the concept of virtual mobility. It is not a new concept as you may see, researchers from different countries and even regions of the world starting discussing it. But Europe here has a say and has many publications and research books and case studies dedicated to the important area that was identified already in the beginning of this century. It would be interesting to note that here we have Professor Wim van Vitegem, Franky Loven, the university among the pioneers of this research. Also we had the dissertations published in our university about the developments, the formats, the potential and the impact of virtual mobility upon students, researchers, curriculum and institutions. I will come back about this at the end of my presentation. I decided to share with you a couple of short, very short cases and then to talk with you about the impact of virtual mobility that actually was proved through research implemented, I would say, in the last 10, 11 years. I really prefer myself and share with you the proposal of the definition of virtual and blended mobility suggested initially by the European Commission in 2011. You see the reference document but then adapted and approved by this consortia of institutions with logos that you see in the slides with whom we had the pleasure to collaborate on the European projects about virtual mobility development and implementation. And the definition says that in this case it is set of informational communication technology supported activities organized at institutional level that realize or facilitate international collaborative experiences in a context of teaching and or learning with a hint that sometimes it may go only in a non formal or even informal way. We of course established our characteristics of virtual mobility, and we characterized it from the perspective of the number of involved actors in the process. So virtual mobility opens possibilities to collaboration of more than two higher education institutions. We focused on higher education because in physical or traditional if we may call it the mobility, usually a person travels from one country to another country. And this is based on bilateral agreement between two higher education institutions. So definitely virtual mobility expands it. Teachers and students as well experience enhancement and facilitation. And I will give you short examples when students staying in one country and being in here home universities in the same semester participate in the virtual mobility way in two or even three universities at the same time. And my initial examples will be focusing on three types of virtual mobility multilateral collaboration informal studies multilateral collaboration in non formal studies and bilateral collaboration informal studies. The first is most complex. And the last one is the simplest and maybe the second step to be mainstream in Europe. So I will start with the first that was one of the most complicated cases that I was involved in when actually three higher education institutions agreed to develop one formal learning course for bachelor study program and 13 teachers from six higher education institutions develop one course. The first challenge is when you start such I would say really multilateral collaboration informal settings is agreement on the learning outcomes. If I could give you an example it would be the stable when six higher education institutions divide curriculum into equal parts following of course learning outcome and assessment strategy and share development of learning design and learning curriculum in the format of sub modules or topics and then accompany the same group of students that could be of course by nature international through one semester in one course you can imagine such rich experience and it is existing and it is quite a successful example. Then happened a long time ago when we had still all the audience type video conferences meeting students every Friday from group groups of national participants and then working in an asynchronous way in model. Testimonies and impact of such experiences show that it's great pleasure for students to enrich to enhance their academic exchange and also social cultural exchange. A similar project was carried on when again four universities in this case developed a study program a study program consisting of 10 or 11 modules together again in multilateral collaboration and this collaboration proved such huge impact that teachers and students appreciated collaborative mode in curriculum designing in virtual mobility studies and in the end all universities benefited from the whole list of modules developed together so each university receives a new updated master program. And of course it continues in different different ways and modalities in meetings visits and other social cultural and academic exchange this is an evident evident result of such case studies. The second type of multilateral collaboration and non formal studies is an easier format where people meet in the projects usually develop a joint course together again inviting several universities even from outside consortium to participate in course development. And then of course pilot the courses and issue certificates as non formal course certificates for the participants of the course. I know that I can be confident showing here the names and signatures of people involved because that was very very favorable experience as well. However each such experience of collaborative international collaboration in international settings has much wider impact. Like experience gain lessons learned feedback testimonies trusted network development and what is more important understanding what are the steps needed for higher education institution to prepare for the quality integrated virtual mobility processes that are needed and how to prepare internal regulations that such virtual mobility could be implemented. And as I promised the third most probably popular way awaiting Europe in the coming years is bilateral collaboration informal studies when traditional physical mobility can be not replaced but enriched by virtual mobility options. When a single university offers courses for students all over the world and in Europe to participate in an exchange program to join their courses but the courses are not developed in a collaborative way. I would say it's a loss but maybe the first accurate step towards virtual mobility implementation. The problems and barriers for virtual mobility are still numerous. One of them is that still virtual mobility is not funded enough and properly but to my knowledge regulations are being updated and Europe already takes care and discusses how the process should be funded. And then of course the preparedness of the institutions those who do not yet have experience. And the very last slides will tell you a couple of statements I will share with you a couple of statements about how virtual mobility actually contributes to international collaboration. And all these statements have been reached through research implemented in quantitative and quality research after the experiences that I shared with you before. So there is data which is evidence that a virtual mobility as international collaboration experience enhances internationalization of studies, expands learning environments, contributes to cultural intercultural exchange, encourages good practices, collaboration, even idea sharing, establishes interinstitutional trust based relationships and solves problems of time, distance and sometimes financial resources. Virtual mobility has impact for higher education institutions. I am not going to read all these bullet points but all benefits listed here actually directly support internationalization and modernization of higher education as such. Virtual mobility has impact for teachers on the level of professional development, networking, exchange and of course transparency, recognition of teaching and professionalization, career opportunities, even research enhancement. And virtual mobility of course has benefits for students. This should come first, but we know that first institutions need to prepare, then teachers need to prepare curriculum and then students receive the outcome of this preparation already. So students who participated in research in quantitative research indicated that they upgraded their transferable skills participating in virtual mobility, also they confirmed curriculum and study quality enhancement experiences, new learning methods suggested by various higher education institutions, transparency of learning, enhanced employability, intercultural, international experience and expertise, enlarged academic areas of studies, new possibilities of course and support for being home students and lifelong learning groups, international study accessibility for physical and socio-economically disadvantaged groups. So this is my short introduction and of course I will be happy to discuss it further with you. Thank you, Irina. You have very nicely shared what actually this is about and these three possibilities. I think now it's quite clear on the benefits of all this. I invite the participants to set the question in the chat or their experience, but before we are going forward the question for you, actually from your experience, how much participants are interested in participating in such programs developed jointly by more universities and in virtual mobility as such. Definitely with pandemic we have experienced that the European Commission has said that blended mobility is possible because usually students went physically to some universities for one semester to get some new knowledge. Now we see that as it was not possible, more and more virtual mobility is present and also the European Commission is encouraging the collaboration of multiple universities jointly to work on some programs. So your experience from your students and how you see this in the future, how it will expand. We actually in our university worked a lot to explain to students and teachers what they may expect, what kind of support they will receive if they choose a course in a different university and in role and if their learning outcomes will be recognized and how they will be visible in their academic certificate. We worked a lot with our students and we sent out many many students to our partner universities. I think we were among the leaders sending students outside and we see it as a very beneficial way because students are very eager to know about different ways of studies in different countries. We are eager to find out something that is new, something that is different and maybe we find better offers in different countries and different universities and we want to try. So their experience was very positive and when we had next round and next round they were happy, they were already peer learning from each other and registered for virtual mobility, but you have to explain and to work with your students very, I think very openly preparing them for this new experience. In my opinion it's a very good way for students to test, to pilot studies in a different university before physical visit to that university or that country. And the same with teachers. Teachers enjoy working together, but they need time to understand, to accommodate themselves. I think we need to work a lot in order to prepare them and to explain. Thank you. Let's move on and then we will come back for discussion. So our next speaker is Elena Calderola. So Elena please can you share your part of introduction now. Thank you. Thank you very much Sandra and thank you very much Irina for a really interesting and insight view and framework for virtual mobility, talking about some projects in which Irina and other people were playing paramount role in order to produce and release them in Europe. And together with her I was with my university participating in especially in one project and other initiatives. And this one project I want to present today in depth. One of the project that mentioned Irina that is opening university for virtual mobility and now this is will be the topic of my presentation. I'm going to share my slide. So while Irina with practical example for sure, but also gave us theoretical frames about the various types of visual mobility. I want to focus on a specific project. And it was a joke just to say virtual mobility at work. So we can check we can control how was going a project, the positive part, the travel in this project and the lesson learned at the end of this project. So the project, the title of this project was opening university for virtual mobility opening university as a specificity because we will see, we will use a specific approach in the term of to open them, not only for mobility but only for but also for tools that we were able to use in order to implement the project. In this project without as many as the university university of Pavia University they have heard that he is born in the Portugal University of Ovo Vieto was contributors and KU Levin was participating as a supervisor. So this was the general schema of this project in which four university produces the content and activities and KU Levin was the university acting as a supervisor and coordinator. The aims of the project was to design a master study program curriculum using open educational resource. So another time we can highlight the term open. So not only open university to collaboration in a view of international cooperation, but open university, helping them in the use of open resources, open educational resources, applying correct licensing. So the idea is to use open resources that we were able to search and find on the internet. And then to reuse them to produce original product and to release them with a credit license. Then how to establish collaborative trusted relationship. So please each word is as an importance to collaborate not only cooperate but collaborate in a project together in the same topic more team. Trusted because there was an agreement between universities and relationship in designing the curriculum for multicultural exchange. And then how to integrate this open education innovation in everyday practices. How can you see the idea was so wide and so ambitious in define the aims of the project. But I think that in some manner we were able to achieve the goal. And now it will be my pleasure to go on and illustrate you what we did. Of course, Ayurina in her presentation presented this declaration from European Commission of virtual mobility. I invite you so this is the same declaration reported by Ayurina, I invite you and I like your attention on some specific and keywords. The first one is institutional level. Institutional level. So here the point is that institution has to be involved and not only is not just a matter of collaboration between single professor in some free initiatives or some free exchange of students but institutional level. That realize or facilitate international collaborative experiences so the first institutional level the second point institutional relationship and the first point teaching and or learning. So not not only or not at all exchange of ideas of collaboration but digital mobility is about institutional level. International collaboration teaching and or learning activities. So just to have clear the concept to benefit for institution really Ayurina was so perfect in highlight what are the benefit for the institution and just I want to stress and answer sound competition between institutions. So the idea is, we can collaborate with other universities but we won't demonstrate as as University of Bavia or K11 or Padua that our professor our faculties are very good in producer realize and then thinking such kind of collaboration so there is good competition between between organization. And then of course when there is competition the international university have to as to hope as to be international and as a result, the university will become recognizable and as a result, it will be able to attract for a student. So, as you can see here there are some good benefit for institution willing to adhere to such kind of approach at the same time for students and teacher. For example, for the student linguistic competence language competence because the student are forced to go and to interact in a new environment with people speaking a common language, for example, that will be for example, English language, English language. And so maybe at the, at the starting time, students are not so confident but then in a second time, they take part and at the end they will be happy because this improved the level of English. This improve the cultural and intercultural ability to stay and to interact with other people. They will be able to improve the ICT level all skills. And of course they will improve personal and social characteristics. Of course, all these kinds of skills and abilities improved will transform at the end of the curriculum studies in university in more career opportunities. We found in the project, going in the project, we were able to identify some key success factors. Of course, not such kind of, how can I say, top-down level, but it has to come from a need, from a need to be more international, more collaborative, more intercultural. So the first point is it come from a need. A lot of importance is integration of technology should not be technical barriers, because if this is the case, people refuse if it is so difficult, if the technology is not easy. The problem is that people refuse and prefer not to be involved. Of course, enthusiasm and effective teamwork are of paramount importance and the really point for a key success factor is the engagement of four levels. Top management, institution, faculty and teacher, of course, student, but the staff. The staff have to be prepared to realize, to prepare the infrastructure in which virtual mobility will move. Of course, in a blended way, blended here is, we can think blended in this sense, partly synchronous, partly asynchronous, but there is absolutely the necessity of synchronous meetings. Of course, we can add here, if we think at the word blended, also with maybe physical presence. So the blend, the mix is always the better solution. A very, very important part we noticed in our project, absolutely of a paramount importance is that everything has to be preplanned and absolutely communicate to the student how the virtual mobility take place in the next month. Of course, teacher has to be trained and supported and benevolent attitude and encouragement of the teacher, it's a matter of fact, different cultures and different perspectives of course offer wider approach. Point of view of the students, students have to know that they have to be particularly motivated. We cannot think about virtual mobility if we think about a student, a passive student, waiting that the professor will give the lesson. We need students with self-responsibility, we need students able to plan and organize the own learning process. We need proactive students, we need students with language knowledge and a bit of ICT skills. Of course, respect for diversity and intercultural differences, self-reflection capability. So not only, I mean, the students have success in virtual mobility, but these characteristics have to be present. As Irina said, it is a bit difficult to introduce virtual mobility in institution and in our case also the use of open education resources because these innovations are hardly mainstreamed. And even applied in university studies. So we can be more confident for the next year and we are, as Irina said, we work a lot in this direction, but a lot of parts we have to go on for a lot of aspects again. The reason, because innovation are hardly introduced to the teacher staff, it is difficult. We are experimenting this now in the University of Favilla coming from the experience of a pandemic. People generally are loved to stay in the same situation and not to learn more and more and more situation. The virtual mobility innovation needs to be introduced, as Irina said, to regular student exchange possibilities. Communication, organization and involvement and inclusion of paramount importance in this process. And teachers should be, of course, train it on how to design open curriculum, train it, how to design open curriculum and how it will be recognized afterwards in regular university study programs. Some steps in the project, in the project I worked in, so in OUVM, Opening University for Virtual Mobility. Training material for university staff was developed on virtual mobility curriculum design using open educational resources and Creative Commons license. Staff from consortium universities were trained during free one week short term mobility. So staff were created in each university and this staff for the time of one week worked in the different city of the project and received training time from experts. So this was very, very important to receive the training time, to receive the training materials and training period and to create collaboration, intra and inter staff from different universities. So in these ways, the consortium university were able to develop virtual mobility modules for supposed master degree. Each partner will have to lead the development of two modules. In total, we have about 10 modules. Best experience from the partner and it was realized that this master, a very important point, no new courses was created, but traditional courses were transferred from face to face to virtual courses. So we worked on existing courses, traditional courses in each universities and the staff worked to transport it in virtual mobility mode. Very, very important here that is institutional level, institutional level, I want to highlight this, please the last point. Participant student from consortium universities received ECTS. This was possible involving international relations offices from each universities of the partnership that agree in bilateral agreements, recognizing these courses released for each university. So the idea was that student receive ECTS for attending this course. No specific virtual learning environment was created, but each institution offered virtual mobility courses on their own virtual learning environment platform. And a specific website was created to collect all the needed information and to serve as point of access to the virtual mobility environment of each university. So, staff training session, course development, intra and inter-staff collaboration, produced and released open educational resources on Creative Commons license, exchange of experiences and tuning. But the very important point in this list is the administrative schemas, because I want to stress again on the importance of institutional level, administrative schemas so useful and mandatory for internal affair for international relations office and administrative schemas, detailed and precise for students in order to learn them how to move, how to do in a framework of virtual mobility. This was the access point, the website that the students of a partnership university reached in order to choose the course. This was the, how can I say, each university of the four university produced course and KU Leuven was the coordinator. How comes all the models were implemented? Each institution provided for internal calls, that is, each institution was committed to inform the student about these initiatives, provide for internal calls and to select students in order to foster their participation to the virtual mobility initiatives. Surveys for teacher and students were prepared and run and about 60 students for institution attended to the program's modules, internal and external students. Here in the slide there are the addresses of the website in which you can reach the training materials prepared and the courses released. So each of you can reach how we prepare the staff preparing these training materials and the produce of the project that is the courses released. Here are, in a nutshell, the courses released, just to make you. Okay, we are just at the final part, just some minutes ago, Sandra, just to show to the attendees the result. What were the students' expectations and doubts? In green, the expectation, the positive part. Okay, I am interested about the topics of the courses and I am interested about this experience in open educational resource. Okay, I will improve myself in using digital technologies and in project work, in group work. This sounds to me good. Okay, it will be an interesting experience and I will improve my level of English language. But in red, working in an international and intercultural group, I don't know. Some problem may be using English language as a unique and common language. Maybe I will not be so good as other participants, which will be my level of confidence in using English. Oh, there will be an intensive use of technological tools. I will be able to. And the problem, I am so good in order to manage properly my time. Because we need, if you remember, a motivated student and able to self-regulation of life study. Ex-post evaluation. Great success in the cooperation, so the green part is positive. No problem, good digital tools, it was easy, no barriers, fine. Both individual and group work were considered relevant, as well as researches, presentation, analysis and discussions held during the course. But students would have appreciated more feedback on weekly group work released and presented during little meetings. So again, a great desire from the student to stay in touch with the teacher, with other people in order to have more feedback about the work done. Students feedback. Okay, we were able to achieve the goals of the course. There was a relevant improvement in English language. Perfect. Intercultural aspect and social relation coming from the course were much appreciated. Students developed more confidence in using digital technology. Students developed more awareness in their critical and reflective abilities. And from my side, the last point, maybe is the more important point of the list. We are at the end. Overall assessment, 99% of participants declared to have positively modified their attitude to virtual mobility. So at the starting time, they were a bit doubt with some doubts. The last slide, we are at the end. Less alert of this project. The main critical factors for succeeding belong to organization and communication aspects. So if we are able to well pre-organize and if we are able to properly communicate and to properly involve students and teachers and staff, we can say that we will be able to avoid a lot of troubles. So this is really the main critical factors. ICT tools are now, more now than some years ago, easy to use and totally suitable for online education. So I really love when I hear also here in Italy, distance education is not the same as to stay in a room because there is not interaction, there is not the possibility for working group. Absolutely this is not true. ICT tools are easy to use and totally suitable for online education properly. Virtual mobility finally will be totally integrated in higher education processes if during the curriculum development, advantages for students and also for teachers will be taken in consideration and properly shared with them. Disseminate to them. If not, of course, people will stay with doubts that the better idea of education is to go to the home university and attend lessons in presence or the unique form of proper internationalization is to have presence physically in another country. Finally, I want to say Irina used the verb enrich. Absolutely this is not the case to substitute physical mobility. But the case here is to enrich the mobility with virtual mobility, adding also this way, this way who is so useful for student and professor for the motivation that both Irina and I tried to demonstrate during our presentation. Maybe I used some more time sorry for this and thank you very much for your attention. Thank you Elena. Very, very good example. I saw that people have asked for the link to web pages. You really clearly stated the old issues and things one have to think about when preparing such a program. I said I saw that prerequisites are motivated students knowing how to manage their own time. It's much easier to write it than to achieve it because sometimes students definitely are willing to participate but on the way are not able to fulfill all the expectations. And maybe they have better picture on themselves than they are really. So something to think about. So in that way, did you think within the program to ensure some kind of consolation for students, some kind of mentoring part to help them to stay on the program. And to pass all the obstacles in which they encounter. Thank you very much Sandra for this question because I have the culture that not only the best student have to undertake such kind of a possibility but all the students. So we can we have we our that is is to support the student that may be are not the best one. Just for this reason the University of Pavia now is participating in a project calling digital passport and involving in how to help student during the phases of mobility. And one of these modules is cultural shock or problem during the mobility. So I am in trouble. I am in difficulties. I don't know how to and we are prepared some capsules some ideas in order how to support to the student during the undertaking of his mobility both digital or physical. So the idea is to work also in this direction. Thank you Elena really really good example I think it can be a showcase to others how to do things. So let's move on we are running a little bit of time so next is Francesca if I'm correct. No we said next is Vim sorry so Vim you are the next please you have your 15 minutes to present introductionary the topic thank you. Okay. Thank you Sandra can you see my screen yeah I think so. Sorry. Yeah. So my name is Vim for Peter can I come from the University of Leuven has been mentioned already in this webinar after the introductions by by Rina and Elena. I will go and tell you a little bit more about one practical case where virtual mobility is applied in a concrete in a course actually that is offered by my university and another university across the ocean in the States Penn State University. And I will talk about virtual mobility in practice. Yeah like I said teaching on and for intercultural competencies. Let's see how I can move to the next slide. Yes. Okay. Intercultural competencies are becoming more and more important as had been said already but you should see that in a whole complex of. Let's say new skills and competencies that our students are expected to achieve when they graduate at the university. There is a lot more of a lot more competencies that then just related to the scientific domain in which you are studying. This gives just an overview of competencies that have been identified also by let's say the workforce. The companies the organizations the government where our graduates will start working afterwards when they graduate. They expect that our students will have new competencies related to the digital world in which they are living related to a connected world a networked world an open global world. And so we have to prepare in one or another way our students for that new world so to say. And that is what we would like to do with our course in the course is called professional and intercultural competencies for engineers. My colleagues at the University of Penn State University called the course engineering beyond borders. OK it's for engineers but it can be applied to many other types of studies as well. But OK in our case we focus on engineering students. Like I already mentioned it is important that we give our students during their studies already a flavor of what would it mean working in an international company. In an inter in a global world full of digital technologies with different cultures. I think that this is an important aspect that I would like to emphasize here. So in our university it is embedded in the postgraduate program on innovation and entrepreneurship in engineering at Penn State University. It is part of the engineering leadership development program. Remember what both Irina and Elena already said we talk about virtual mobility in when it is really part of the mainstream activities going on in the university. So the course I'm talking about here is part of full programs offered by our universities. And so what are then the learning objectives. Well I think that's a little bit beyond the topic of this webinar here. But especially we would like to explain engineers what does it mean to work in international teams in virtual teams. How can they actually develop the skills that are necessary to solve an engineering problem. Not just with engineers in the same room but with engineering teams all over the world. They learn how to set up such teams how to develop their own skills to work in such a team. Also learn about the team dynamics what's happening in such a virtual team. And how can they maybe also become a sort of leader in the team. So that is part of the the let's say the learning objectives of the course. So it's about intercultural competences into the virtual team collaboration and so on. But we also would like to let them experience it firsthand so to say by embedding them in a virtual team in the course itself. So that is what we wanted to achieve with the course. The things we are teaching in the course are based on two books which are quite well known I think in the field when you talk about intercultural competences. We refer to Hofstede who is a Dutch engineer that worked in global companies for most of his life and who then took the time to think about what are now these intercultural competences. And I think it's debatable what he did but at the other hand I think it's an interesting resource. If you would like to start thinking about intercultural competences in a global world and especially in an engineering world. The other book at the right hand side mentioned here is a sort of encyclopedia Kiesbauer shake hands. Which is giving for many countries in the world sort of overview of things that you better know before you start working with people in those countries. Or before you visit and start collaborating with people in such a country. Again debatable because it's more like an encyclopedia and it's generalizing things and maybe there is some bias in it. So be careful if you read it. But at the other hand it's also a good starting point for discussing when you work with people in other countries. Okay that was about the books. Okay the course characteristics develops about around five themes that we would like to address in the course starting from yourself and your own competences and your own identity. Let's say how you then develop and work in teams and eventually we end up with talking about cultures in organizations and companies in general. Of course the language we use is English in this case that was taken as a sort of given by all the students. The format that we used in this course and then that applies to virtual mobility is that we had in the first edition at least we had synchronous video conference lectures twice a week. And so there was faculty in Leuven and faculty in Penn State University that were actually giving lectures twice a week to the students. And that was then complemented with of course coursework readings and case studies also individual assignments and group discussions. And then let's say another main part of the course is related to a project that the students have to work on. A project related to an engineering problem somewhere in the global world and where we divided the students in teams, virtual teams, where there is students from Leuven and students from Penn State University gathered in one team and working together in that one team across the ocean. So they had to apply what they were learning in the course in different steps to the project that they were working on in that virtual team. Okay. Yeah, here is a few pictures. You will remember that's the time when we were having video conferences in dedicated rooms with dedicated equipment and where we were sharing content altogether. I think it's normal. And we also have to say that we sometimes interrupt the video conference lecture to allow local discussions with the students at both sides, just to make sure that we could also take benefit of the fact that students were still coming together in a sort of classroom context. And that we could also, yeah, discuss our own, let's say, perception of what's happening and what was told in the course based on how we could discuss that on a local level. Okay. The first run was in 2015, so long before Corona pandemic was disturbing our educational systems. Some experiences that students had with the first edition was that they liked it. It was interesting they told us it was relevant. But what they were saying was that having two lectures every week where the teachers were sort of transferring their knowledge in a very short time into one video conference session, that was a bit too much. So it was for them, it was heavy, let's say, to catch up with all the material that was provided in the video conferencing session. And so they were asking for more time for discussion. There was certainly something and that it was at the same time also a bit difficult during the video conference sessions to already start collaborating in their teams, in their virtual teams. So they were asking for us to reconsider that. Okay, the teachers were also quite happy and the one thing that we had to do was to overcome barriers related to different educational settings. For instance, the time zone problems, academic calendars was a very difficult one to overcome. For instance, this year, if we organize the course again, the American students have already started at the end of August and we will start next week in Leuven. So there is some flexibility needed from the teachers to catch up with this asynchronous academic calendar, so to say. And another interesting remark to make is that, and it's related to the educational systems, but the grading, the assessment of students is also something you have to take care of, in the sense that in the US students are expecting, for instance, high grades when they do everything what is asked for. In Leuven, we give only higher grades to students when they are doing extra work than what we are asking. So there is a need to make sure that the grades that we are giving are acceptable at both sides of the ocean, so we have to think about that. And important was also to note that opposite to what the students could not do actually, we had a chance as teachers to meet face to face before we started the first edition of the course. And that helped, of course, because then there was sort of trust relation between the teachers. We knew each other. We had a good feeling and we became even more than just professional colleagues. There was a sort of friendship between the teachers that also helped us to overcome all sorts of barriers that came across in the course. Okay, so after that first run, we started thinking about what can we now improve to accommodate the concerns of the students and at the same time also to help us as teachers. And there we decided that a flipped classroom model would be a good idea. So what we tried to do then was we provided all the learning materials online. And we were fortunate enough that the colleagues in Penn State University could get sorts of grant so that we could develop a fully online course that was giving all the concepts and all the ideas, definitions that we wanted to cover in the course. And we then said, okay, instead of two video conferencing sessions, we will limit it to one and it will not be a lecture, but it will be dedicated to a discussion that we could have with the students at both sides of the ocean, where we could then digest the learning material that they already studied before they came to the session. So that was the major change that we made from the first edition to the second edition of the course. And that was also helping the students to better digest the material, let's say. There was also some work done on the topics and what we learned from the first edition that we had to implement in the second edition. Okay, so the second run of the course was then offered in spring 2017. You might have seen that there is always a limited number of students. Small numbers of students at both sides of the ocean involved in the course, which makes it also feasible for us as teachers to adapt to certain needs that might pop up and that we have to address. So in the second edition, it was so that in Penn State, they decided to even just stick to the online course and there was no classroom participation. Here in Leuven, we went for the blend. So the students were still coming to the classroom. We organized the video conferencing sessions where the teachers from Penn State University were involved, not their students. So we tested out the flipped classroom model and we tried to see how that could work in this format. Okay, and we saw that this is a picture of the online course. It's offered by Penn State University, so there was no need to copy that course to the system in Leuven. We simply had access to the learning platform of our colleagues in Penn State University. So the students liked the online material, also liked the flipped classroom model, and they were also happy with sort of the discussions that we could have in the individual conference. What they disliked a bit was that I was still as a teacher talking too much. And so I was sort of leading the discussion at certain points, but while leading the discussion, I was also involved in the discussions myself a little bit too much according to the students. And then there were also some practical details with the course, but that is not important for the story today. So just a few quotes of the students that they would have liked to get to know the students anyway, although the participants from Penn State University were only online. That was not sufficient for the students. They really wanted to see their faces so that there was a sort of contact possible with the students. And certainly in the beginning of the course that would have helped them. We forgot about that. So I think that it was also important that students said that they were happy that they could still come to the class and meet their peers in the classroom and that we then connected two sides all together. I will come back to that later because in Corona that was a bit more difficult. So based on that we went to the third edition and now we introduced the blend also in Penn State University. So we had the flipped classroom model still and then we had the students live in a classroom in Leuven and live in a classroom in Penn State University. And then we used again video conferencing, web conferencing actually to connect the two sides and to really go into discussion not only with the teachers in Penn State University but also with the students there. So that was certainly something that students liked very much. We have to say that also in the third edition it was becoming more and more clear for us that we had an international group of students both in Leuven and both in Penn State. In Leuven it was not just Belgian students, same in Penn State University it was not just American students. So we could also take benefit of the fact that we had students with different backgrounds. And therefore we decided that at the beginning of the live session together that we would like the students to tell a little bit about their backgrounds. It started because students wanted to say a few words in the language of their peers. But we enlarged that and enhanced that a little bit so that they could also talk about their culture and students love to do that. They really wanted to introduce something about their own culture into the lecture. To such an extent that it even became an essential part of the course and maybe in the beginning even a too elaborated part of the course. So we had to reduce the amount of time spent on that later on. But it was interesting to see how students were really enjoying the fact that they were learning about other cultures in such a life experience. As said in the third edition we no longer were using dedicated video conferencing equipment but at that time we shifted to Skype for Business as the tool that we were using. In the fourth edition we moved again from Skype for Business to Zoom. And then there were not that much changes anymore because we were established with the course and we were happy with the way it went. I think that this is now the sort of format that we appreciate with a sort of flipped classroom model and then live discussions with students. Oh, I forgot to say that in the third edition it was no longer me that was leading the discussion or no longer the colleagues at Penn State University that were leading the discussion. But we asked the students to lead the discussion themselves. So because it was a flipped classroom model they had to study the material beforehand and we each time asked one or two students to prepare a little bit more than the others in the sense that they had to prepare for leading the classroom discussion. So at that point I was just a participant in the discussion and I just enjoyed what the students were preparing as a discussion format. And I have to say that the creativity of the students was sometimes higher than what we could do as teachers. So we learned also a lot as teachers from how students were dealing with the material and how they wanted their colleagues, their peers to digest the material during the video conferencing sessions. And so that's another aspect that we now still want to do in next editions of the course. In the meantime we have had fifth and sixth editions of the course. There is just one thing that I would like to add here as a final remark and that was due to the COVID pandemic last year. It was not possible for students to meet in the classroom physically face to face, not in Leuven and also not at Penn State University. But still we wanted to have a sort of feeling with the students that they could come to a classroom and sit together with let's say the locals. And therefore we organized a parallel session to the main session for the discussion. And in that parallel session we started let's say half an hour before we made the connection with the other side. And we let the students enter that parallel session just like they enter a classroom. And that was a sort of informal moment for the students where they could talk about everything. I also participated there as a teacher. And so students could also address me as a teacher just like they do when they enter a classroom and they have a question that they would like to ask to the teacher. So that was a sort of mimicking the classroom feeling. So students could come there from half an hour before the real session. And then we all together we moved them to the synchronous session with the other side. And when that was finished we all came back to our parallel session with only the local students as sort of debriefing moments. Where there may be some local questions that students wanted to ask maybe they just wanted to say something about they they they wanted to share. And actually I have to say that this worked very very well for the students. And yeah that was for them especially in the pandemic times when they could not see each other and face to face. For them it gave them a sort of yeah connection with with the classroom mates. And I think that this was something that that yeah we also have to cherish in virtual mobility. If it cannot all be virtual it can also maybe not all be be face to face like Corona was was disturbing that that feeling. But with that parallel session the students could at least have a sort of feeling of belonging to the to the class. And I think that this was I think it was important for the students because every student was there half an hour before the class actually started just because they enjoyed that so much. I just want to give that as a lesson learned for myself that you can do a lot virtual you can do a lot blended. But try to also include that that that sense of belonging in to a virtual team a virtual class and so on. I think that this is oh yeah there is in the slides that we will provide you there is some literature that you could we published a few articles about this program where you can see a bit more details. Okay. And that's the end of my practical example of how virtual mobility can be implemented in a real course. Thank you. I especially like this part how you adapted while pandemic and organized this for students so that they do not have such feeling of being alone alone in this situation. I think it's very valuable as we are lacking a little bit of time I'm not going to move on to Francesca. But if you if participants have any questions please put them in the chat so we will answer them there. So the next speaker is Francesca Helm so Francesca please floor is yours. Thank you sorry I'm just getting a presentation. Okay. Can you can you hear me. Yes. Yes we can hear you and the slides are perfect. Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to talk about virtual exchange as an instrument for the internationalization of the healthcare curriculum with with some examples. And I would just like to start talking a little bit about the terminology so I know there is one of the problems with our field is this the many different terms that we use. And I think virtual exchange is perhaps a sub aspect if you like of virtual mobility. It's, you know, Eleanor and Dainina talks about the institutional the importance of institutional level collaboration. And virtual exchange is can, you know, can and should be institutionalized as well but the focus in the literature is very much on the interaction part of it so it's about the people to people. The what women was talking about at the end now the students interacting with one another this sense of belonging. And so it's this side of, if we're talking about student mobility is this side of student mobility that that virtual exchange seeks to work on so the definition is that it's technology enabled people to people dialogues sustained over a period of time. So as I said the focus is on the people to people interactions. And so we are simply using media platforms to enable this deep interactive social learning. And the interactions are very often facilitated to ensure that they are meaningful so the idea of having students interact with one another over a distance. It doesn't happen automatically it needs to be designed through tasks, but also we found that trained dialogue facilitators are very helpful in promoting deeper level discussions, particularly on difficult issues on intercultural learning. And so again it's like virtual mobility it's not anything new. It has been developed over 30 years from experiences in different areas so from educational exchange. It also has been used a lot in foreign language education but also that the dialogue focus comes from the field of peace building. So it is something that that has existed for a while. The idea is to promote reciprocity so reciprocal learning. It's not I'm teaching you it's not you need directional in terms of the flow of information and dialogue, but it's reciprocal learning we learn from each other, and it's intended to allow for equity and inclusiveness. And so in relation to physical exchange it can be it doesn't need to blend with physical exchange, it can complement it can prepare for it can deepen and it can extend physical exchanges. If we need to look at them in relation, and it can also stimulate interest in physical exchange overcoming the fear I think as I mentioned you know students are perhaps scared of going abroad this anxiety, but having an international experience online may may increase the interest and lessen the fear. And so, again to talk about why virtual exchange I'd just like to focus on on on what what students have said about this kind of experience. This is from a project which was about history actually and I think history is a very interesting field for virtual exchange but what the student reports here I think is relevant to any any field. Through this project I was able to meet new people with whom I could exchange ideas and opinions. The subject chosen for this project allowed me as a Romanian history student to see another side of the discourse regarding these events. The events they were looking at was 100 years after the end of the First World War. So this is an exchange between Romanian and Hungarian students. And so the idea of you know how how national histories they are very one sided. So the idea was exchanging experiences and discourses about how historical events were being remembered. So the exchange allowed me to see another side of the discourse and made me realize that such controversial events can't be analyzed from just one perspective. Also, it helped me to refine my teamwork skills but also time and task management capabilities. So we have content specific competencies and widening of horizon but also these transversal skills that we've talked about a lot teamwork task management. A couple of other quotes from students. Again, it's amazing that we can all share our opinions at the same time about the same topic opened my eyes. We see this a lot opening my eyes, because there are people from a lot of countries who've made me realize that my point of view is not the only one. I see the world from a Western European person point of view, and that is definitely not the only perspective. I could see that each country has a very different way of thinking than me. So again, I don't think you know we necessarily necessarily have national perspectives that we may have national ways national legal system national ways of doing certain things. But I think what is interesting here is how through the exchange this person has learned to nice her Western European perspective on the issues that they were discussing. And again in terms of inclusivity, you know, student mobility is the privilege of, you know, less than 10% of the student population in Europe. At least we haven't reached the 20% that was the aim for 2020. And here the students says you know since I was young I've always dreamed to go abroad see the world meet foreign cultures. I would never afford or participate in Erasmus mobility, but thanks to this I succeeded in getting in touch with people around the world, who I shared my ideas and thoughts with. Again, so this highlights that the focus also on the the person to person dimension. And so just, we've seen a lot of examples of virtual mobility. So for example, they could be considered virtual mobility but also with the virtual exchange components so designing for the interactions between the students. And there are just two examples which I wasn't directly involved with, but I've come to know through my involvement in professional development for teaching staff, and in my research on virtual exchange. The first one in this was a project that was developed in the context of Erasmus virtual exchange which was a pilot project of the European Commission, and it involved partners in the UK Portsmouth University and Sweden. And it was an exchange for healthcare professionals. And so the aims for the students as defined by by their teachers, Martha and her colleague in Sweden, were to improve students communication skills to raise cultural awareness across borders and across healthcare professions. What they were looking on was the collaboration of different healthcare professionals in in the field, practice communication skills in the digital era by exploring a variety of digital collaboration tools, and this was actually before COVID become able to identify barriers to effective inter professional collaboration and suggest ways of overcoming them using real life case study. So the problem they had identified in in both of the courses is inter professional collaboration, which seems to be a problem in many different contexts. So the exchange was for them to talk about inter professional collaboration in their respective contexts. And how were they to do this. So the actual exchange lasted seven weeks. And it was embedded in the courses of the two colleagues. Okay, so is an exchange which was kind of embedded. And they had to do individual and group tasks, and to facilitate the, the group building and interactions between the students. They had some facilitated dialogue sessions, which were offered by the Erasmus Virtual Exchange project so trained facilitators engage the students in interactions before they actually started the collaboration and midway through the collaboration to see how the groups were getting on in their interactions. Students explored inter professional collaboration in the different contexts so UK and Sweden. And how did they do this by carrying out interviews with practitioners in their local contexts. And then they created podcasts and videos to share this information that they had gathered with their fellow group members. So they used podcasts and videos to share knowledge of national health systems of the countries involved. And then in their transnational groups, they developed case studies to illustrate good practice in inter professional collaboration to enhance the patient experience. So this was the collaborative task developing the case studies. And through this they could learn from each other's experience and extend their working knowledge between the countries and the systems. This is a blog post on on the university's AC website by my father although who was actually the Erasmus plus coordinator of for the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at Portsmouth. And she says that she'd been engaging with Erasmus exchange student mobility for over 10 years, planning for all these students to take part in summer placements with various partner institutions. But she came through the Erasmus Virtual Exchange project to understand that you know the importance of also having online experience virtual experiences. So this is why the title of the article why don't believe in a one size fits all approach to student exchanges. And here she says the challenge of presenting themselves and the topics they study via different communication tools, push them out of their comfort zone and helped build their competence. But to exchange is a powerful tool to enhance students communication skills and other transferable skills in the digital era. And then there is a quote from the student but I've shared the link in the slide so you can read the full article if you're interested. Another exchange is I heard about it from a colleague at the University of Padua presented it recently in a staff week. And this was led by the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences with nursing department partners in Austria, Denmark, France, Italy, Madagascar and Portugal. And this was a very new project. So it was actually developed in order to replace the lack of mobility due to COVID. So it was a recent project and developed kind of almost last minute because of COVID. So the Western Norway University had taken part in a coil experience with the United States and with Madagascar the previous year. And so here in preparing for this exchange coordinators had weekly meetings to define how many of students would be involved, how they would facilitate the exchange to develop the phases of the project, the objectives, the tasks, the learning outcomes, tools and platforms. So this is just to give you an idea of how intense the collaboration is in order to develop such a collaborative exchange. But this professor who presented the project recently said that despite the fact that they were all absolute beginners in this kind of experience they managed through these weekly meetings to create a cohesive group and have a positive collaboration. And the numbers again are quite striking because actually with seven partners they had 220 students signed up for the project and they involved a lot of teaching staff so there was 33 teaching staff in all. In Italy the University of Padua involved six people also with the idea of developing the competencies and the capabilities of the teachers and the tutors in their experiences of facilitating and supporting this exchange. And how it worked is that each university developed a theme. So there were actually about 20 different themes were developed. For example, technology and nursing was one global health and intercultural nursing and communication was another global health workers, global health and aging, road accidents. This is just to give you an idea of the themes that they worked on. And then within the theme there were specific tasks and discussion topics for the students. So each partner university took responsibility for developing two or three of these themes and designing the tasks and the discussion groups, following though a similar kind of matrix. So there was uniformity in the design of the tasks and the discussion questions, but based on these different themes that each university was responsible for. They created 25 different groups and each group had students from each of the universities. And their main tasks were to analyze and compare the theme in the different national contexts. They were supposed to draw on the literature on this theme again from the national context. And they were supposed to suggest strategies for improvement. That is suggest strategies on how to address the problems that they've identified through their research. And so they collaborated again through seven weeks through individual and group tasks. Yes, again, it's very similar to the other one. They carried out interviews. The final assignment was to actually prepare a group poster presentation. And they shared this on a padlet. Okay, so similar to the other one they developed case studies to show the good practice, but they also did this final group presentation on padlet. And as I said, the students learned from each other's experience and their knowledge between countries and systems. And so the the positive outcomes of this exchange for the teachers involved, though, you know, it wasn't. There was a fury, as we say in Italy, you know, there were some problems, some of the groups didn't work well. They were also doing their placements within the national context. So they had difficulties, some of the students in finding time for this. But overall, it was evaluated positive positively and they want to repeat the experience with additional partners. The minister told me that they're carrying out focus groups for a research study on this transnational collaborative experience, which they hope to submit to the Journal of Nursing Education. And starting from the bottom up, so this started as a kind of grassroots collaboration, if you like, what they're trying to do now is see how they can integrate this experience in university curricula. Because also, you know, as Irene and Elena have both pointed out, it's still not mainstream. So we still don't really have mechanisms for recognizing this kind of transnational collaborative activity within our institutions. So these were just two examples related to the area of health. And I hope they were useful for you. Thank you. Thank you Francesca. Very valuable examples. I think today we clearly showed what actually is virtual mobility and virtual exchange with a number of examples, case studies proven to work well, showing the effort from the organizer part, you know, institution teacher, but also from the student part. What should they invest and how would they invest and why they are participating, naming the positives, positive results and some obstacles or some doubt students had during such programs. We are going over the time, but in the end, I'll just give you to summarize in one or two sentences. How do you see the future of virtual mobility and exchange? Will it become a much more present in formal education or maybe the informal education will be that where it can have a significant impact. So how present it will be in, for example, next decade. So maybe to start from Irene. I am confident about the fact that blended virtual mobility is already in high education in Europe in one or another for maybe very, very first steps taken, maybe not formally everything correctly set up for students and teachers. But the concept already I think is in high education in the current decade. I wish that virtual exchange and the virtual mobility is recognized for students and teachers is a part of formal studies that students are able to have this option to select it and to get recognition, but teachers as well. And I think studies in higher education changed the traditional system when we calculate, when we plan studies, we need already to look from the new perspective. It only depends how much we want this innovation to be penetrating into our regular studies. It's my time, Sandra. Yes, myself, sorry. So thank you, Irina Elena, please. I think that in some manners in the last years, a lot of movement arose in internet from one side massive open online courses, or such kind of other idea of using the potentiality of internet and technologies in this field also virtual mobility moved. I really think that one initiatives from Europe that is the one of European alliances can in some way go in the direction of virtual mobility that is the idea to create such kind of alliances between university in order to exchange courses. And I think that this kind of work together with different teams of different university will for sure foster another, how can I say, way of thing, another setting from both institution, not only both, sorry, institution, professor, students, and stuff. So the idea is, like Irina, I am confident a lot of tentative initiatives are running. Maybe we want, we are, we have to walk in order to refine to precise and to give the correct model. But I think that at the end, challenges from the future, first of all, the climate change will push us in order to work more and more collaboratively in different teams in creating culture, using different teams from all over the world. And this, of course, in some way will be recognized as virtual mobility. So I am confident that the movement will arise and will improve in the next future. Thank you, Elena. And Vim, your summary. My summary. I think when you ask the question like that, Sandra, I'm thinking at a certain moment, we went from learning to e-learning. And now it's kind of obvious that the e is in the learning happening. So we are sort of back to learning and we call it blended learning, we call it high flex learning, whatever. I think that just like that kind of movement, I think that virtual mobility will also become a sort of obvious part of our learning. At a certain point, we will, we still have to do some efforts to include examples of virtual mobility and what we are doing in our universities. But it will become so obvious that this is integral part of what we teach and how we teach in the university and how we want to learn as a learner, a lifelong learner, that we will no longer make the difference anymore. I mean, we will find it normal that we go to the classroom and meet our local peers, but at the same time that we also engage in virtual activities online, not only with our local peers, but with other students in other parts of the world. And make that integral part of our learning experience. Maybe I'm dreaming, but I like dreaming. Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm certain that all of us are dreaming. And this is what makes us moving forward because only our dreams can make us do something better than we already have. So thank you. So Francesca, you are the last one, but at least so your final words. Okay, so I'm dreaming and optimistic, but I don't want to be too cynical, but I think I think we've massive steps have been made. So we've kind of overcome the technological barrier, as Wim said, you know, e-learning is normal. We can take that for granted. I don't think we can take for granted though that that we will have students collaborating that, you know, that they will be involved because it does require a lot of work on the part of the teachers. And this isn't recognized. And a lot of universities and Lebanon is different. I saw you, you know, you have fantastic support systems in place. But, you know, we don't have, I don't know, learning designers who help us design and plan our courses. What I'd really like to see in place is universities investing, not just in the technology, but investing in staff to support us in planning our collaborative courses so that they really become collaborative in practice and not just on paper. I've seen a lot of institutional collaborations, and I think even I don't want to be cynical about the University, European University alliances, but I think that, you know, on paper they seem to be collaborating, but I don't know how many students are actually benefiting from these interactions. I've seen joint programs where, you know, it's the two or three students who have the mobility, they have the joint program, but none of the other students experience it as a joint program at all. So what I'd really like to see is joint programs being really joint program where every student in the degree courses that have joined actually have interactions with the students in the other university where it's joined. So, you know, but this, it needs, it needs support, it needs, we can't always, you know, rely on teachers who are overworked, we're understaffed, and we have increasingly, you know, teachers on precarious contracts. So I think, you know, the university needs to invest in this so it can work from a bottom up and a top down perspective. Thank you Francesca. Yes, we need to conclude as we have passed already the time, but it was such interesting and such excellent webinar I have learned really a lot. And I hope that the recordings will be watched by a number of people because such good examples of practice and guidance and advice is given in these webinars are really, really of great importance. So I wish to thank all the speakers for being today and for joining the webinar. I wish to thank the attendees, the participants for being with us. This is the last webinar in this training part within the child in Central Asia education. So I hope that projects finish well and that you have the good results. And it may be some other occasions to see you all again by then. Bye and stay safe. Bye. Thank you very much Sandra and thank you very much to the speakers. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye.