FRAMES

BM and VE suggests that each is a separate construct. I believe – wrongly, maybe – that VE is an umbrella term. In this case BM would be a form of VE. As a result, the paragraph would require some changes.

BM as a special form of VE?

VE has been the term used throughout the project, in all its documents and outputs. And it is used here. This is one more reason for showing that BM is a form of VE.

They are also likely to change attitudes, broaden horizons, help go beyond stereotypes, making students and teachers more open-minded, equipped with better intercultural communication skills, and, generally, better humans :). I know this may sound too idealist, but it’s generally true.

And Frames has done all this, congratulations 🙂

The previous paragraph ends with “the following changes”. What kind of change is suggested here? Introducing the position of internationalisation officers? Strengthening the position / developing competences of the international officers presently functioning (at each HEI, I believe)? Something else?

As BM and VE officers? “As BM and VE” is unclear.

As above “as BM and VE”, without a noun, sounds unclear.

OK, on second thought, I understand “as” means “because”. But still, I would like to repeat the first comment here. If it starts with “for changes involving”, the reader might want to know what changes are involved, as regards all the stakeholders listed here.

I as wrote in the reviews presented to the FRAMES teams before, both the action plan and the toolkit are excellent tools.

Human, economic and tech resources?

This is very clear and very helpful too.

I believe this is one of the most important sustainability factors. I’m happy to see it’s number one on the list.

Well done, FRAMES team 🙂 This is a very clear, informative and well-structured document. Each section is a set of guidelines that are logical and easy to follow making one want to implement the framework – it looks inviting and  – well – doable 🙂

What characteristics should the integration of a group of educators without borders have that promotes virtual and blanded exchange and mobility?

Financing seems very important to me, given that there are scholarships and mobility, at least in Mexico, which are often not applied due to lack of knowledge in this area.

Perhaps, I would also add the specific evaluation of the skills obtained

I think the training is very important to know the toolkit and guide the resource in a specific and collborative way.

In Virtual Exchanges, defined by the Virtual Exchange Coalition as “Technology-enabled, sustained people-to-people education programs”, students get together in a structured setting, as part of their education, using online and digital technology. In “Virtual exchange and Internationalisation at Home: navigating the terminology”, Beelen and O’Dowd note that Virtual Exchanges should not be confused with Virtual Mobility, where students follow online courses at educational institutions abroad without having to travel. By contrast, Virtual Exchanges are aimed at bringing students together into structured dialogue in an online environment in order to develop their intercultural and international competences. The core of Virtual Exchanges exists around the structured interactions, and collaboration, between students from different countries and cultural backgrounds.

Thanks Giorgio for your feedback. Our understanding was that the inclusion of VE in the internationalisation strategy is part of the development of the first point, an institutional structure supportive of BM & VE but perhaps this should be made more explicit at this stage of the Framework.

The terms virtual mobility and virtual exchange create an intuitive idea of distance interaction, whereby I am not thinking primarily of teaching, but rather of projects or integrative communication. The latter also plays a role in a new course of study of our university, which we have designed on the basis of the teaching experience in the pandemic, mostly online and completely in English. In addition to usual learning management platforms, video conferencing systems and virtual collaboration tools, we use other possibilities of exchange, especially instant messaging in partially prepared virtual rooms (by means of Discord server, Matrix-Element or similar technologies). The spatial structure is not based on the individual courses, but is also aimed at self-organisation and interaction, for example between different courses, projects, genders or languages.

This results in an agile structure that is very suitable for expanding stakeholder structures, be it international students or international lecturers. The lecturers or students of different universities thus become designers of virtual “houses” in which different topic typographies or user typographies can be organized. As an example, I would like to mention a room for all female students over all academic years in the program of applied computer science. Unfortunately, we have only around 10-15 % female students in our courses, sometimes only 1 or 2 female students in a course group. The virtual room makes it possible to enforce relevant interaction and support among those female students in a group that summed up is around 10-15 women. I could imagine that this is also good for creating similar homogenous subgroups of any kind reaching a critical mass for minority groups. On the other hand, conversely, other rooms can be used to mix up.

I would put this paragraph at the very beginning of the document

I would not say 1

0To achieve the objectives of this Strategic Framework

but rather to introduce VE and BM

sometimes (like here) VE is alone without BM. I would always mention both

Here you say “taken from the findings of the FRAMES project”

I think the fact that what you say in the framework comes from the work and findings of FRAMES should be further stressed in the whole document

Here and the point below the teaching and learning centre (or equivalents) could be included

Totally agree on including students

What do you mean with the term “virtual mobility” and in what does it differs from “virtual exchange”? At IAU we believe that only the second one should be used as “virtual mobility” in an oxymoron.

I agree on everything is written in this paragraph but I would change the point on internationalization at home by highlight more the fact that virtual exchange is only a tool to implement internationalization of the curriculum at home. I would also separate the point that VE offers opportunities to strengthen partnerships as this is a different point from internationalisation at home.

I would write the point on  internationalization at home in the following way:

– internationalise the curriculum at home for all students by offering a powerful tool to allow students to exchange and collaborate with peers in other countries even if they do not take part in a physical mobility programme.

I think here it is missing the most important point which is to include VE in internationalisation strategies.

Actually, in the strategy the emphasis should be put on internationalisation of the curriculum at home and VE as a tool to implement it, I would write something like this:

– emphasise internationalisation of the curriculum at home in institutional internationalisation strategies and recognise VE as a powerful tool for implementing it

Again here I would separate the point on internationalisation at home from the one on partnerships. They are two different things.

What I am missing here is the role of university leaders themselves, which is to recognise the importance of VE in internationalisation strategies, they are the ones who create the strategy and they should modify them accordingly.

No changes needed here, but this for me is a key point and arrives quite late in the strategic framework. As suggested before I would include references to strategies before.

I would include a student representative in such working group as the feedback from students is very important.

It is mentioned in the parenthesis but I would stress more the fact the need for training of teaching staff, this paragraph could be rephrased as:

Provide support, including financial, for teaching staff that develop and implement BM and VE (ie. time release to develop VE; specific training in VE, Continuous Professional Development);

In the first point I would add “academic leadership”:

The implementation of BM and VE requires collaboration between different units within the HEI, such as, the academic leadership, internationalisation office, academic affairs unit, IT services and academic departments.

I agree with these points, but would like to emphasise the terms resilience and diversity in addition to intercultural professionalism. We are currently working in a publicly funded project (ODUCE) to stabilise university operations at Ukrainian universities affected by the war. Various virtual methods and structures play a role in this. Students and lecturers are partly mobile due to war and continuously change their study behaviour (e.g. synchronous, asynchronous). Another point is access to mobility or excursions for people with reduced mobility (multiple burdens such as childcare, care or disabilities), who can be enabled to participate virtually in such (virtual or hybrid) offers on the basis of well-thought-out concepts.

Although the 2nd sentence mentions potential impact on the teachers site, I think it could be made more explicit that: BM and VE can contribute to increasing the number of teachers who benefit from an international and/or intercultural experience thus developing their transversal skills

ad 1. Is tehre a reason why the ‘other relevant stakeholders’ are not mentioned (or given as an e.g.): Inclusion Officer, Sustainability Officer. After all — we do want VE and BM to be included in ‘their’ strategic plans (as mentioned earlier)

Following point 3, would it (not) make sense to also mention here: Inclusion Officer, Sustainability Officer?

In my opinion this is a very interesting point, especially when we are dealing with students coming from difficult economic/social backgrounds and/or remote geographical areas who may not have appropriate IT tools/internet connection. Because VE is more inclusive than physical mobility, it is successful among this kind of students. Universities should reflect on having areas/rooms dedicated to VE and equipped with the needed IT tools, maybe?

other than recognition of learning objectives, also the recognition of the international dimension should be considered (not sure if this is already included in other sections and – if so – please excuse me I missed it)

I think that the idea to convey is that VE/BM has the same value (and deserves the same dignity) of other international experiences. This also means provide stable funding to these activities, like it is for other mobility activities. However, we still need to consider that the vast majority of mobilities are funding through Erasmus (and the single institutions do not provide any own funding). Thus, funding for VE/BM can only be marginal. This is, at least, the case of the University of Padova.

Dear Sir or Madam

I would like to confirm my participation in the consultation online meeting. I would also ask about what type of written contributions can I provide. I am finalising my article on my virtual exchange experience at Hassan II University, Casablanca. Morocco.

Looking forward to hearing from you

Regards

More specifically, we hereby make reference to the research desk carried out to draft and publish the Scenarios Report available here: https://frames-project.eu/outputs/scenarios/, the interviews made for the FRAMES training and the exchange with trainees during the 2 rounds of trainings, and the FRAMES Toolkit available here: https://frames-project.eu/outputs/toolkit/, for HE professionals, so that they can access the tools and information provided (including case studies on the various approaches that HEIs can take to integrate and accredit VE and BM).

Dear Jelly, we have hereby focussed on the most intuitive and immediate impact and benefit deriving from BM and VE for students and teachers respectively. You are indeed right, though, that participation in a VE can also contribute to the development of transversal skills for staff, thanks to the international and/or intercultural experience they have while designing/planning/implementing BM and VE.

Dear Anna,

Thanks a lot for your kind comment. We totally agree with you, as proved by the scenarios we identified in the report, yet we have preferred to refer to both these two concepts to keep in line with the questions we posed at the very project beginning and with the overal project rationale, to make more intuitive and transparent the way we dealt with both VE and BM.

yes, this is the concept behind, but we hereby refer not only to that specific form (BM) but to VE as a whole, and we wanted in any case to stress both to keep in line with the overall project aims and targets, whereby we focus on BM too.

I strongly believe that BM and VE are indeed a way to encourage students who have never considered to take part in a physical mobility programme to apply for a (short) mobility) and also to make sure to reach out to a wider range of students. It is very frequently the case that students participating in a VE in the end apply for a physical mobility exchange, which proves how VE can indeed contribute to boosting physical mobility

Thank you indeed Dirk! And in fact “Resilience” is one of the key words in the FRAMES project, which has actually led us investigate these topics further.

FRAMES stands for “Fostering resilience through Accredited Mobility for European Sustainable Higher Education innovation”

Thank you Anna for this valuable input, we might make it more explicit that it is a form of VE, to a certain extent, but we do believe that there is the need to refer to both in this document for the reasons explained above, that is to keep in line with the project reasoning and targets.

indeed Anna!!! We will definetely consider adding this, as this is the essence of VE. We hereby tried to convince that VE is important based on the skills and needs which are top on the agenda of HEIs right now.

Dear Jelly, this is indeed a valuable input, as we have focussed on the mostly widespread and shared “categories” of staff at HEI level, but we could also add other potential staff/units which might be present within HEIs, and for sure the Inclusion and Sustainability strategies are crucial for the successful integration of BM and VE.

thank you so much Anna! on behalf of the whole FRAMES team

Dear Anna, I am not quite sure whether you mean we should substitute “as” with “because” or add something further to explain what changes are needed.

thank you Carlos for such precious and valuable input!

Thank you Anna! Am I right in understanding you would suggest adding “tech” in the title, right?

I totally agree! the community of practice is indeed a pivotal aspect in terms of sustainability and also of sharing of info, updates, best practices in VE

Thank you dear Anna, your feedback is indeed important and enriching! Thank you from the entire FRAMES team!!!!

thank you Fabio, hereby we referred more to the overall concept and hence to VE as a hyperonym

thank you Fabio, we could add reference to the outputs produced within FRAMES

I deem “virtual mobility” is a wider concept, which includes “virtual exchange”, whereby the focus of VE is more on the interaction and the peer-led approach. To this end, I would quote the following definitions for Virtual Mobility and Virtual Exchange as the point of departure for this Strategic Framework: whereby the focus of VM is on the cooperation of educational institutions as well as the recognition of the achievements, while that of VE is more on the interaction than on the access to the educational content of another course from another university:
Virtual mobility “the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to obtain the same benefits as one would have with physical mobility but without the need to travel” (Bijnens, Boussemaere, & Rajagopal, 2006, 20 p. 5)
 
“Virtual exchange […] is centred on the interaction and communication of geographically separated participants (Virtual Exchange Coalition, 2019). Instead of access to educational offers of cross-border universities, the focus is clearly on exchange, competence building, and interaction in small groups (European Commission, 2018). Administrators implementing these concepts in higher education are confronted with a variety of organisational, didactic, and administrative challenges.” (Schoop, Clauss & Askbar Safavi, 2020, pp. 19-20)

Thank you Dirk for this valuable input and comment. Indeed VE implies interaction and cross-cultural communication, whereby the focus is not necessarily or not primarily on the online teaching.

Thank you dear Giorgio for your interesting and enriching comment! I do agree with you that VE is a tool to enhance Internationalisation of the Curriculum too, here I think the stress was more on the wider concept of Internationalisation at Home. I deem there is a slight distinction (in terms of focus and emphasis) between IaH and IoC, as VE can indeed be adopted not only in a specific curriculum but also as an extracurricular activity or in any case to enhance the offer made to all students, regardless of what they study. To this end, I think a point on IoC could be added, if we want to stress more the fact that VE is a tool to also contribute to incorporate “international, intercultural and/or global dimensions into the content of the curriculum as well as the learning outcomes, assessment tasks, teaching methods and support services of a program of study” (Leask 2015, p. 9 based on Leask 2009). Whereas with IaH reference is made here, in my mind, to the following concept: “Any internationally related activity with the exception of outbound student and staff mobility.” (Crowther et al. 2021, p. 8).

If it is not explicit enough that VE is indeed a tool to boost IoC too, we should definitely make this clearer by adding a further bullet point, so thank you indeed for your valuable comment!

Yes, you are definitely right Giorgio, and this Strategic Framework is precisely meant to address them! We have however to declinate here the various roles and contributes of university staff in this whole process, building upon the shared belief that university leaders are the ones who need to recognise the importance of and embrace VE, maybe we could stress this even more.

I totally agree with you Giorgio, this should be a separate point.

I do agree with you, this is actually crucial and something we do always recommend, we could indeed add reference to a student representative so that it it clearer, instead of giving this for granted in the list of examples.

YEs indeed dear Jelly, we just meant to only mention a few examples, but we could make this list even more comprehensive

Thank you Giorgio for this input, you are indeed right, we just wanted to focus more on the resources here, while we address the issue of the need for training under “Quality” – bullet point 5.

This is a very interesting observation! Many thanks Carlos!

Thank you for this useful input!