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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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”

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.

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!

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