The Covid-19 pandemic has presented higher education institutions with the challenges of suddenly having to switch to online and hybrid teaching and dealing with the collapse of physical student and teaching mobility. To aid them in mastering these challenges, VERSATILE creates the necessary building blocks for a collaborative online semester abroad in the form of a guide to online teaching methods, a model curriculum of team-taught modules in the social sciences and guidelines for an administrative infrastructure. It enables deeper collaboration between the project partners and provides other higher education institutions with guidelines to develop online collaborative learning and teaching environments. VERSATILE has four key objectives: 1) to create viable alternatives to physical student mobility during the pandemic, 2) beyond the pandemic to enable higher education institutions to offer new internationalisation-at-home possibilities to students who traditionally face mobility barriers, 3) to aid educators in developing their online teaching skills, and 4) to provide new ways in which educators can internationally exchange knowledge and methods. The project consists of five participating universities from the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands. They already collaborate as part of The Hague Network, a European network of universities founded in 2017 to share capabilities and best practices and jointly develop new internationalization initiatives. The groundwork of VERSATILE is laid in a state-of-the-art analysis of online teaching methods and infrastructural conditions in the partner institutions. This forms the basis for creating a guide to online teaching methods suitable for international classroom settings with diverse student groups. A curriculum of team-taught modules under the topic of “European Scenarios in Business, Politics and Societal Change in the next Decennium” is jointly designed and prepared. In order to facilitate the smooth delivery of the online semester abroad, guidelines for creating an effective administrative infrastructure are developed. These elements are put into practice when the online semester abroad is delivered to students in the project partner universities. Responsibility for the activities is spread between the project partners. Working groups made up of experts from each partner on the different areas of the project – educators, administrators, curriculum developers, didactic experts and experts on online teaching methods - will ensure that the results are achieved collaboratively. In order to identify best practices and develop the guidelines and curriculum, a number of methods are used, in particular feedback interviews and questionnaires with educators and students in the participating universities, the joint training of educators in online teaching methods and piloting through mini team-teaching episodes. The intellectual outputs are also tested in the delivery of the online semester abroad to students of the project partners. VERSATILE will produce results that can be used by the project partners and other higher education institutions. The online semester abroad enables the project partners to offer students a viable alternative to physical mobility and build long term possibilities for internationalization at home. It provides teachers with opportunities to develop their skills in online teaching and offers then new avenues for teaching exchange. These results can be extended to include further partners and other disciplines. The intellectual outputs provide other higher education institutions with the key building blocks necessary for developing and delivering a collaborate online semester abroad. The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed digitalization in higher education institutions from an emerging field to an absolute necessity. It is also posing huge challenges for universities in managing student and teaching mobility across national borders. VERSATILE seeks to provide the building blocks necessary to develop collaborative online teaching and learning environments which can have lasting benefits beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. It enables higher education institutions to develop internationalization-at-home practices so that a wider range of students can develop vital future-focused skills, including intercultural engagement, digital literacy and collaborative working in international teams. It provides educators with opportunities to develop their online teaching methods and enlarge their teaching experience and skills through collaborative teaching with colleagues from different institutions. It enables administrators to create infrastructures in which administrative barriers to student and teaching mobility are more manageable.
By implementing the project we wanted: 1) to provide a viable alternative to physical mobility, enabling students to gain international experience during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. The project provides a template for creating an international classroom environment where students can learn with peers from different academic systems and cultural backgrounds and benefit from different academic perspectives. It also offers guidelines for the development of an administrative infrastructure to ensure the smooth delivery and accreditation of the virtual exchange semester. 2) to provide a means of encouraging students, who traditionally face barriers to mobility to gain international experience and develop their skills, thus taking internationalisation at home in higher education institutions to a new level. 3) to aid educators in developing their proficiency and techniques in the online delivery of classes by creating a toolbox of online teaching methods. 4) to produce new ways in which educators can exchange specialist knowledge and teaching techniques with each other and gain new insights in their own fields by developing a common curriculum of team-taught modules.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to a sudden shift to online and hybrid teaching in higher education in order to ensure continuity in learning. Moreover, international collaboration between higher education institutions suffered serious consequences, with physical student mobility, teaching and staff exchange collapsing. Against this background, the partners involved in the VERSATILE project saw a particular need to develop online teaching and learning together, in order to improve ongoing efforts at their respective institutions by profiting from best practices, and to continue international collaboration and exchange by developing new virtual exchange formats. So a central goal of the VERSATILE project was to create a viable virtual alternative to a physical semester abroad, including the necessary building blocks for a collaborative online semester abroad in form of: a) a guide for online teaching methods including a toolbox for online teaching, b) a joint curriculum under the common topic European Scenarios in Business, Politics and Societal Change for the Next Decennium and c) guidelines for developing a common administrative infrastructure for a multilateral virtual exchange semester.