The COVID-19 emergency had a dramatic impact on students mobility flows, but at the same time can be a great innovation leverage for European universities to rethink students mobility in innovative ways, both regarding the use of digital technology to complement and enrich traditional mobility, and to use mobility to build important soft skills such as intercultural communication, teamwork and critical thinking. To do so, universities need to develop the capacities to design and implement blended mobility schemes that are inclusive and intercultural, and to integrate and accredit blended mobility activities as a stable component of the academic offer. The FRAMES project aims to foster an harmonised implementation and accreditation of blended mobility among European HEIs, making the European Higher Education Area more innovative and resilient and helping universities to move from the COVID-19 emergency to sustainable innovation. The project will do so by promoting a specific online collaboration methodology called Virtual Exchange (VE), a practice that consists of sustained, technology-enabled, people-to-people online exchange sessions in which constructive communication and interaction takes place with the support of educators or facilitators. The VE methodology has proven to work as a synergistic and complementary component of physical exchange programmes, showing that it can prepare, deepen, and extend physical exchanges, and now it is high time to work to facilitate the integration of this approach in the daily mobility activities of as many EU universities as possible. To achieve its aim, the FRAMES project will: 1) valorise successful scenarios of accredited Virtual Exchanges, considered as an innovative, inclusive and intercultural complement to physical mobility; 2) build capacity of European HEIs to integrate and accredit Virtual Exchange as a key component of their mobility activities, towards a more inclusive and sustainable internationalisation; 3) support HEIs, European Universities and HEI Networks in creating the conditions for long term harmonised integration and accreditation of physical, blended and virtual mobility. The project is led by the Mediterranean UniUNIMED and involves two leading organisations in the Virtual Exchange field (UniCollaboration and the Sharting Perspective Foundation), three universities (Girona, Siena and Limerick) as well as some associated partners such as the Erasmus Students Network and the Network of Public Catalan Universities.
The FRAMES project aimed to foster the integration of Virtual Exchange (VE) and innovative blended mobility approaches within academic mobility schemes in Europe. The project’s specific objectives were: 1) to valorise successful scenarios of accredited VE, considered as an innovative, inclusive and intercultural complement to physical mobility; 2) to build the capacity of European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to integrate and accredit VE as a key component of their mobility activities, towards a more inclusive and sustainable internationalisation; 3) to support HEIs, European Universities and HEI networks in creating the conditions for long term harmonised integration and accreditation of physical, blended and virtual mobility.
Nowadays, many universities in Europe and globally are exploring tools and methods that can guarantee students’ ongoing engagement and their active participation online, as well as complementary ways to provide them with an intercultural and international experience, in addition to physical mobility, and with the much required transversal competences and soft skills. One approach that can help deliver online learning is Virtual Exchange (VE), a distinctive e-solution to enable deep, interactive intercultural learning through online facilitated discussions. However, universities exploring blended mobility and VE for the first time, and those already experienced in these activities, typically face two main challenges: i) to design and implement blended mobility and VE schemes that are inclusive and intercultural, and ii) to integrate and accredit blended mobility and VE activities as a stable component of their educational offer. In this context, the FRAMES project has worked to address those needs, by fostering a harmonised implementation and accreditation of VE, as an integral part of blended mobility approaches, among European Higher Education Institutions.