International Teaching & Learning through Virtual Exchange

The focus of Virtual Exchange (VE) is on dialogue and cooperation between lecturers and students from at least two universities from different cultural contexts or countries of origin in the context of joint teaching projects. Co-teaching and peer learning are central components of VE scenarios in which digital media are used for communication and collaboration. VE enables students to gain international experience and develop their intercultural, communicative, digital, and linguistic skills even without physical stays abroad. By working in internationally composed teams, students gain new perspectives on school, education, different learning cultures didactic methods, and strengthen their ability to cooperate, understand other cultures, and problem-solving - important skills for future teachers and their task of preparing young people for the challenges of the future.
The lecturers also benefit: On the one hand, they expand their teaching skills in multiple ways (including the integration of digital media, international cooperation, and project-based learning in their teaching), and on the other hand, they can further their international research network.

Financial support is accessible to TU Dresden lecturers who offer virtual exchange formats for student teachers of the TU Dresden and for students of at least one foreign university during the winter semester 2021/22. The prerequisite for financial support is that the teaching format is collaborative, integrative, international, including online formats for collaborative work, and that students can earn credit points according to the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).

In addition, IMPRESS offers lecturers who offer internationalized courses independent of financial support:

• Support in finding partners: IMPRESS has a resource-rich, diverse network of partner universities in 12 countries as well as an international school network and provides support in finding suitable partners for international teaching tandems;
• Train-the-trainer offers: Training courses on the implementation of Virtual Exchange in teaching and individual mentoring offers support lecturers and e-tutors in opening up their teaching formats internationally and developing them further. A series of workshops is planned in which teachers can get to know VE as a teaching method and exchange ideas. They will explore different models and examples of VE scenarios and learn how to design assignments for VE and select suitable digital tools.
• Evaluation: For all supported courses, a scientifically supervised evaluation of the students' competence development is offered.

© S. Münning

The project “Global Weirding: Human-Environment Estrangement in Literature, Theory and Art” was an interdisciplinary seminar co-taught in English by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Moritz Ingwersen (North American Literature/Future Studies, TUD) and Dr. Alison Sperling (Cultural Studies/Feminist Science Studies, TU Berlin). It focused on cultural negotiations of the climate crisis and the anthropocene and was accompanied by a lecture series and class visits from leading international scholars in the environmental humanities. Inspired by the journalist Thomas L. Friedman’s 2012 proposition to capture the disparate effects of global warming with the term “global weirding” and linking up with the literary genre of New Weird Fiction, the course examined the situated experience of ecological disruption and estranged human-environment relations in times of extreme weather events, species extinction, climate injustice, and the pandemic. Guided by the assumption that artistic and literary modes of the surreal, the uncanny, the speculative, and the strange are exceptionally suitable vehicles to mediate and encourage an awareness of the eco-systemic entanglements of climate change, a particular focus was laid on queer-feminist and anticolonial perspectives to sensitize students for the political dimension of embodied and emplaced human-environment relations of the anthropocene and their underlying cultural narratives.

The accompanying Global Weirding Lectures provided an opportunity for direct exchange between students and renowned North American scholars and authors whose texts provided the basis for the seminar. The aim of this integration of diverse scholarly voices was to help students recognize the relevance of the course material in current academic debates and to understand research-oriented learning as an integral part of the humanities classroom. Aside from guest lectures by Rebekah Sheldon (University of Indiana) and Stefanie K. Dunning (Miami University) on Black temporalities and feminist epistemologies in times of crisis, two highlights were the class visit of Andrew Hageman (Luther College, Miami) and Gerry Canavan (Marquette University, Wisconsin), editors of the first literary studies collection on global weirding, and a guest lecture by the award-winning Asian-Canadian author and professor of creative writing Larissa Lai (University of Calgary), whose novel Salt Fish Girl was discussed in class. In addition to the option of writing a term paper, students had the opportunity to acquire credits by developing their own creative approaches to the aesthetics of global weirding and throughout the course produced a compelling archive of collages, sculptures, short stories, paintings, drawings, and songs that critically and artistically engage the experience of “post-normal” human-environment relationships. A pedagogical reflection on the thematic, theoretical, and methodological conception of this course will be presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association in Oslo.

Inquiries can be addressed to on an ongoing basis. Please provide the following information about your teaching project:

• Details of the person(s) responsible for the planned teaching format at the TU Dresden (name, address, telephone, e-mail)
• Information on the foreign university(ies) involved and on the cooperating lecturers
• Description of the teaching project with information on:
  • Period of implementation
  • Objectives of the teaching format and added value for students
  • Brief description incl. realization concept (technical, organizational, temporal)
  • Teaching language(s)
  • Outline of the planned digital or hybrid form of implementation: How will synchronous and asynchronous forms of teaching be integrated? Which video conferencing systems, learning platforms, and other digital tools will be used?
  • Financial calculation (for teaching assignment, (senior) student assistants, mobility funds, if applicable).
  • Completed Fact Sheet for the teaching assignment.

Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs U. S. Department of State (2019). Virtual Exchange Tool Kit [PDF]. https://state-low.app.box.com/v/VirtualExchangeToolkit.

EVOLVE Project Team (2020). The Impact of Virtual Exchange on Student Learning in Higher Education: EVOLVE Project Report. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11370/d69d9923-8a9c-4b37-91c6-326ebbd14f17

Hilliker, S. (2020). Virtual Exchange as a Study Abroad Alternative to Foster Language and Culture Exchange in TESOL Teacher Education. TESL-EJ. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language 23 (4). URL: https://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume23/ej92/ej92a7/

Jager, S., Peng, H., Albá Duran, J. & Oggel, G. A. (2021). Virtual Exchange as Innovative Practice across Europe: Awareness and Use in Higher Education. EVOLVE Project Monitoring Study 2020. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11370/80666684-9024-466a-9968-d13b335cfb6a

Jones, E. & Haug, E. (2020). In conversation – COIL programme design and implementation, July 2020. URL: https://youtu.be/PdlW_QhdsgA.

Nissen, E. & Kurek, M. (2020). The Impact of Virtual Exchange on Teachers’ Pedagogical Com­petences and Pedagogical Approach in Higher Education. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11370/bb89998b-c08b-41f4-aee6-08faf1208433

O’Dowd, R. (2018). From telecollaboration to virtual exchange: state-of-the-art and the role of UNICollaboration in moving forward. Journal of Virtual Exchange, 1, 1–23. URL: https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2018.jve.1