UNICollaboration and its members are involved in various international and European projects in the area of telecollaboration and virtual exchange. An overview of current projects can be found on the accompanying pages.
GO-DIJIP Project
Project Start & End:
03/2021 – ongoing (03/2023)
Project Summary:
UNICollaboration is excited to be a full partner in the GO-DIJIP project “Integrating Digital Collaborative Environments into Joint Programmes”. UNICollaboration will contribute with our international network of qualified trainers in Virtual Exchange to designing and coordinating the project Training activities, which will be open to the wider public after a first Pilot.
UNICollaboration participates in the GO-DIJIP, Key Action 2 project on “Integrating Digital Collaborative Environments into Joint Programmes”. This two year project is coordinated by the University of Padova – Padova, Italy. University of Bergen, AgroParisTech and EMA, as well as UNICollaboration are the full project partners.
Representatives from the European Association for International Education (EAIE), Coimbra Group, ARQUS European University Alliance and the Association for the Promotion and the Development of Joint International Programmes in Higher Education (ProDeJIP) are among the Associate Partners.
This Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project focuses on the introduction of digital elements in Joint Programmes.
GO-DIJIP aims to develop a digitalised, innovative, collaborative and quality-oriented Higher Education, providing instruments to sustainably mainstream new forms of virtual teaching and learning.
FRAMES – Fostering Resilience through Accredited Mobility for European Sustainable HE innovation
Project Start & End:
03/2021 – ongoing (02/2023)
Project Summary:
UNICollaboration is excited to be a full partner in the FRAMES project “Fostering Resilience through Accredited Mobility for European Sustainable HE innovation”. UNICollaboration will contribute with our international network of qualified trainers in Virtual Exchange to designing and coordinating the project Training activities, which will be open to the wider public after a first Pilot.
What is the FRAMES Project?
The FRAMES project is an Erasmus+ KA2 – Strategic Partnership project, which aims to foster an harmonised implementation of blended mobility among European Higher Education Institutions (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 stems from the impact that the COVID-19 emergency is having on students mobility flows, and wants to help 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.
The FRAMES project, which will be centered around Virtual Exchange (VE), has three main objectives:
- valorise successful scenarios of accredited Virtual Exchanges, considered as an innovative, inclusive and intercultural complement to physical mobility;
- 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;
- support HEIs, European Universities and HEI Networks in creating the conditions for long term harmonised integration and accreditation of physical, blended and virtual mobility.
This two year project is coordinated by UNIMED, while Sharing Perspective Foundation (The Netherlands), University of Girona (Spain), University of Limerick (Ireland), and University of Siena (Italy) are the full project partners.
Project Start & End:
03/2021 – ongoing (02/2023)
Project Summary:
UNICollaboration is excited to be a full partner in the PENSA project “Pour une Professionnalisation des Enseignants utilisant le Numérique pour un Soutien à l’Autonomie et à la citoyenneté (PENSA)”. UNICollaboration will contribute with our international network of qualified trainers in Virtual Exchange to designing and coordinating the project Training module on Virtual Exchange, which will be open to the wider public after a first Pilot.
What is the PENSA Project?
This two year project is coordinated by Aix-Marseille Université – France. This Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project focuses on two current issues in higher education and society. The first one is the need for training and infrastructure to deliver blended, distant and/or co-modal (i.e. in-class teaching simultaneously streamed to online students) teaching during the pandemic. The second issue is the need to educate young people to the implications in the use of social networking websites (Facebook, Youtube, etc.) at psychological, sociological, economical, and ideological levels. The PENSA project addresses these issues with an overall approach of openness, both in the direction of open education and open source platforms. The core of the project is constituted by 30 teachers and teacher trainers in seven universities, mostly part of the CIVIS European University, one academic association and a firm. During the project, we aim at providing training for these teachers and to reach 100 supplementary teachers with local training events. Teachers will be trained to integrate blended and co-modal teaching in their classes, with the integration of telecollaboration and virtual exchange on topics related to digital citizenship. The core group will implement virtual exchange adopting either the pedagogy of inquiry, or a collaborative creative writing approach. Through these actions, PENSA will involve 400 students across Europe in developing their digital competence, plurilingual competence, collaborative skills, and learner autonomy.
The intellectual outputs of the PENSA project will be:
- a literature review on teacher training for the integration of ICTs and for education to digital citizenship;
- an open course for teacher training for the pedagogic activities described above;
- two sets of open educational resources to implement virtual exchange adopting either the pedagogy of inquiry or collaborative creative writing;
- open source functionalities for open source platforms for teaching and training, such as Moodle, BigBlueButton and Mahara, to make those platforms more interoperable and to adapt them to co-modal teaching.
The estimated results will be:
- increased digital readiness in higher education,
- to contribute to sustainable internationalisation providing guidelines to stakeholders for increasing virtual exchange and virtual mobility,
- and above all to contribute to a culture of openness both among teachers for open education, and among students for open digital citizenship, reducing the use of commercial platforms in higher education.
VAMOS Project
Project Start & End:
01/2021 – ongoing (01/2023)
Project Summary:
UNICollaboration is excited to be a full partner in the VAMOS project “Virtual Exchange to Tackle Wicked Problems: Latin American and European Collaboration on Education for Sustainable Development (VAMOS)”. UNICollaboration will contribute with our international network of qualified trainers in Virtual Exchange to designing and coordinating the project Training activities on Virtual Exchange, to help teachers implement this innovative pedagogy in their courses on Sustainable Developments.
What is the VAMOS Project?
VAMOS is a capacity-building project within the framework of the Erasmus+ programme running between 2021 – 2023 with a budget of 738.990 EUR. The project gathers six Latin American universities (Brazil and Honduras), two European universities (Uppsala and Padua), and one NGO with leading experts in virtual exchange (UNICollaboration). This project is coordinated by the University of Uppsala – Sweden. VAMOS wants to build capacity for innovative international collaboration and joint learning, with a focus on learning spaces for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and to co-create virtual exchange courses on addressing wicked problems. Students from all partner universities will work with the local/global sustainability issues (Wicked Problems).
The activities to facilitate a joint co-creative process of developing a virtual course(s) on local/global sustainability issues (Wicked Problems) are structured in three work packages (WP):
WP 2 Education for Sustainable Development Learning & Teaching Methods – Explores how partners in VAMOS teach Education for Sustainable Development at partner universities. The aim is to establish a common foundation on how the project team wishes to transform the way we are teaching and learning in order to meet the current and future sustainability challenges.
WP 3 Virtual Teacher Training & Course Development – Focuses on how partners in VAMOS can teach sustainability together in joint international virtual courses. The training will be facilitated by UNICollaboration and introduces the concept of Virtual Exchange as an innovative pedagogical approach and will guide teachers in co-creating a virtual exchange course addressing the Wicked Problems.
WP 4 Test of virtual exchange course(s) on Glocal Wicked Problems – Focuses on testing and evaluating the pilots offered by partners in VAMOS. The course(s) will be part of a virtual GLOCAL ESD Campus setting in which students will interact with their international peers (via video conference and interactive smart board) and work together on wicked problems.
Further specific project objectives are to:
- Strengthen the capacity of teachers to transform university Education for Sustainable Development
- Provide training in Virtual Exchange teaching skills
- Address local Wicked Problems in society through International Virtual Exchange with students and teachers
- Empower students to become active agents in addressing Sustainable Development Goals
- Increase the relevance of Education for Sustainable Development by focusing on transversal approaches and interaction with society.
UNICollaboration was a member of the consortium developing and promoting mentoring, training and other opportunities for Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange, part of the Erasmus+ programme aimed at providing an accessible, ground-breaking way for young people to engage in intercultural learning. Working with youth organisations and universities, the programme was open to any young person aged 18-30 residing in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. This initiative has now ended.
Member Projects
If you are a member and wish to have a current project featured on this page, please contact info@unicollaboration.org with the following information about your project: Project title, dates of project, project logo, brief (max 250 word) description, web link.
