From today until next Friday, October 28, CEU UCH will host the fourth edition of the International Virtual Exchange Conference IVEC 2022. More than 400 participants from 42 countries, mainly from the United States, Spain, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil and Canada, in This three-day event presents more than 60 teaching innovation proposals to apply technological possibilities to the internationalization of university education. Coinciding with this forum, the Spanish University Chancellors’ Conference (CRUE) was held this morning at the CEU UCH working subgroup meeting “Internationalization at Home”, which included two visiting experts on Virtual Exchange as a university methodology.

Director of the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE) of the Ministry of Universities, Alfonso Gentil; executive secretary of the CRUE Internationalization and Cooperation Group, Carles Padilla; and the Chancellor of the UCH CEU, Vicente Navarro de Luján, opened the IVEC 2022 session this morning.

Virtual Exchange, to train students

Through more than 65 presentations, 31 posters, 6 workshops and 6 special sessions, this forum will enable students, professors and academic managers to share successful experiences in the field of ‘virtual exchange’. This methodology for university education allows you to participate in teams of students from different countries, connect online to solve challenges, cases or design joint projects around a common subject or material. Collaboration between students from different cultures, brought together digitally in simultaneous training sessions, such as Collaborative International Learning (COIL), transforms this virtual exchange format into an international training experience, without the need to travel to another country.

Since 2019, CEU UCH has hosted more than 50 COILs, which makes it one of the pioneering Spanish Universities in the implementation of this format. The professors and students of this university, where students from more than 90 different countries are trained, present at IVEC 2022 4th some of the innovative formats they have been practicing in recent years. In addition to presentations and communications, there are special sessions such as COILogues and Cultural Challenges & Opportunities, where academic aspects are discussed from various geographical perspectives, taking into account the realities and contexts of each continent.

In total, more than 470 participants from universities around the world attended IVEC 2022, more than 300 of whom did so in person at UCH’s CEU headquarters and the rest, digitally connected to the session. Among the participants were professors, university managers and academic managers who were interested in promoting new multicultural training methodologies through technology, as well as students who shared their experiences of participating in this innovative and international type of training. Communications received by the organizing committee will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Virtual Exchange.

More international, hybrid and sustainable training

The inaugural IVEC 2022 conference was presented by Federico Juárez, senior innovation developer at CEU UCH, on the importance of innovative methodologies for the future of education. And on Friday the session will be closed by the executive director of the International Association of Education Administrators (AIEA), Darla K. Deardorff, who will discuss trends in the formation of intercultural skills in higher education. As a key technology partner, LG’s president, Jaime de Jaraíz, will intervene at IVEC 2022, which will analyze the keys to future, more hybrid and sustainable education. LG is a major sponsor of the conference, along with other collaborators such as FIU COIL (Florida International University), the Global Business Center of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, Orange Thinking and eTwinz. During the congress, the book The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange was also presented by its three authors, Jon Rubin, Stephanie Doscher and Sarah Guth, recognized specialists in the field for over fifteen years.

CRUE meeting on internationalization

Prior to the opening of IVEC 2022, CRUE had also held a meeting of its working subgroup on “Internationalization at Home”, consisting of 42 Spanish universities, at CEU UCH. The session was chaired by Reyes Alejano, vice chancellor for Internationalization and Global Commitment at the University of Huelva (UH) and coordinator of the CRUE Internationalization Working Group; Raúl Martín, vice chancellor for Internationalization at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) and president of the subgroup “Internationalization at Home”; Alfonso Díaz Segura, director of the company Internationalization San Pablo CEU University Foundation; and Chirag C. Sheth, vice chancellor for Internationalization at CEU UCH.

Sandra Julieth, from the Catholic University of Manizales, in Colombia, and Eva Haug, from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, have been invited to a meeting of the CRUE subgroup, who have shared with representatives of Spanish universities their experiences in the field of Virtual Exchange.