Project news
Here you can read more about what has been going on within the project Digital at home: new steps in internationalization of education.
October 2023
The free massive open online courses (MOOCs) 'Introduction to Virtual Exchange' and 'Re-thinking the Baltic Sea Region: trends and challenges' are published on the BUP Course Platform.
September 2023
The BUP has published the book Re-thinking the Baltic Sea Region: trends and challenges. This book has been created within this project. This publication aims to critically (re)approach the classical understanding of region and region-building processes in difficult times of war in the region itself. The publication also aims to freshly chronicle the processes that have taken place in the region over the past two decades. Read the full book via DiVA.
March – May 2023
Virtual Exchange on "Regional Integration and Cooperation".
During this virtual exchange international students at Marie Curie – Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland and students at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (IFNUL), Ukraine had a short course together which was devoted to Regional Intergartion and Cooperation. Students had common lectures and seminars, and the most important thing was that they have been given a task which they were supposed to fulfill in mixed international groups.
“It was a really important and valuable experience both for the students and for the lecturers especially in terms of ongoing war in Ukraine. The students were able to present their opinions and views on how the war influence the security of Europe and particularly the Baltic Sea region, how effective are the institutions functioning in the BSR, how the cooperation in the BSR will develop, etc. These exchange classes also gave a great experience of intercultural communication though it was not very easy for the students, but they successfully managed to overcome this difficulty. For Ukrainian students, this exchange was the experience they have not had before and judging from their feeback it was a success. They expressed their wish to have such exchange in future and participate in the whole course in virtual exchange mode.” says Marianna Gladysh, one of the lecturer at IFNUL.
5-8 February 2023
Project meeting in Uppsala. During the meeting the participants finalized work with the educational material which is being developed within the project, mainly the volume about the transition that the Baltic Sea Region has undergone during the last decades. Another part of the meeting was devoted to planning the Virtual Exchange between the some of the partner universities.
Ukrainian colleagues and the project Coordinator during the meeting in Uppsala. Photo: Lyudmyla Babak
Autumn term 2022
Pilot Virtual Exchange Events on Regional Studies. The students from Polish and Ukrainian universities met to look at and discuss the issues of Regionalism, Regional Security and NATO Enlargement in the Baltic Sea Region. These events were highly appreciated by the students from Ukraine who has less opportunities to meet international students. Also, it was a good experience for the teachers from partner universities to prepare the content of events together.
Autumn term 2021 & Spring term 2022
Pilot virtual exchange events on Climate Change Curriculum in the Baltic Sea Region, between student from Sweden, Finland and Lithuania.
May - October 2021
Course: Setting up an International Virtual Exchange Class Room
This course was providing information on curriculum development, Task and Tools for Virtual Exchange (VE), as well as challenges of international virtual classroom. The course was open for the project members.
The course consisted of four modules: the two basic modules 1 and 2 provided an introduction and was run in May/June 2021; modules 3 and 4 discussed the questions of virtual classroom facilitation and common challenges, and were run in September -October 2021.
The purpose of the four modules was to give the teacher-developer-teams of WP 2 (Climate Change In the Baltic Sea Region) and WP 3 (The Baltic Sea Region in the Conditions of Global Transition) the skills and knowledge to co-create, test and integrate virtual exchange (VE) activities in their courses.
26 March 2021
Webinar 2: Introduction to Virtual Exchanges / Virtual Class
The concepts of virtual mobility, COIL, virtual exchange, and virtual class were introduced and presented as possible practical instruments of internationalization at home in virtual setting. The webinar was open for participants outside the project as well.
12 March 2021
Webinar 1: Rethinking of Internationalization and Internationalization at Home (IAH) and Internationalization of Teaching and Learning (IL&T)
The webinar leaders invited participants to think (or rethink) on the internationalization of higher education concept(s) in the current realities. These are some of the questions that were discussed: What is the main contribution of internationalization? Is internationalization important for students, and why, but not only those at international programs? Does internationalization remain available only for a "small minority" of students? If IAH and IL&T could be the instruments to provide students with global competence? The webinar was open for participants outside the project as well.
5 February 2021
The project launches. During the kick-off meeting that took place via Zoom the partners met, confirmed the workplan and timeline as well as presented their ideas of work to be done within each work package.