IVEC 2022, the fourth International Virtual Exchange Conference, has taken place at the CEU Cardenal Herrera University, and the University has also hosted the meeting of CRUE’s working group on internationalization at home.

CEU UCH has hosted IVEC 2022, the fourth edition of the International Virtual Exchange Conference. More than 400 people attended the conference, coming from 42 countries, including the USA, Spain, Mexico, the UK, Germany, Brazil and Canada. Between 26th and 28th October more than 60 talks on innovation in teaching took place, seeking to take advantage of the possibilities which technology offers for the internationalization of university education. On the morning of the opening day of the conference, the association of Spanish universities, CRUE, also scheduled a meeting of its internationalization at home working group at CEU UCH, at which two guest speakers on using virtual exchange in university teaching gave presentations.

IVEC 2022 was inaugurated by Alfonso Gentil, the Director of SEPIE, Spain’s agency for the internationalization of education, part of the Ministry for Universities; Vicente Navarro de Luján, the Rector of CEU UCH; Carles Padilla, the executive secretary of CRUE’s Internationalization and Cooperation Group; and Alfonso Díaz, Corporate Director for Internationalization at CEU.

Virtual exchange for university students

With 65 talks, 31 posters, 6 workshops and 6 special sessions, the conference has enabled students, lecturers and university managers to come together and share their expertise and to tell their success stories with regard to virtual exchange. The use of virtual exchange as an approach to learning in higher education means that students enrolled on similar courses but in different countries can form teams online to tackle challenges, to undertake case studies, or to carry out projects together. Virtual exchange means that university students of different cultures can learn together online and simultaneously, in projects known as COILs (Collaborative International Online Learning). Students are thus able to gain an international educational experience without having to leave their home country.

Since 2019, CEU UCH has organized more than 50 COILs, meaning that it leads the way among Spanish universities in this innovative approach to learning. CEU UCH lecturers and students – with over 90 nationalities represented at the University – have also given presentations IVEC 2022, displaying some of the innovative teaching and learning methods that have been used over the last few years. In addition to the standard presentations, there have been several special sessions, such as the COILogues and the Cultural Challenges & Opportunities, in which academic issues have been discussed from different geographical perspectives, taking into account the context in each region and continent.

In total, more than 470 participants from universities from across the world have attended IVEC 2022: 300 of them on the CEU UCH campus, and the rest following the sessions online. The attendees have included lecturers and university managers and administrators who are interested in promoting the use of new, multicultural educational approaches through the use of technology, but also students who want to talk about their experience of participating in this kind of innovative and international activity. The papers accepted by the organizing committee will be published in a special edition of the Journal of Virtual Exchange.

A more international, hybrid and sustainable education

The inaugural lecture of IVEC 2022 was given by Federico Juárez, senior innovation developer at CEU UCH, regarding the importance of innovative approaches for the future of education. The conference closed on Friday with a lecture given by Darla K. Deardorff, the executive director of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), who talked about the latest trends in higher education in providing students with intercultural skills. Jaime de Jaraíz, the President of LG, the conference’s main technology partner, also spoke about how education will change in the future, becoming more hybrid and sustainable. LG is the main sponsor of IVEC 2022, and other partners include FIU COIL (Florida International University), the Global Business Center of the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, Orange Thinking, and eTwinz. The conference also saw the presentation of the book, The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange, by its three authors, Jon Rubin, Stephanie Doscher and Sarah Guth, all prestigious experts in this area for more than fifteen years.

CRUE meeting on internationalization

Prior to the inauguration of IVEC 2022, CEU UCH also hosted a meeting organized by CRUE, the association of the 42 universities in Spain, for its working group on internationalization at home. The meeting was chaired by Reyes Alejano, the Vice-Rector for Internationalization and Global Commitment at the University of Huelva (UH) and also the Coordinator of CRUE’s Internationalization Group; Raúl Martín, Vice-Rector for Internationalization at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) and Chair of the Internationalization at Home Working Group; Alfonso Díaz Segura, Corporate Director for Internationaliization at the San Pablo CEU University Foundation; and Chirag C. Sheth, Vice-Rector for Internationalization at CEU UCH.

Also invited to the CRUE meeting were Sandra Julieth, from the Catholic University of Manizales, in Colombia, and Eva Haug, of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, who shared their experiences of virtual exchange with the representatives from Spanish universities.

About IVEC

The universities and international organizations which founded IVEC, whose representatives also make up its executive committee and who chose CEU UCH as the host of its fourth conference, are: DePaul University of Chigaco, University of Washington Bothell, Drexel University in Philadephia and East Carolina University (all in the USA); the University of Monterrey, in Mexico; and Durban University of Technology, in South Africa; UniCollaboration, the European Telecollaboration Consortium; and FAUBAI, the Brazillian Association for International Education.

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