My approach with this Fellowship was simply to meet with, listen to, and learn from people who have experience of Virtual Exchange or knowledge of working across cultures. I wanted to understand what it was like for them to design and manage a Virtual Exchange project, so that I could support other people in trying VE for the first time.
As VE is reasonably well-established in Higher Education and it is a sector that I personally am familiar with, I focused my search for experts there. I reached out to two centres of excellence in VE: State University of New York’s Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Centre, and Kansai University’s Institute of Innovative Global Education. They were deliberately chosen for their vast experience in VE and also their very different cultural contexts. I felt that this would help ensure a more global look at how VE works.
I am pleased to say that both centres were kind of enough to offer to host a visit and to put me in touch with VE practitioners who would be willing to share their stories with me during my travels. Those stories of success, failure, misunderstandings and transformation are what formed the basis for the guidance contained on these pages. I hope that the wisdom entrusted to me will be of some use to anyone out there who is considering undertaking a Virtual Exchange project.
During this journey I have therefore met a great many people who have been unfailingly generous with their time, knowledge and, on occasion, food!
So, to those who I met on my travels in the USA and Japan: you embodied the true spirit of Virtual Exchange and welcomed a stranger who wanted to learn from them and had little to offer in return but a suitcase full of British chocolate and tea. Thank you.
I am also indebted to my network in the UK, be they colleagues, friends, family, my long-suffering PhD supervisor or members of the Virtual Exchange community. You have provided a sympathetic ear, let me bounce around ideas, and put me in touch with your contacts. Without you, this project would never have got off the ground.
And finally, I am hugely grateful to the Churchill Fellowship, who first saw the value in this project in 2020 and were not fazed by the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic delayed its completion by three years.
At home
- Athene Reiss (Senior Lecturer and Global Partnerships Lead, Oxford Brookes University)
- Irene Hill (Programme Lead for Modern Languages, Oxford Brookes University)
- Daniel Williams (long-suffering partner)
In Japan
- Keiko Ikeda (Vice-Director for Institute for Innovative Global Education)
- Rob Kuipers (International Exchange and COIL Coordinator, Kansai University)
- Michelle Fuji (Academic Manager, CIEE.org)
- Chris Hammond (Associate Professor, The University of Tokyo)
- Leyla Radjai (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Tokyo)
- Curtis Chu (Lecturer, Setsunan University)
- Miho Kamada (Lecturer, Setsunan University)
In the USA
- Hope Windle (Director, SUNY COIL Center)
- Helen Gaudette (Assistant Dean for International Education, FIT, SUNY)
- Jon Rubin (Director, COIL Connect for Virtual Exchange)
- Brooke Schreiber (Associate Professor, Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, CUNY)
- Dana Caponong (Assistant Director, Admissions for Graduate and International Students, St. Thomas Aquinas College)
- Fabiola Riobe (Associate Provost of Academic Innovation, Online Education and Global Opportunities, SUNY Rockland)
- Laurie Gorman (Assistant Professor, Nassau Community College)
- Grace Pai (Faculty Fellow, Queens College, CUNY)
- Olga Aksakalova (Professor of English, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY)
- Elizabeth Pierson (Education Abroad Coordinator, Purchase College)
- Nicole Simon (Professor of Physics, Nassau Community College)
- Samantha Somma (International Student and Scholar Advisor, Syracuse University)
- Cara Ruzzolino-Werben (Writing Tutor, Nassau Community College)
- Yaroslava Babenchuk (Senior International Officer and Associate Dean, SUNY Suffolk)
- Catherine Roche (Professor, Rockland Community College)
Featured image by Cory Billingsley on Unsplash
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