Every virtual exchange is designed with intentions for how students will communicate, collaborate, and learn together. But what makes those experiences meaningful—and who gets to decide?

Meaningful collaboration is not simply the result of putting students from different institutions together or following a set of design practices. How students experience an exchange is shaped by the learning environment faculty create as well as by the identities, perspectives, expectations, and ways of communicating that students bring to it. Moments of connection can generate powerful learning, but so can tension, misunderstanding, reflection, and the need to negotiate different perspectives.

This webinar explores the relationship between intentional design and the lived experience of virtual exchange. Drawing on research and practice in virtual exchange, intercultural communication, transformative learning, and global learning assessment, speakers will examine what we know about designing experiences that foster communication and intercultural learning while also asking critical questions about what meaningful participation and learning actually look like once students enter those environments.

Through research findings, examples from virtual exchange interactions, and participatory activities, attendees will consider how faculty can design for meaningful collaboration without predetermining what that learning must look like—and how attention to students' experiences can, in turn, inform the design, facilitation, reflection, and assessment of VE/COIL.

What You'll Gain

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Examine how intentional design and learner characteristics interact to shape communication, participation, and learning in virtual exchange.
Consider how language, identity, perspective, and students' own expectations influence what meaningful participation can look like.
Analyze examples of virtual exchange interactions to identify opportunities for learning within moments of connection, tension, and misunderstanding.
Explore research-informed approaches to designing and facilitating activities that support reflection, intercultural learning, and collaborative engagement.
Consider how evidence of student experiences and learning can inform the continued design and assessment of VE/COIL.

Speakers

Hiba B. Ibrahim
Assistant Professor in the Applied English Program, Applied Science Private University (Jordan)
Jennifer Wiley
Co-Founder & Partner, CoreCollaborative International