NETT DEVISE

We focus on Education for Sustainable Development. The target audience are students of primary and secondary teacher education, in which all the partner institutions are specialised. It is our belief that future teachers are ideal multipliers for the important task of spreading the idea of a more eco-friendly and inclusive way of life. Not only the ESD content, also the application of sustainable and inclusive intercultural collaboration will be transported by our students to their future school classes: their experience of virtual exchange will be the basis for their own implementation in schools.

We have developed a curriculum that consists of three parts: a Virtual Exchange course with a subsequent week of attendance (3 ECTS) - Blended Intensive Programme/BIP (3 ECTS)- and a course at the home university on the topic of ESD (3 ECTS). By successfully completing all three components, students can qualify for the digital badge “ESD for teachers” which we’ve created in PR 6.

Detailed description of the ESD curriculum that we’ve developed with our project partners over the last months:

1. Virtual Exchange Course on Moodle “ESD for Teachers: How to be a Change Agent at Primary and Secondary Schools” (3 ECTS)
2. Blended Intensive Programme on the topic of ESD (3 ECTS)
3. ESD course at home university (3 ECTS)

The Virtual Exchange Course can be implemented in Moodle, including all learning materials and presentations. Please follow this link to download the Moodle Back-up file.

It can be stated that we were successful in assuring the recognition of ECTS for participants of virtual mobilities or virtual exchange opportunities at our universities within this project. In line with the procedures outlined by the Erasmus without Paper (EWP) process and recommendations given by the German Rector’s Conference (HRK) project MODUS, we have given out guidelines and implemented measures to assure the recognition of the ECTS gained by participants of the offers made in PR1.

A major step for this was that our virtual exchange course is fully embedded in the in all standard curricula at the partner universities. This is one of the main requirements when we talk about gaining ECTS through virtual exchanges, and it must be stated that it took quite some effort to ensure that our VE course is part of every institution’s curriculum. Thanks to that fact, all participating students get the ECTS of the virtual exchange at their home institution. The recognition process is therefore fully in line with local requirements.

Having in mind that intercultural exchange does not always lead to intercultural learning and growth – not even a semester abroad guarantees growth in intercultural competence –, we develop a systematic material collection for pre-trained faculty (see PR 4) on virtual intercultural mentoring with a focus on our "green" context.

The Green intercultural mentoring tool kit includes five videos, which can be used as an introduction to Virtual Exchange:

Video 1: Introduction to Virtual Exchange

Video 2: What is culture

Video 3: Cultural influences on Communication

Video 4: Mindful intercultural communication

Video 5: Sustainable Development

Despite the fact that our faculty is familiar with online teaching, the format of Virtual Exchange is still new to most. This is why we have developed a staff training framework (based on the “Online Training Co-laboratory” (OTC) by the EVOLVE project, see evolve-erasmus.eu/training/), addressing both the general aspects of design and implementation of Virtual Exchange in our context of ESD, but also adding a new component of how to mentor students in a virtual environment, enabling them to open up for the intercultural experience and for behavioral change, developing the attitude of a teacher as change agent.

The teacher training on virtual exchange had been designed as a full online blended course. It was 100% distance learning consisting of a 5-module Moodle course adapted from the EVOLVE Project (https://evolve-erasmus.eu/training-resources/) covered asynchronously and 6 synchronous meetings on Teams. The Virtual Course can be implemented in Moodle, including all learning materials and presentations. Please follow this link to download the Moodle Back-up file.

Virtual forms of mobility have the advantage of being both eco-friendly and inclusive, but as international educators, our interest is on students to gain intercultural competence.

The NETT DEVISE project aimed to evaluate the impact of various mobility forms (physical, virtual mobility, blended mobility, and virtual exchange) on students' cultural competence. The evaluation was based on established studies and frameworks, including those by Nuffic and Auer et al.

As we realise the need for certified professional development of in-service teachers, we create the NETT DEVISE ESD digital badge for  as a way of certifying the participation of in-service teachers in our ESD curriculum, strengthening the role of our institutions in lifelong learning.