Erasmus+ Virtual Distance Education Experience
Duration: During Fall 2020 & Spring 2021

Intro: The External Academic Relations overall objective from all offered online programs and projects is to strengthen the BU human capital, specifically at higher education. The short-term outcome will be to create a civilized generation that understands local and global issues with self-motivated, lifelong learner skills, empowered to enhance professional and leadership skills.

The profound impact of the virtual programs and training is developing cross-cultural communication skills and can engage in constructive dialogue across divides. It will further enable us to connect educators to accelerate the speed and spread of sharing experience and knowledge. It helps BU to get a broader panoramic understanding of the future labor market needs and demands.

Those virtual activities will improve BUs' general performance, starting with management skills and the quality in the preparation, implementation, monitoring, and follow-up with technical skills, all part of applying globalization best practices. It contributes to gradually transitioning to the world of work by strengthening our human capital by acquiring knowledge, skills, and competencies to generate competent professionals capable of facing global challenges.

At these difficult times, we need to find innovative ways to create work offers and international connections for young undergrads who are not supported by a rescue employability plan. As mobility restrictions continue to control the socio-economic and education sectors, the double burden of adapting to the effect of COVID-19 while living under severe conditions will further reduce the already limited possibilities of mobility and employability. Therefore, we must find alternative ways to increase the competencies of individual graduates to become qualified, proactive members of the local and global labor force and meet the demands of the 21st-century. We must target to enhance and reinforce the potential of undergrads' outcomes in developing their mindset.

Several virtual projects and programs launched best practices on adapting and conducting an existing virtual exchange program on the current global conditions. Those initiatives successfully facilitate undergrads' virtual exchange by creating programs with joint supervision of official joined partnerships in executing co-curricular soft skills activities.

By adopting those virtual initiatives, educators and students expand knowledge as it encourages dialogue and mutual exchange of information. The real gain is the massive exposure to the intercultural experience all lead towards structuring graduates' talk towards self-awareness by reinforcing their globalized citizenship. It is an opportunity by all means to create new networks, partnerships, and developing joint projects to spread virtual employment opportunities. Therefore, BU needs to consider preparing BU alumni's future leaders for the local and international network via reinforcing their cross-cultural awareness as perceived as a need in Palestine.

Challenge:

Knowledge exchange and virtual collaboration activities may not come naturally to all BU crew members and cannot smoothly integrate at the margin of their academic paradigm. Moving forward, we need to understand better the language of digitalization with a better and more in-depth understanding of the business environment that can help improving teaching to provide students with flexibility, autonomy, accountability, and – more in general – with a "learning-to-learn" attitude. We need to embrace a digital paradigm in all sectors and fields, which should orient our missions and activities.

Fall 2020 & Spring 2021:

Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange participants shared remarkable stories of how they have been able to meet their language, uncertainty issues, use of technology, and shy challenges. Erasmus+ program created a cross-cultural collaborative learning experience. Many students learned how to work collaboratively better and have a cross-cultural dialogue to reinforce their networking opportunities and increase their social intelligence. Please check students’ reflection testimonial essays.

Institute for Community Partnership (ICP) and the Faculty of Science integrated Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange programs under the title "Cultural Encounters - The Big Climate Movement," 9 week program run by Sharing Perspectives Foundation. The Institute of Hotel Management and Tourism integrated the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange program under the title "Connect Express," 4 week program run by Solyia. All programs are designed to equip better, promote, and create a networking pool and opportunities schemes to develop undergrads' soft skills.

Conclusion:

What we truly need now is to apply 21st-century acceptable practices that target young graduates' employability. I believe the post-crisis the world will be more indebted, less global, and more digital. Accordingly, having embedded and integrated the virtual exchange project into my teaching in the recent three continuous semesters, I can assert that the outcome has been positive, and I highly recommend this approach. Adopting these methods has helped me shift from a teacher-centered learning approach to a learner and virtual-training-centered practice. It well-positioned my Home University on the global geography map of Higher Education. This is a genuine opportunity in front of us today. We have an essential role and opportunity to play to create a new and even more robust learning culture.

Remark:

We still have a long way to develop a BU institutionalization plan and learn how to bridge educators who conduct education and exchange programs to learn more about how to design, prepare for, and facilitate future virtual exchange programming outreach, specifically designed to serve undergrads whose access to exchange academic programs highly restricted for some time. Therefore, strengthening mobility opportunities became a part of transitioning from in-person to future virtual employment opportunities by creating a new perspective of managing the transition from university to the world of work using a holistic approach.