European Site Visits

JORDAN OPPORTUNITY FOR VIRTUAL INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

European Site Visit

Two European site visits occurred in the early stages of the JOVITAL project – one to TUD Dresden, Germany and one to Coventry University, UK.

The initial visit saw 28 Jordanian staff from across the JOVITAL Consortium visit TU Dresden for a three-day observation visit between 25th and 27th April 2018. The agenda included insight into the concepts of Project-Based Learning and Virtual Collaborative Learning and its practical implementation in case studies in a virtual classroom.

The visit was complemented by a guided tour through TU Dresden’s media centre, the Saxon State and University Library (SLUB) and the Traveling Innovation Labs and Services (TRAILS) project. As a cultural side event the Jordan guests visited the historical city centre of Dresden and the transparent factory of Volkswagen.

The visit was well-received by all, and offered Consortium members an insight into collaborative learning in an online space, and highlighted the possibilities of what might be achieved through the JOVITAL project.

“I think that [JOVITAL] gives us the opportunity gives us the opportunity to look at European universities to see how they apply online learning. [Through the training] we get a lot of information that we can apply for our students” - Academic from PSUT

The second visit followed the publication of the needs analysis report and saw members from the Jordanian institutions invited to Coventry University for a staff observation visit between the 3rd and 5th September 2019. The purpose of the visit was for Jordanian academic staff to be introduced to a range of approaches, tools and solutions to online learning, particularly Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) (which is the preferred term used for virtual collaborative learning at Coventry and which is an approach regularly used as part of curriculum internalisation in teaching and learning across all disciplinary areas at Coventry University. In addition, the visit offered valuable insights into the practical considerations of developing and delivering COIL and COIL-like activity, ranging from intercultural considerations to navigating time zone differences and working with new and different technologies.

“The main focus for me is to learn more about VLC and how to adapt them for my classes. This is for the benefit for myself, and of course my students, for their learning process … I plan on adapting VLC for use in more of my classes and want to motivate my students to take part and … to share knowledge with those from different institutions” –Academic from TTU

In total, 31 Jordanian staff visited Coventry, with key highlights including:

• Insight into a range of teaching and learning methods that can be utilised within COIL projects, with examples from

Health and Life Sciences, Business and Law, Arts and Humanities and Engineering and Computing.

• Exposure to a number of state-of-the-art technologies that are being used innovatively within teaching and learning, including robots, virtual hospital patients, virtual reality and augmented reality.

• Real-life examples of the processes used to set up and deliver COIL projects, with an honest and open discussion around the challenges and limitations of the collaborative online approach.

• Insight into the wider pedagogical benefits of utilising state-of-the-art-technologies within teaching and learning, including the development of intercultural competences, blended learning and the flipped classroom.

Fundamentally, discussions focused on questioning why collaborative online learning approaches are being considered, and to what effect, as part of students learning. One of the key takeaways from the JOVITAL project so far is that, although technology may be a key factor in COIL, it is not simply enough to buy new software or hardware and expect success; it takes significant time, energy and training to realise a meaningful and successful COIL project. 15

JORDAN OPPORTUNITY FOR VIRTUAL INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Particularly, attention needs to be directed to achieving the collaborative aspects of the online learning exchange.

Feedback on the Coventry visit was largely positive, but it was acknowledged that the schedule was packed, with a lot of sessions across the three days. Otherwise, the participants shared they found the visit a useful insight into an institution which embeds collaborative online technologies in an international learning setting. Participants gained insights into state-of-the-art technologies and different styles of teaching and learning approaches used at Coventry, which was viewed as valuable to their understanding of the development and implementation of COIL and other online teaching and learning projects.

“We don’t have the same facilities as those in Western Universities and the economic situation [in Jordan] isn’t so good. This type of programme allows our students to learn about other students in other cultures without travel and we can arrange for video conversations to get our students to be more aware about other students from other cultures ... I believe education environments is where we can build a bridge of peace between cultures.” – Academic from TTU

As a result of these European sight visits, it was also highlighted that the Jordanian partners do not often get the chance to interact with each other, with many of the attending delegates having not previously met each other in Jordan. It was recommended that there be more interaction between the Jordanian partners in Jordan as part of the JOVITAL project, so that there is more efficient collaboration and communication between partner institutions.

Staff interviews following their participation in the Coventry site visit demonstrated how the Jordanian Academics experiences and expectations of the JOVITAL project before the training and whilst the delivery of student learning activity was influencing practice

“Our university [German Jordanian University] is unique in that we are very experimental with our students and we already have internationalisation [through mobility] … We need to do more … I think we need to soften our interactions between students before they go abroad for a year, and I think we need to do more of this as it is a first opportunity for Jordanian students to interact with non-Jordanian students … I hope JOVITAL will help us to deliver a flavour to our students before they go abroad.” - Academic from GJU