On November 13th 2020, the international Virtual Collaborative Learning pilot course, organized in the framework of the JOVITAL project, kicked-off with a meeting facilitated by Wissam Tawileh and Prof. Dr. Eric Schoop from the coordinating institution, the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) in Germany.
The course has been designed to be an occasion of virtual collaborative learning between international graduate and ungraduate students from 10 Universities in 5 countries.
Virtual collaborative learning began as a practice in learing long before the COVID-19 pandemic and offers now to students and practicioners an additional opportunity for international collaboration. During the last 3 years, 5 Jordanian Universities have built competences, through knowledge exchange and capacity building, and are now ready to take the lead in online learning, they got familiar with concepts and approaches and are now in the process of taking the full reponsibility of VCL in Jordan.
The international Virtual Collaborative Learning pilot course is a success in itself, since it is the opportunity to reach out well beyond the project consortium and beyond Jordan. It has the potential of showing how VCL is up-to-date in relation to life long learning, for internationalization at home, for the future of education.
Today, 60 students from both Bachelor and Master courses, from different backgrounds and disciplines, joined the iVCL pilot course. They will be grouped into small groups, assigned with both a Project Manager and an eTutor and will be given a number of tasks and deadlines. Only through collaboration, exchange and team-working they will be able to fulfill the assignments and make the most out of this international experience. The virtual becomes a tool for both the learning process and the intercultural dialogue, strenghtening students competences (i.e. self-management, interpersonal skills, media competences), their language fluency as well as employability.
Students are expected to be actively engaged, communicate within the team, conduct scientific research and.. have fun!
