Modern mobility with blended intensive programmes

SEDLÁČKOVÁ, Kateřina and Katherine GUERTLER. Modern mobility with blended intensive programmes. In Tag der digitalen Lehre 2022! Studieren und Lehrende teilen inhre Erfhrungen une Ideen für ihre Lehre post Corona. 2022.

Basic information

• Original name: Modern mobility with blended intensive programmes
• Authors: SEDLÁČKOVÁ, Kateřina and Katherine GUERTLER.
• Edition: Tag der digitalen Lehre 2022! Studieren und Lehrende teilen inhre Erfhrungen une Ideen für ihre Lehre post Corona, 2022.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Language Centre
• Keywords in English: blended intensive programme, plurilingual competence, intercomprehension
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

The innovative solutions for virtual and hybrid teaching conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic unleashed a wave of creativity and opened up new perspectives for university teaching. While these on-the-fly concepts served us well (all things considered) during emergency remote teaching, the return to in-person classes gives us the opportunity to consider which aspects of virtual instruction will persist as future trends. With the introduction of ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Programmes (BIP) in 2021, the European Commission created a new agenda to marry virtual exchange with physical mobility. This practical report presents insights from a BIP focusing on intercomprehension strategies and development of the plurilingual competence for students at the partner universities in Belgium, Czechia, France and Germany. In the first phase, students complete an asynchronous course with a weekly workload of 2 hours over 13 weeks. At the end of the semester, the students come together for a week-long intensive in-person course at the host institution, Masaryk University in Brno, in order to consolidate the learnings from the virtual course, promote intercultural exchange, and give the course participants an opportunity to meet each other in-person. This presentation outlines the development of the BIP course curriculum, the deployment of the virtual course elements and the experience with the intensive mobility phase (TBD: the physical exchange is in July 2022). The focus is on the operational implementation of the blended intensive course as a good-practice example, along with lessons learned about virtual exchange and international blended courses to share with interested colleagues.