Dialogue-based virtual exchange for students

We run large-scale, dialogue-based virtual exchanges in higher education, connecting students from universities across the world in facilitated dialogues. Since launching our first virtual exchange programme in 2013, we have engaged over 30,000 students from more than 100 countries. We have partnered  with over 80 universities worldwide and facilitated thousands of online interactive learning sessions in multiple languages, including English, Dutch, and Arabic.

From 2018 to 2020, we participated in a consortium that piloted the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange for the European Commission, engaging over 27,000 participants in just three years. Between 2023 and 2026 we are running the large scale Virtual Exchange programme Climate Justice as part of CliVEx, an EU funded project engaging at least 1,500 students. 

Dialogue serves as the primary approach to learning in our virtual exchanges in higher education, promoting deep intercultural exchange and fostering personal growth among students. Intercultural sensitivity and personal development are central to the learning objectives of our programmes. By using dialogue as a pedagogical framework, our virtual exchanges in higher education offer distinctive characteristics that set them apart from non-dialogue-based virtual exchange programmes:

• Dialogue takes place in small groups. Research has proven that the most impactful dialogues occur within groups of 6-12 people. In our programmes all students are given the opportunity to be part of groups this size, even in large programmes with over 500 participants.

• Dialogue is a process. Our unique Group Process Framework empowers facilitators to customize activities during dialogue sessions based on the specific stage and needs of each group.

• The dialogue process requires time. Effective dialogue takes time, which is why our programmes span several weeks. We do not believe in one-off interactions; instead, a minimum of six sessions of two hours each is essential for meaningful engagement.

Training to design virtual exchanges for educators

From 2021 to 2023 we trained educators on how to integrate and accredit virtual exchange and COIL courses into higher education curricula. From 2022 until 2025 we have been commissioned by the Dutch ministry of Education, Culture and Science to train Dutch educators to develop Virtual International Collaboration projects. 

Our trainings empower educators with a deeper understanding of designing and evaluating an effective collaborative, learner-led online exchange process. The trainings also focuses on how to ensure a quality learner experience and measurable impact through a monitoring and evaluation framework. Educators in our trainings are given the opportunity to develop facilitative teaching skills, and how to best navigate their role in the collaborative learning process.

We offer two types of training: an introductory training on the basic pedagogical frameworks for virtual exchange, and a more advanced training for those educators already familiar with COIL and/or virtual exchange who wish to gain further knowledge on the design of an effective collaborative learner-led online exchange process.

Campus dialogues

Throughout 2024 we have witnessed protest and increasing division across campuses around the world. We are now offering our experience and expertise to support higher education institutions by facilitating difficult conversations between their students, and turning conflict and difference into opportunities for community cohesion.

Our decade of experience in bringing together diverse university students across lines of difference, including race, gender inequality, hate speech and Israel/Palestine, have provided us with the capacity and methodology to facilitate constructive dialogue  and defuse tensions between students of the same university. 

Our facilitation trainings are also ideally suited to giving university staff and student leaders the opportunity to bring our facilitation knowledge ‘in-house,’ so that they can facilitate constructive dialogue and meaningful conversations on challenging and divisive issues with confidence. 

Facilitation training

For our dialogue-based virtual exchanges, we use facilitators who are trained in online dialogue facilitation. The training for facilitators focuses on two main tenets of dialogue facilitation: Facilitation skills and the recognition and managing of specific dynamics in groups that affect the dialogue. 

The facilitation training we deliver focuses on key facilitation skills, such as active listening, neutrality and multi-partiality, observations and meta conversations as well as conversational techniques such as asking good questions or summarizing (parts of) the conversation. 

Recognizing specific dynamics in groups and or individuals throughout the dialogue process and effectively managing those dynamics is of essential importance to the success of facilitation. Therefore, the training addresses dynamics that may occur during the dialogue process and offers tools to effectively address those dynamics. These dynamics include conflict, but also dealing with specific power dynamics between (groups of) participants or working with disengaged groups.