Marta Giralt is from the University of Limerick in Ireland, where she teaches in the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, including her native Spanish.
She’s a keen virtual exchange practitioner with a long history of involvement with UNICollaboration training.
Marta particularly enjoys teaching intercultural communication at Limerick. For this reason, she encourages her students to take part in a large virtual exchange called CliVEx, that focuses on climate change through intercultural dialogue.
She’s a keen virtual exchange practitioner with a long history of involvement with UNICollaboration training.
Marta particularly enjoys teaching intercultural communication at Limerick. For this reason, she encourages her students to take part in a large virtual exchange called CliVEx, that focuses on climate change through intercultural dialogue.
A climate change virtual exchange collaboration
CliVEx – “Climate Virtual Exchange” aims to enhance climate awareness in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean area and includes Marta’s favourite topic of intercultural awareness and intercultural dialogue.
This VE brings hundreds of students together from different cultures and backgrounds to discuss the issue of climate change and to foster intercultural communication.
The primary goal of this initiative is: ‘to raise climate awareness, transcending geographical and linguistic barriers. Through this initiative, we empower the next generation of leaders and advocates with the knowledge and insights needed to address pressing environmental concerns. We believe that collaborative learning, enabled by virtual exchange, can drive global climate actions. By facilitating connections, sharing expertise and working together, CliVEx seeks to protect our planet and inspire sustainable solutions.’
Marta’s students have been involved in one iteration of this exchange, which is coordinated by UNIMED. She says she observed immediately that her students began to appreciate how differently climate change and sustainability competencies are experienced according to where you are in the world.
“This was very clear and one of the main points of this virtual exchange.”
The University of Limerick is an associated partner, and the consortium has about 14/15 partners. All these students are participants in the VE.
Embedding a virtual exchange into an existing course
The way it works for Limerick is for Marta to embed CliVEx in her course, which is a module entitled: ‘Communication across Cultures’.
“We teach intercultural communication with the aim of enhancing students’ competencies by using a combination of theory and practice. But the VE is what gives them a more experiential aspect. Through this collaboration, they talk to their peers across Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. For me, this VE brings authenticity into the course.”
Each iteration lasts 9 weeks. During this time, the students interact with all the other participants in groups of 10. They attend a weekly synchronous session lasting two hours which is facilitated by trained online dialogue facilitators. These facilitators come from the Sharing Perspectives Foundation. In between the online meet ups, students need to complete other activities asynchronously in order to prepare for these sessions. At the end of the exchange, the students write a reflective diary, which can be very revealing for the teachers.
Marta explains: “At the end of the VE, the students also have to prepare an action related to climate change. It’s an action that they will take out into the community beyond the walls of the university. Some students made a social media podcast for example. Others prepared a talk or a video for local schools, all geared towards bringing awareness to the topic.”
Student groups VE make up
The groups are made up of students from across Europe and the southern Mediterranean and included Germany, Italy, Ireland, and other Erasmus students, France, Syria, Palestine, Tunisia and more. Marta says her students were very inspired by the exchanges they experienced with the other participants.
“The main takeaway for my students was the realisation that they need to work together to begin to address the issue of climate change. In Ireland, these facts are not so visible compared with the situation in other countries. In this way, they realised the importance of working together for a better future. This idea of global collaboration is vitally important .”
One of her student’s testimonials says: “This experience has transformed the way I see the world and now I understand the importance of working together to address the issues of climate change.”
A few tweaks along the way
Marta explains how the work load proved a little challenging at times. “We had to make some changes to accommodate the requirements as the weekly 2-hour commitment was quite heavy. We ended up adapting our own module to accommodate it by reducing the amount of lectures for example….it was well worth the effort though.”
Next autumn, hundreds more students will participate in another iteration of the CliVEx project and despite the challenges and the tweaks needed to make it work, Marta says her students love interacting with their peers from around the world as this is a very enriching experience for them.
“For me, she says, ’it was great to see how transformative this virtual exchange is for my students. The project really connects to the UNSDGs and in particular number 13 on Climate Action, because it’s the biggest issue we have to deal with today, but it’s also a great educational opportunity for my students.”