A success story from the University of Padova
Laura Orian is Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Department of Chemical Sciences at the University of Padua. She teaches physical chemistry to undergraduate students of environmental science and technology.
Moreover, she teaches computational chemistry, which is her research topic.
But’, she says, ‘I am passionate about teaching, and so I also am involved in education projects that include a course on how to teach chemistry. It’s at Masters’ level. And I love virtual exchange. Obviously!”
Integrating VE into STEM and how to make it work
Laura says her virtual exchange collaboration came about by serendipity!
During COVID, she began exploring how to improve her teaching skills during this challenging time. She also attended a training on virtual exchange to explore and deepen the experience of online teaching.
“Subsequently, I was contacted by the international office of my university, and they said there was a colleague in France who wanted to establish a virtual exchange with me”.
Laura’s initial excitement was rather short-lived, however, as the colleague turned out not to be a teacher of chemistry, as she was expecting, but a teacher of English language.
Not to be defeated, Laura began contemplating the offer and decided she would take on this challenge, considering it a great opportunity to get creative with her teaching, thereby enhancing the experience of the 15-20 students on her course who were learning how to teach chemistry.
And anyway, she says, English is the fundamental language in all scientific disciplines. So why not give it a go and establish a virtual exchange with this French professor in Bordeaux, and her students?
“And so, five years ago we began our international collaboration adventure, which I have to say, has turned out wonderfully.”
How it all panned out
Laura explains how the activity was not mandatory, but, to her great surprise, all students decided to participate!
“This was already a big achievement for me. Then it was even more challenging, because my course is in Italian and as such, nobody was expecting to have to study 10 hours of English!”
This turned out not to be a problem, as the project consisted of forming small groups of Italian and French students and giving them a chemical misconception to work on. Laura explains this is something that we all believe is correct in life. And we believe it because we think we have a chemical explanation for it. But, our chemical explanation is totally wrong. The students needed to demonstrate this in English.
“They have to develop their project by working together, and their final task was to produce a video in English.”
With her colleagues, Laura would check the chemistry contents whilst the Bordeaux partner would be checking the English language aspect including grammar, syntax and any specific language related to chemistry terminology.
“The final videos were absolutely great!”
Laura explains that the French students were science students and not language students, but the intrinsic value of doing the virtual exchange remains to enable the students to benefit from an international experience. She says chemistry happens to be the topic and a means to an end for the virtual exchange.
“I think that the important aspect is the international collaboration, the peer collaboration and the exchange – the getting something from each other.”
Impact of the VE project on STEM
Much to her delight, Laura has seen the number of students attending her course steadily climb, demonstrating its worth and how much students appreciate the opportunity to engage with their peers in France.
Despite the Teaching chemistry course in secondary schools being considered less attractive due to a high level re-organisation of teaching, the number of students wishing to learn how to teach chemistry continues to rise.
Laura says her participants can use their knowledge with creativity: for example in lecture design and they can be engaged in scientific discussions and practice English too to boot!
“This is a very positive message and a very good achievement,” she smiles.
The second positive thing that happened was that despite being on sabbatical leave last year, the French professor from Bordeaux, decided to visit Padua anyway, and carry out a series of lectures. Therefore, there has been a physical mobility aspect to complement the virtual exchange element of the course. And for Laura, this has been a way to cement the international nature of her course.
The other important satisfaction for Laura has been to see students who really disliked speaking and learning English actually dipping their toe into the virtual exchange and deciding that English is not so bad after all!
“Instead of complaining how bad their English is and how hard it is, after they interact, they start being involved in the conversation and they attend the classes. These, for me, are really strong indicators that the project is working.”
Advice to others considering taking the plunge into the world of VE and STEM
“Be prepared to explore and be creative. We need to be flexible and go a bit ‘easy’. By that, I don’t mean that we lose rigour, but we need to allow the students to discover themselves as scientists. Let them work collaboratively, let them be and allow them to be scientists.
We don’t need to offer solutions to all the problems. We should give them real problems to work on. Like proper scientists. We should enlarge the context and involve international students with different backgrounds, different ways of working and different perspectives. That’s when the real learning can begin.”
The other advice is that ground rules must be fixed before the work commences.
“This is critical to establish as we can have such different ways of working. Students need to agree to some rules. But these aren’t the rules for the Italian students, or the French students. These are the rules of the virtual exchange.
If the rules are there, says Laura, then the creativity can begin to flow and the enthusiasm will follow.
“We need to be a bit fearless!”
One final validation for Laura has been the recognition in Bordeaux of the chemistry teacher as a professor of the subject, at her institution. This has meant the virtual exchange is an officially accredited course. A great satisfaction indeed!