Asia Pacific Virtual Exchange Association

From the Stevens Institute

Hello,

Our world has changed dramatically this past year, and virtual exchange has grown as a way to connect young people with their peers around the world. To capture this important moment in time, we are pleased to launch the Stevens Initiative 2021 Survey of the Virtual Exchange Field. This is the second in an annual effort to document the practice of virtual exchange from fall 2020 through summer 2021. By reporting the number and types of virtual exchanges connecting young people with their peers around the world, this effort will yield critical insights about the dynamics of virtual exchange programs and the evolution and growth of the field.

We need your help! The Initiative seeks the cooperation of all virtual exchange implementers and encourages sharing the survey across communities of practice. The survey, conducted in partnership with Rajika Bhandari Advisors, closes on September 1, 2021. You can read more about this effort, including instructions and incentives, and access the survey here. Questions can be emailed to stevensinitiative.survey@gmail.com.

Access the Survey here https://www.surveymonkey.com/.../2021-survey-of-the...

To show our appreciation for completing this survey, the Stevens Initiative will offer several opportunities to showcase your work:

Publicly release the aggregated data from the survey later this fall, including sending a report to all respondents.

Select a few programs that submit valid responses to be highlighted either in the public report or in a public webinar to discuss the survey findings in November 2021.

Acknowledge and list all participating eligible virtual exchange providers on the Initiative's website with a link to include in your promotional efforts. In 2020, our website was viewed over 128,000 times and our outreach list had over 8,000 subscribers.

Best Wishes,

The Stevens Initiative

Access the Survey here

APVEA: dedicated to bringing the students of this vast region closer together through virtual exchange.

Our 4th Biennial conference will take place on the 4th and 5th of December 2021. The conference will be a fully online conference due to Covid. Please click here for more information on the conference. To submit an abstract, you will have to create an account on this site.

APVEA promotes the IVEProject as one project that will ensure your students can participate in VE. Of course, there are many other VE that are available and the Stevens Initiative and Unicollaboration are places you can look if the IVEProject is not for you.

The position paper on virtual exchange created by the INTENT project group states that "Virtual exchanges are technology-enabled, sustained, people to people education programs. These entail the engagement of groups of students in online intercultural exchange, interaction and collaboration with peers from partner classes in geographically distant locations, under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators."

APVEA aims to promote virtual exchanges within the Asia Pacific. APVEA also wants to work with educators to improve the quality of these exchanges and research the most effective ways for them to ensure language and cultural development and understanding occurs.

The fourth biennial APVEA conference will probably be held online but if the pandemic allows, we will have it face-to-face on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Aquinas College has kindly agreed to be our venue. The choice of a high school for the venue is on purpose as Virtual Exchange needs to urgently be incorporated into high school curricular too. It is wonderful to see Aquinas using VE in their Japanese classes.

The third biennial APVEA conference finished in May 2019. The book that eventuated from that conference was recently published and can be seen here.

At the recently finished conference, the general meeting was held and it was decided that the IVEProject would be one of the projects APVEA promotes.

Asia Pacific Virtual Exchange Association

APVEA21

The conference will be fully online

Check out the book from APVEA19

From the Stevens Institute

APVEA: dedicated to bringing the students of this vast region closer together through virtual exchange.