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

Aquinas and Rikkyo virtual exchange - click here

AGU and HDU virtual exchange - click here

Special information:

The Stevens Initiative wants your help capturing data on global virtual exchange programs that took place from fall 2021 through summer 2022. Respond to their 2022 Survey of the Virtual Exchange Field to share more about your virtual exchange program. The survey closes on September 15, 2022, and all questions can be directed to stevensinitiative.survey@gmail.com. Read more about the survey and how you can participate here. The 2022 Survey of the Virtual Exchange Field is supported by the Bezos Family Foundation.


Our 4th Biennial conference took place on the 4th and 5th of December 2021. The conference was a fully online conference due to Covid. Please click here for more information on the conference. The presenters' slides can be seen here.

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 (VE) 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." It goes on to state that the "practice is also known as Collaborative online International Learning (COIL) and Globally Networked Learning (GNL)" which may have been the case when the paper was written in 2014, however now it is generally accepted that COIL (and GNL) is very different to VE, as COIL focuses on students' majors and areas of study and intercultural understanding being a "bonus", whereas VE has the development of intercultural understanding as the focus of the study and is generally a part of foreign language learning or culture studies.

APVEA aims to promote VE 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 was held online due to the pandemic. We hope to have it face-to-face on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia in 2023.

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