Virtual Exchange Project: European Perspectives 2025-26

Our Virtual Exchange Project was carried out during the winter semester 2025/26 and it brought students from four European universities in Germany, Spain, Slovenia, and Ukraine into a shared online learning environment. Using English as a lingua franca, we engaged in meaningful intercultural dialogue and collaborated in small international working groups. The project created opportunities for students from diverse academic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds to exchange ideas and develop a deeper understanding of contemporary European issues.

Throughout the project, 14 international groups, consisting of students from the University of León (Spain), the University of Munich (LMU, Germany), the University of Primorska (Slovenia), and the National Technical University of Ukraine in Kyiv (Ukraine), explored shared European challenges from multiple national and personal perspectives. This collaborative format enabled in-depth cross-cultural comparison, critical reflection, and mutual learning across different social and cultural contexts.

The topics addressed by the groups included gender equality, mental health, digital privacy and data protection, affordable housing, language and integration, environmental sustainability, digital well-being, cultural heritage in the digital age, and responsible technology use. These issues are highly relevant across Europe and provided a meaningful basis for intercultural discussion, collaborative problem- solving, and the exchange of diverse viewpoints. Working closely with students from different national and cultural backgrounds allowed us to compare perspectives, question our own assumptions, and gain a deeper understanding of how these challenges are experienced and interpreted in different European contexts.

Based on the research conducted by each group, we transformed our insights into concrete products, such as videos, podcasts, posters, and presentation slides. These formats encouraged creative engagement with the topics and helped make our research accessible to a wider audience and raise awareness of the issues addressed. Students from the University of Munich (LMU, Germany), including my classmates and myself, also presented our research findings and project outcomes at an on-campus event. This presentation provided an additional opportunity to discuss our work with an academic audience, receive feedback, and reflect on the learning process.

Overall, the Virtual Exchange Project fostered intercultural awareness, collaborative and digital communication skills, and confidence in using English in an international academic setting. It also demonstrated the potential of virtual exchange formats as effective tools for addressing European challenges and promoting cross-cultural learning in a digitally connected learning environment.

As the project aimed to give students a voice, this article was written by Weihang Lin, one of its participants.

Project outcomes

Find the project outcomes (e.g. posters, podcasts, presentations and policy reports) collected in a digital book here:

European Perspectives 2025-26 (all contents)

PDF of the book (in case the multimodal version cannot be accessed):

European Perspectives (PDF)

Project instructors

Robert O’Dowd (University of León, Spain), Petra Rauschert (University of Munich, Germany), Yuliana Lavrysh (Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine), Marina Peršurić Antonić (University of Primorska, Slovenia)