On 6 November 2025, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., an open conference was held via the MS Teams platform, inaugurating a series of training sessions as part of the pro-quality competition organised by the AMU Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching, entitled ‘COIL – an innovative path to internationalisation in academic teaching’. The meeting was devoted to the practical path to internationalisation at home and the development of intercultural competences through online collaboration between students from various universities (Collaborative Online International Learning).
The event was attended by winners of the pro-quality competition from AMU, along with guests from universities in Poland and abroad. The conference was opened by the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching at AMU, Prof. Joanna Wójcik. The first special guest was Dr Jos Beelen from The Hague University of Applied Sciences, a prominent researcher in the field of internationalisation at home (IaH). He emphasised that Virtual Exchange (VE) and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) effectively support IaH only when they are intentionally integrated into the curriculum, scalable, and accessible to large groups of students. Subsequently, Prof. Robert O'Dowd (University of León, Spain), a distinguished researcher and practitioner of VE/COIL, presented virtual exchange as an effective tool to reach the majority of international students who do not travel abroad, while motivating physical mobility and strengthening intercultural competencies. Dr Małgorzata Kurek from Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa presented VE/COIL from three perspectives: academic, intercultural, and personal. She highlighted specific outcomes such as improved teamwork, enhanced communication, increased student autonomy, as well as new partnerships and teaching tools for faculty.
An essential component of the programme was practical examples of VE/COIL implementation at AMU – in health sciences (Dr Magdalena Durda-Masny, Faculty of Biology), in philology studies (Prof. AMU Dr Leonor Sagermann Bustinza, Dr Dominika Dziubała-Szrejbrowska, Faculty of Modern Languages) and in language teaching (Karolina Żok-Plackowska, MA, Language Centre).
The conference was organised by the AMU International Online Cooperation Research Unit (COIL HUB) (AMU COIL Hub) operating within the AMU Foreign Language Teaching Centre.