TIEF Virtual Exchange Grant Application

Overview

The Virtual Exchange Grant (formerly COIL Grant) provides direct support for faculty/staff at TIEC member institutions who design and facilitate new virtual international collaborations for undergraduate/graduate students.


In collaboration with your faculty partner abroad, you will use best practices in Virtual Exchange or COIL design and student engagement to connect students from each institution through technology.


Virtual Exchange Activities should:


- Support regular course objectives while also enabling students to examine topics from varied cultural and societal perspectives.


- Use technology, synchronously or asynchronously, to support goals of student learning.


-Include a strong connection to two or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the details of which can be found here: https://sdgs.un.org/goals


- Endure for a period of at least four weeks.


Because of the complexity and nature of Virtual Exchange programs, this grant allows recipients up to six months for joint planning and design of the course prior to classroom implementation. The funds are budgeted per faculty pair and preference is given to proposals that incorporate faculty from at least one Texas and one affiliate institution.


TIEC operating council members at each institution have a directory of contacts at all TIEC institutions, and TIEC will also offer introductions, if needed, during the proposal development process. TIEC will assist both Texas and affiliate members seeking to initiate relationships within the consortium.


The funds will be disbursed as an overload payment in compensation for time developing and implementing Virtual Exchange activities. If a course is co-taught within one institution, the award for that institution may be split between the faculty members. As stated above, the award is intended to be shared between faculty at the partner institutions, but a singular institution’s share may also be divided between more than one faculty, as appropriate. Recipients will have the option to choose between receiving the funds directly, or having the funds distributed through their institution in the form of a grant, gift, or donation.


Please only submit one application per faculty member, including applications in other grant categories. If one faculty member submits applications for multiple grants (ie, a Study Abroad Grant and and Internationalization Grant), only one application will be considered at the discretion of TIEC and the 2025 Grant Review Committee.


The application deadline for this grant is May 31st, 2025, for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 courses. Please fill out the application below to be considered for this opportunity.


For more information about the application details and evaluation rubric, please click here.


Selected participants will be invited to complete TIEC’s Virtual Exchange Academy (4 weeks, 4 hours per week).


TIEC reserves the right to deny items in the budget that they deem as an improper use of funds.

You will be asked to upload a brief CV (2-3 pages Word or PDF) at the end of this application. Failure to do so will disqualify your application. Do you understand?*

Please write N/A if undetermined.

Briefly describe the course and course objectives.

If your course already contains global elements or content, please describe the content, and explain how incorporating Virtual Exchange activities will introduce or reinforce global content in the course.

Select Term Course Will be Taught:*
Course is Intended for:*
Have you taught this course before?*

If you have taught this course before, please list the average number of students enrolled in past course offerings. Please write N/A if undetermined.

Please write "N/A" if undetermined.

Please write "N/A" if undetermined.

Please write "N/A" if undetermined.

Please write "N/A" if undetermined.

Please write "N/A" if undetermined.

Briefly describe any previous engagement with the partner institution or faculty member.

Virtual Exchange Description

The Virtual Exchange component may be incorporated throughout the entire course or over some weeks within the course. Effective Virtual Exchange collaborations have four primary components.


Please describe the planned Virtual Exchange activities to take place during the course. We understand that your course is in development and that details and plans may shift, but please be as specific as possible at this stage.

Through introductory activities and icebreakers, students across courses build a foundation for personal connections. Describe what kinds of team-building you plan.

Students get to know each other and learn through shared assignments, readings, lectures, and discussions. Describe what kinds of shared activities you plan.

Students apply knowledge and work together to produce a shared project. Describe the collaborative project(s) you plan.

Students reflect on their experiences, creating new knowledge about themselves, others, and the world. Describe what kinds of reflection components you plan.

Please provide an estimate on how many contact hours students will have with students at the partner institution. This includes synchronous and asynchronous activities, inside and outside of the classroom (i.e., group discussions in class, interacting via message boards or blog posts, and working together on group projects).

At TIEC, we challenge ourselves to always consider the purpose of our activities and the beneficiaries of them. To that end, we ground ourselves in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and aim to contribute to solving these global challenges through our international education activities. The Sustainable Development Goals provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for all countries and go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth, which fits perfectly with TIEC mission to increase internationalization of higher education. Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your proposal support? How?


*The details of UNSDG can be found here. https://sdgs.un.org/goals

Please provide any additional clarification.


For example:


- If there is a language difference with students at the partner institution, how will this be managed to ensure cross-cultural student engagement?


- If there is a large difference in the number of students enrolled at your course compared to the partner course, how will this be mitigated?


-If there is a large time or scheduling difference, how will this be managed to still allow for student engagement with peers and instructors at the partner institution?


-Do you anticipate any other cultural differences that may cause difficulty? If so, how do you plan to address these additional changes?

Please Upload a Brief CV (2-3 pages Word or PDF):

Drag and drop files here or

THANK YOU

Thank you for your application! If we have any questions during the review process, we will contact you directly.

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