The Erasmus+ CLUVEX project (https://www.atm.helsinki.fi/cluvex) started in July of 2023, is making now a series of preparatory steps for Virtual Exchanges (VE) or so-called the VE Weeks for students from the CLUVEX Partners’ Universities (Yerevan State University, Armenia; Odessa State Environmental University and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine; University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and University of Helsinki, Finland). In total, staring autumn 2024 and until the end of the project, five VE Weeks will be organized and carried out online as educational and training events for students who will become the Climate Messengers.

For each VE Week (with a duration of 5 days, up to 3 h per day) about 500 students will work online: listening a series of lectures (on climate change, air quality, impact on society, weather and extreme events, etc. topics), learning demonstration of tools for data (past-present-future) visualization and analysis, jointly working in international groups/teams on practical Group Exercise called “Utopia”, presenting of developed outcomes of the “Utopia“ exercise, and awarding CLUVEX project certificates (corresponding to 1 ECTS, issued by the University of Helsinki).

The online work in groups will be led by moderators. In general, they are interested lecturers, researchers, advanced level students, expert persons, etc. from the above-mentioned Universities and the Bioart Society (https://bioartsociety.fi) network. These persons will be educated by professionals/ experts during spring-summer 2024. The moderators’ education will include online trainings on the CLUVEX VE concept and technical skills, Climate University (https://climateuniversity.fi) massive open online courses (MOOCs), soft skills, CLUVEX developed handbooks and materials, CLUVEX Group Exercise “Utopia”. Currently there are several working materials in preparation for planned VEs, and these include handbooks – the Virtual Exchange Guidebook (VEG), the Climate Literacy Guidebook (CLG), and the Climate Messenger Code of Conduct (CMC), as well as the Group Exercise “Utopia”. Soon, such materials will be publicly available at the CLUVEX website.

Moreover, the CLUVEX project will be also presented at the upcoming European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2024 (https://www.egu24.eu; 14-19 Apr 2024, Vienna, Austria). The talk is entitled “CLUVEX – Climate University for Virtual Exchanges” (https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-15348.html), and it will be delivered at the session EOS2.1 “Open session on Teaching & Learning in Higher Education” (https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/session/49292).

Text by: Maria Dominguez, Hanna K. Lappalainen, Alexander Mahura, University of Helsinki