Dr. Rita Koris is an assistant professor of international business communication in the Institute of International and Political Sciences at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University of Budapest, Hungary. Her research and teaching focus on business communication trends and practices in Europe and on how to connect education and real-life businesses into collaborative projects. Her interest also lies in new ways and methods of teaching, including the application of online collaborative projects, virtual exchange and virtual mobility in her courses. Continue reading Teaching in Hungary amidst COVID-19

Dr. Sonia Vandepitte is a full professor at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, director of the Master of Translation programme and head of the English section. She teaches English, translation studies, translation into and from Dutch and has experience with coaching student translation companies. Publication topics include metonymic expressions in translation, translation competences, international translation training projects and translation and post-editing processes. She is currently involved in reading and translation processes of translation problem-solving. She is also investigating peer feedback and other collaborative forms of learning in translation training. Continue reading Teaching in Belgium amidst COVID-19

On a Friday afternoon, three days away from the start of the new semester, the state board of education informed us that the university would be shutting down and all courses would go online for at least the next five weeks. Suddenly colleagues, for whom online instruction meant uploading files to the university LMS, were faced with having to go completely digital. There was a scramble for Zoom tutorials, our IT department was flooded with so many requests they had to adopt a ticket system, and colleagues who were more computer savvy were suddenly in high demand. Within two weeks, professors, adjuncts and administrators were entirely online. And so were their students. Continue reading Teaching Virtual Teams Projects in Germany amidst COVID-19