Blurb:

Over the past decade, there has been a growing call to adopt a more inclusive and accessible approach to international higher education (European Commission, 2022b), as many students cannot bear the expense of study abroad programs (Byram & Dervin, 2008), the intercultural experience par excellence. Virtual exchange (VE) is thought to have the potential to bring about inclusion in this regard (O’Dowd, 2023a), as it is a readily available online tool that promotes global citizenship, collaborative intercultural learning, and students’ appreciation of diversity (O’Dowd, 2023b). This chapter addresses the need to advance inclusion in international higher education, reviews the rationales for employing VE for this purpose, and outlines an interdisciplinary pre-mobility VE program that is currently underway at the University of León (ULE) in Spain. GearUp! is a lingua-franca pre-mobility VE model that offers students an intercultural experience that prepares them to become interculturally competent (Byram, 1997) and boosts their language and transversal skills. It has brought together more than 100 undergraduate students from more than 20 different countries across the globe to work collaboratively on tasks about studying abroad.