Design-based research as a framework for developing and deploying augmented reality applications and scenarios for intercultural exchange

This paper delves into the underlying phases involved in designing, developing, and deploying Augmented Reality (AR) applications and game-based scenarios that will be implemented during intercultural exchanges among students in two different academic institutions in Sweden and Cyprus. Building on principles of design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004; Klopfer & Squire, 2008), the aim is to expand the learning ecology by leveraging instructional tools and developing novel scenarios to broaden the trajectories of collaboration, intercultural understanding and communication, and cultural knowledge. The AR applications and scenarios are in the process of being developed as part of the Digital Methods Platform for Arts and Humanities (DiMPAH) project, where game-based activities will foster intercultural collaboration, exploration of cultural heritage sites, intercultural understanding, knowledge, and interaction. Adopting a bottom-up approach, instructors collaborate with a software developer and an extended research team to design pedagogically and culturally potent scenarios embedded in novel technologies that bring the virtual into the physical world.

Music Endangerment, Repatriation, and Intercultural Collaboration in an Australian Discomfort Zone

To the extent that intercultural ethnomusicology in the Australian settler state operates on a colonialist stage, research that perpetuates a procedure of discovery, recording, and offsite archiving, analysis, and interpretation risks repeating a form of musical colonialism with which ethnomusicology worldwide is inextricably tied. While these research methods continue to play an important role in contemporary intercultural ethnomusicological research, ethnomusicologists in Australia in recent years have become increasingly concerned to make their research available to cultural heritage communities. Cultural heritage communities are also leading discovery, identification, recording, and dissemination to support, revive, reinvent, and sustain their practices and knowledges. Repatriation is now almost ubiquitous in ethnomusicological approaches to Aboriginal music in Australia as researchers and collaborating communities seek to harness research to respond to the impact that colonialism has had on social and emotional well-being, education, the environment, and the health of performance traditions. However, the hand-to-hand transaction of research products and represented knowledge from performers to researcher and archive back to performers opens a new field of complexities and ambiguities for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants: just like earlier forms of ethnomusicology, the introduction, return, and repatriation of research materials operate in “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination” (Pratt 2007 [1992]). In this chapter, we recount the processes and outcomes of “The Junba Project” located in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. Framed by a participatory action research model, the project has emphasized responsiveness, iteration, and collaborative reflection, with an aim to identify strategies to sustain endangered Junba dance-song practices through recording, repatriation, and dissemination. We draw on Pratt’s notion of the “contact zone” as a “discomfort zone” (Somerville & Perkins 2003) and look upon an applied/advocacy ethnomusicological project as an opportunity for difference and dialogue in the repatriation process to support heterogeneous research agendas.

The Politics of Intercultural Collaboration in Higher Music Education: Challenges Seen from a Leadership Point of View

Internationally, various mandates and policy directives require higher music education institutions to engage in intercultural collaboration. These include fulfilling national policy demands for internationalization in higher education, providing students with experience of working internationally to increase their employability, and conducting proper diversity management so as to facilitate diversity-conscious and responsible interaction with employees, students, and the broader educational community. In this chapter, the topic of intercultural collaboration in higher music education is approached from a different starting point, asking what, from a leadership point of view, creates obstacles to such collaboration and what makes it challenging or difficult either at the levels of individual participants, administrators, or the institution. Twelve leadership representatives from three different institutions of higher music education were interviewed about their experiences with intercultural collaboration and the benefits and challenges of engaging in such interactions. From the interviewees’ experiences, their work of attempting to govern or manage situations of complex intercultural interaction while simultaneously negotiating between the different interests expressed within the frames of their respective institutions featured prominently in the empirical material. In this chapter, these negotiations and deliberations are theorized and discussed attending to perspectives borrowed from literature on intercultural competences, leadership in higher education, and new managerialism.

One World, One Purdue: Implementing Successful Intercultural Collaboration at Purdue University

Collaboration is vital to promote international understanding, raise cultural awareness and competency, and cultivate an environment of vibrant inclusion. A successful example of this intercultural collaboration is One World, One Purdue (OWOP), a series of events organized every November to support International Education Week (IEW). OWOP was conceptualized by the International Student Peer Coaching (ISPC) Program and the Global Engineering Programs and Partnerships (GEPP) of the College of Engineering in 2017, and expanded in 2019 with the participation of Cultural Catalysts, Purdue Fulbright Association (PFA), and the Environmental and Ecological Engineering Graduate Student Organization. Planning for OWOP 2019 began with the realization that many organizations, especially cultural organizations, work independently in silos creating, at times, repetitive or conflicting events. We made this observation by documenting all the cultural events at Purdue every week for posting in the Cultural Catalysts (now OWOP) Facebook page and attending most of them. OWOP’s first role was to bring all these organizations into one common classroom and enable them to believe in a common goal of cultural celebration. While OWOP is a vision shared by organizations whose missions are to celebrate culture, OWOP 2019 was a year-long effort to achieve that vision. Many initiatives were made possible through the team’s personal networks, resources, and collaboration. As a testament to its success, OWOP 2019 was named Co-Sponsorship/Collaboration of the Year, awarded to a collective effort for the betterment of campus, students and Purdue University by Purdue Student Life and the Student Activities and Organizations Office. One of the key reasons for the success of OWOP 2019 is its collaborative efforts. The OWOP 2019 organizing committee quickly realized that to provide undergrads with maximum cultural exposure during a short time, OWOP would need the help of cultural organizations and programs on campus. The OWOP organizing committee worked with over 50 student groups and programs on campus to help organize their own event during the OWOP timeline. OWOP 2019’s calendar featured close to 100 events throughout the weeks of November. Organizations reported that through collaboration with OWOP’s marketing team, events saw a diversification of the demographics of their audience. With limited funding, OWOP was able to bring in a large attendance throughout the events. At the same time, OWOP 2019 relied heavily on the core organizers and partners to spread the word and organize events. While this meant an over-stress especially on the core group, the enthusiasm of the group to push forward its objectives of increasing cultural competency and inclusion among students made the pilot university-wide celebration perform beyond what was expected. If we are to institutionalize OWOP, we must ensure that it is properly funded every year. We also noticed that most of the attendees of these cultural events are international students and the goal for the next OWOP is to increase the attendance of domestic students through stronger promotions and more collaborations.

Formation of the competencies of future teacher-speech therapists in the field of intercultural communication

This article discusses topical issues of future speech therapists’ training in terms of a competence approach. Special attention is paid to formation of universal competences of future teachers in the field of intercultural collaboration. Current bachelor training curricula of specialized (speech pathology) education of speech therapy major 44.03.03 have been analyzed regarding formation of competences of future speech therapists in the field of intercultural communication. Efficient intercultural communication does not emerge spontaneously, it should be consistently developed. Modern life calls for mastering the skills of such communication. At present, special attention is paid to formation of universal competences in future speech pathologists, especially aimed at intercultural collaboration. It is believed that a speech therapist possessing such competences will be able to perceive cultural diversity of society in social, historical, and philosophical contexts. This article analyzes the experimental study of development level of future speech therapists’ general cultural competences. Junior and senior students from the Department of speech therapy, Institute of special education and psychology, Moscow City University took part in this research. The main experimental method was a survey of students. Particular attention was paid to the issues of formation of speech culture of speech therapists and the possibility to apply knowledge acquired during studies of a humanitarian module in professional activities of cultural and educational type. The main results of the analysis are a proven opportunity of updating theoretical knowledge of speech therapists in the field of intercultural communication acquired during studies of humanitarian, psychological, pedagogical and professional sections using interactive approaches to teacher activities.

Literarische Interkulturalität kommentieren: Die mehrsprachige Lyrikübertragung in Sandscript von José F. A. Oliver und Marc James Mueller

This article presents the poetry collection Sandscript (2018) by José Francisco Agüera Oliver translated and commentated by Marc James Mueller. In this edition the textual presence of multilingualism, using parallel bilingual poetry, is historicized by the footnotes and the individual commentaries on translation strategies, historical references and word explications. Sandscript deals with the phenomenon that the commentary is dedicated to a text of its own time created through the editorial teamwork between author and translator. Focus is put on to the question of how this edition is presented and to what extent traditions of commentary cultures can be reconstructed in this edition, published in 2018. In addition, the article aims to present a perspective for editorial and intercultural collaboration.