The multi-disciplinary approach to an interdisciplinary virtual exchange

New communication technologies are changing the way we work and communicate with people around the world. Given this reality, students in Higher Education (HE) worldwide need to develop knowledge in their area of study as well as attitudes and values that will enable them to be responsible and ethical global citizens in the workforce they will soon enter, regardless of the degree. Different institutional and country-specific requirements are important factors when developing an international Virtual Exchange (VE) program. Digital learning environments such as ProGlobe – Promoting the Global Exchange of Ideas on Sustainable Goals, Practices, and Cultural Diversity – offer a platform for collaborating with diverse students around the world to share and reflect on ideas on sustainable practices. Students work together virtually on a joint interdisciplinary project that aims to create knowledge and foster cultural diversity. This project was successfully integrated into each country’s course syllabus through a common global theme; sustainability. The focus of this paper is to present multi-disciplinary perspectives on the opportunities and challenges in implementing a VE project in HE. Furthermore, it will present the challenges that country coordinators dealt with when planning and implementing their project. Given the disparity found in each course syllabus, project coordinators uniquely handled the project goal, approach, and assessment for their specific course and program. Not only did the students and faculty gain valuable insight into different aspects of collaboration when working in interdisciplinary HE projects, they also reflected on their own impact on the environment and learned to listen to how people in different countries deal with environmental issues. This approach provided students with meaningful intercultural experiences that helped them link ideas and concepts about a global issue through the lens of their own discipline as well as other disciplines worldwide.

Virtual exchange facilitated by interactive, digital, cultural artefacts: communities, languages, and activities app (ENACT)

This chapter is based on a workshop at IVEC 2020 which presented a model of Virtual Exchange (VE) facilitated by interactive, digital, and cultural artefacts created using a progressive web app developed by the EU-funded ENACT project team. The model offers an innovative approach to online intercultural exchange through the opportunity to create, share, appropriate, and re-create cultural artefacts. Drawing on Thorne’s (2016) concept of cultural artefacts, the app is designed to enable artefacts as catalysts for intercultural exchange while “artifacts and humans together create particular morphologies of action” (p. 189). The ENACT project aims to develop Open Educational Resources (OER) that will foster intergenerational and intercultural understanding within and between communities; promote opportunities for intergenerational, intercultural interaction; and offer a real-world, immersive learning experience that brings culture to life. The web app is built on the well-established H5P.org interactive media engine tailored for the creation of, and engagement with interactive digital media for task-based exchange of cultural activities promoting linguistic, digital, and intercultural communication skills development. This chapter outlines how the ENACT app can be implemented in VE at higher education to facilitate deeper, immersive, virtual intercultural exchange experiences that go beyond talking about culture and that offer hands-on cultural experiences based on learning by doing to ensure equitable experiences to all students.

Continuous professional development on virtual exchange in Europe: insights from the Erasmus+ VE introductory online course

This presentation focuses on the Erasmus+ online introductory training course, which aims to introduce university educators and administrative/technical staff to Virtual Exchange (VE). The training, which requires no previous experience with VE, engages the participants in tasks that help them understand the requirements to successfully integrate an Erasmus+ VE project into existing courses and curricula, while gaining experience in digital literacy, including communicating and collaborating online. After a brief presentation of the structure of the four-week course, we will show how the design of the course – based on an experiential learning approach – elicited reflections and discussions on pedagogical and technological issues crucial to successful VE projects. Finally, we will show how forum interactions between teaching and administrative staff helped all the participants understand the pedagogical, technological, and administrative implications of setting up VE projects, and identify the necessary steps to engage the different stakeholders (teachers, administrative and technical staff, top management, and students) within their institutions. The overall evaluation of all training courses was highly positive: respondents reported discovering that the course boosted their confidence in communicating or working in a culturally diverse setting. They also felt that the training helped them develop their intercultural awareness, digital competences, active listening, communication skills, and acquire ideas for new teaching practices.

Compensatory strategies adopted by Chinese EFL learners in virtual exchange with native speakers

Compensatory strategies play an important role in second language (L2) processing because of limited language knowledge and ensuing anxiety and could help assure understanding and void communication breakdown. Previous studies about compensatory strategies largely adopt laboratory settings and neglect the strategies in authentic oral communication. Accordingly, the present study investigated compensatory strategies used by Chinese university students in online videoconferences with their US peers during a five-week virtual exchange project. We interviewed 27 Chinese students twice, once after the first-week videoconference, the other after the last-week videoconference. The English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in this study could adopt compensatory strategies of different levels. Their strategy use, however, was not flexible enough as several types of strategies were repeatedly used, while other types were rarely implemented. The virtual exchange could help the EFL learners employ compensatory strategies more often, of higher levels, and with increased immediacy. The results can help to establish more targeted English teaching and learning.

Supporting intercultural communication with visual information in virtual exchanges: when a picture paints a thousand words

Virtual exchanges (VEs) based on synchronous video communication allow learners to benefit from online intercultural experiences with a high degree of interactivity (Wang, 2004). Video conferencing tools allow synchronous audio-visual and non-verbal communication as in Face-To-Face (FTF) situations (Kock, 2005), although synchronous video communication differs from FTF communication because participants are not in the same physical space during interactions. However, technological restrictions during interaction can be compensated by media users as they adapt their communication behaviour (Walsh, 2018). This is the case of the present study which analyses the use of the video camera by learners to support oral communication with the visual information present in their physical spaces. For this purpose, 50 video-recorded intercultural activities carried out by 30 pairs of undergraduate students in Spain, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States were analysed through observation techniques. Results show how Visual Supported Actions (VSAs) are a new digital non-verbal communication which supports intercultural communication in the Foreign Language (FL), blurring the contextual physical restrictions of video conferences. Moreover, the study shows that VSAs are a new way of online Self-Disclosure (SD), a process of communication through which one person reveals information about themselves to another (Sprecher et al., 2013).

Virtual exchange: from students’ expectations to perceived outcomes

What do students expect before starting a Virtual Exchange (VE) with peers? Are their initial expectations mirrored in the final outcomes they perceive after the VE experience? Or, else, do students acknowledge benefits and acquired skills which they did not expect at first? This study draws on qualitative and quantitative data collected across a variety of VE settings within the Erasmus+ EVOLVE project (16 VEs and 248 students in total). In a mixed-methods approach, it confronts students’ expectations and perceived outcomes in order to outline the learning potential of VE, beyond the specific learning objectives set in the different Higher Educational (HE) courses in which a VE was implemented. It brings to light that the overlap between students’ expectations and the benefits they see is only partial. The declared outcomes deviate more from the course learning objectives than the initial expectations do, and they are, unsurprisingly, more nuanced and manifold. Expectations of intercultural and language practice and skills development are more often aligned with outcomes voiced by students than is the case for digital and disciplinary skills. What stands out is a great occurrence of transferable skills in the outcomes, including collaborative, relational, and communicative skills that are not always promoted in the course objectives.

Educational innovation in times of crisis: learner voices from the Albany-Caracas COIL exchange

In the digital era, where everything seems to move at the speed of light, unfortunately certain regions and countries are limited by economic, political, social, or cultural circumstances, as is the case for Venezuela. New technologies are particularly fundamental in the educational field, and every day Venezuelan students need to deal with the second worst Internet in the world (according to a study conducted by Speedtest in 2019), sporadic blackouts, a hyperinflation that makes almost impossible to upgrade equipment, and all the stress and trauma that come along. Despite these challenges, at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), ranked number one in the country, a class of communications students were assigned a crucial task: take a joint 100% online Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) program with students from the State University of New York (SUNY) located in Albany, United States. The final product was a meta-documentary, while the real outcome was an enriching cross-cultural experience. This chapter complements Jiménez and Kressner’s (this volume) chapter, and presents the learner voice from UCAB.

Creating a prototype for a seawater farm through an American-Tunisian virtual exchange

This paper will discuss a Virtual Exchange (VE) between the University of Michigan (USA) and the High Institute of Technological Studies of Béja (Tunisia) that took place between October and December 2019. Students from Tunisia and USA were enrolled in two entrepreneurship courses in their respective universities and joined together to work in groups on an innovative project on ‘creating a prototype for a seawater farm in the region of Khniss’ to be presented at the end of the semester. As this project was student-centered, the main focus was to show its impact on the students through their testimonials on what challenges they encountered and what benefits they gained from this experience at an academic and personal level. These testimonials showed that despite differences in intercultural communication competencies between American and Tunisian students and the use of English as a lingua franca, students gained valuable skills in team communication, collaboration, and coordination in a large team spread over two continents. Students taught each other and learned from each other while working toward solving a social and environmental problem the world is struggling with. Another light was shed on the impact of this VE on the instructors, the pedagogy adopted to conduct the project, as well as the contribution of the instructional support staff. Moving from a directive to a student-driven approach was rewarding for the Tunisian instructor who learned how to push students out of their comfort zone, dive into uncertain areas, and ask questions rather than accepting the norms. On his part the American instructor learned that it is possible to create meaningful, unconventional student-led projects across languages, cultures, and geography as long as the teams (students and faculty) are excited and committed to the project. He also learned that students get inspired to be brave, thoughtful, and resourceful when they can witness what effective professional collaboration by faculty looks like.

Building empathy through a comparative study of popular cultures in Caracas, Venezuela, and Albany, United States

During our six-week Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) module (Oct.-Nov. 2019), 58 students jointly developed task-based projects on expressions of popular culture in Albany (USA) and Caracas (Venezuela). In teams of seven to eight participants, learners from both countries reflected on variations of popular culture through assignments to be resolved in teams that included summaries and critical assessments of readings, contextualization of theoretical concepts, the drafting of a joint video script, and finally creation of a ten-minute video that focused on popular expressions in both cities. All learners were native, fluent, or near-native speakers of Spanish. We experienced the topic of popular culture to be exceptionally well poised to help students engage with each other from the beginning, represent everyday realities and build empathy and transcultural understanding through written reflections and joint creative final projects in the form of documentaries that included slices of life from the two different realities. The small-scale, everyday popular cultural productions allowed for a connection beyond cultural divides, helped students discover novel terrain within their own contexts, and vice versa, find common ground in the new context, thus fostering empathy toward transcultural awareness and equitable collaboration. In their exchange students actively created a shared ‘third’ culture of collaboration.

Making the virtual tangible: using visual thinking to enhance online transnational learning

Tangible visual thinking activities can enrich long-distance intercultural learning experiences by improving realism, respect, and equity. This occurs through the creation of boundary objects, which can be physical objects that generate shared understanding across diverse teams and disciplinary boundaries. In the case of this study, visual thinking activities produce boundary objects in the form of visual creations – such as sketches, photographs, collages, and data visualizations. Used strategically in conjunction with Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) curricula in any academic discipline, these activities cultivate self-reflection, communication, mutual understanding, cultural learning, and cooperative work. The benefits of visual thinking enrich and enhance transnational learning, as illustrated and observed in the course of the authors’ ongoing nine-year study of Virtual Exchanges (VEs) between learners situated in the Middle East and North America. The visual thinking activities in this study complement and work in parallel with COIL curricula or existing courses that instructors have already planned. They can also occur in conjunction with regular course activities leading up to and throughout a collaboration to enhance relationship-building and trust. Visual thinking activities offer ways for learners to understand and appreciate their collaborative partnerships beyond the screen. In the context of long-distance intercultural experiences, the tangible and tactile nature of these activities reinforces the verisimilitude of the collaboration and its participants. After completing these preliminary activities, the study findings indicate an increase in the quality of projects that students produce together.