Presentation given as part of University of East Anglia Public lecture series. https://twitter.com/Languages_UEA/status/1495732386784583683

1. Communication in the 21st century:
Tools for fools?
Teresa MacKinnon
@warwicklanguage

2. Go to:
menti.com
Use code 5567 0631

3. What is Virtual Exchange?
● Technology-enabled people-to-people dialogues sustained over a
period of time
● Use of new media platforms to enable deep, interactive social learning
● Interactions are facilitated to ensure they are meaningful
● Developed over 30 years from experience in the field of educational
exchange and study abroad
● Prepares, deepens, and extends physical exchanges, and fuels new
demand for physical exchange.

4. UNICollaboration: Who are we?
● cross-disciplinary professional organisation for telecollaboration and Virtual
Exchange (VE) in Higher Education, launched at the Second Conference on
Telecollaboration in Higher Education at Trinity College, Dublin in April 2016.
Aimed at:
● promoting development and integration of research and practice in
telecollaboration and VE across all disciplines and subject areas in Higher
Education
● actively engaging in awareness raising of telecollaboration and VE at
institutional and policy making level
UNICollaboration

5. A question of terminology
● Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) (Rubin & Guth 2015)
● Telecollaboration (O’Dowd 2006, Dooly, 2008; Guth & Helm, 2010 )
● Globally networked learning (Starke-Meyerring and Wilson 2008)
● Collaboratories (Wulf, 1989; Cogburn 2003)
● Online international/intercultural exchange (O’Dowd, 2007; O’Dowd &
Lewis, 2016)
● Virtual Exchange (Exchange 2.0 coalition; the Stevens Initiative;
European Commission 2017)

6. Virtual Mobility vs Virtual Exchange
Virtual mobility “the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to
obtain the same benefits as one would have with physical mobility but without the
need to travel” (Bijnens, Boussemaere, & Rajagopal, 2006, 20 p. 5) and focuses on
the cooperation of educational institutions as well as the recognition of
achievements.
“Virtual exchange [...] is centred on the interaction and communication of
geographically separated participants (Virtual Exchange Coalition, 2019). Instead of
access to educational offers of cross-border universities, the focus is clearly on
exchange, competence building, and interaction in small groups (European
Commission, 2018).
Sarah Guth, workshop for Hochschule Trier International, July 21-22, 2020
Sarah Guth, workshop for Hochschule Trier International, July 21-22, 2020

7. Aims of Virtual Exchange
● To allow an increasing number of people to have a meaningful
intercultural experience as part of their formal and/or non-
formal education
● To increase mutual understanding, global citizenship, and
digital literacies in courses across the curriculum
● To develop employability skills such as digital competence
(the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively online),
foreign language and communication skills, media literacy, the
ability to work in a diverse cultural context and team work

8. Why Virtual Exchange (1)
“Through this project I was able to meet new people with whom I could exchange
ideas and opinions. … The subject chosen for this project allowed me, as a
Romanian history student, to see another side of the discourse regarding these
events and made me realize that such controversial events can’t be analyzed just
from one perspective ... VE also helped me to refine my teamwork skills, but also
my time and task management capabilities.”

9. Why Virtual Exchange (2)
“It is amazing that we all can share our opinions at the same time about the same topic. It
really opened my eyes because there are people from a lot of countries who made me
realise that my point of view is not the only one. I see the world from a Western Europe
person point of view, and that is definitely not the only perspective. I could see that each
country has a very different way of thinking than me.”
“Since I was young I have always dreamed to go abroad, see the world and meet foreign
cultures. I could never afford or participate in Erasmus mobility, but thank to this I
succeeded in getting in touch with people around the world who I shared my ideas and
my thoughts with.”

10. https://journal.unicollaboration.org/
Aims and Format:
● Practitioners and researchers in Virtual Exchange/Telecollaboration
● Online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal
● Interdisciplinary
● Research Articles
● Practice Reports
● Keynote Articles
● Published on a rolling basis
● Volumes correspond to calendar years
The Journal of Virtual Exchange: JVE

11. Recognition of virtual exchange
● Pathways to
successful virtual
exchange
● Recognition of the
necessary skills

12. Beware of the tools!
● Ed-tech history bound up with a behaviourist approach to teaching and
learning.
● “central purpose of reducing education to a science” - in the name of
efficiency.
● Focus on testing: “meant to ensure that the content, administration and
scoring of tests were objective - something that the largely male profession of
psychology seemed to doubt that the largely female ranks of schoolteachers
could ever be without their scientific intervention”
● Tension between commercial and public good: eg. reducing costs, controlling
ownership and shaping discourse .
● “Personalized learning” Chunking and branching: had origins in teaching
machine development, learner has little agency, paths are predetermined.

13. History of edtech...
● Lack of scientific rigour and transparency
● Reductionist, no room for individual difference
● Reinforces rather than reduces inequity
● Evidence of misogyny and racism
● Influenced by ideas of eugenics
● Connected to economic and military agenda eg.
industrialisation, space race

14. Professional development and digital skills
“The professional isolation of teachers may well be relegated to the history books,
if they learn how to use the potential for networking, which ICTs offer.” (UNESCO
report 2004)
● Social media and open practice
● Open mindset and interdisciplinary activity
● Critical digital literacy

15. “The pandemic has made visible what should never have been ignored”
Laura Czerniewicz - Letting the light into Higher Education
https://czernie.weebly.com/blog/letting-the-light-into-higher-education
Critical digital literacy:

16. Learning from research in DE:
“The application and use of educational technology, media and tools provided a
means to develop learning content in various presentation modes, and to facilitate
synchronous and asynchronous interaction between students and teachers, as well
as among students, in order to support collaborative learning.”
Bozurt and Zawacki-Richter

17. Future thoughts...
“If we are concerned to create educational practices that work towards
the common good and towards sustainable futures, then our first
concern must be to attend to the causes of existing injustices,
individualisation and unsustainability and to proceed from there. While
digital technology can be an adjunct to this wider work, digital
technology alone is not capable of creating sustainable educational
futures.”
(Facer & Selwyn 2021)

18. “...the future belongs to those who learn to work together with
other groups without regard to location, heritage, and national
and cultural difference” (Grandin & Hedderich, 2009)

19. Go to:
menti.com
Use code 5567 0631

20. Read more:
Trends and Patterns in Distance Education (2014–2019): A Synthesis of Scholarly
Publications and a Visualization of the Intellectual Landscape Bozkurt and Zawacki-
Richter. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/5381
Letting the light into higher education. Laura Czerniewicz
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210813064100898
Teaching Machines. Audrey Watters. Available
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/teaching-machines
Further resources: https://www.thinglink.com/card/1553061187002826753