Digital Learning Tools

Our set of tools

In our first experience, we reflect about the relevance of four specific digital needs for exchange and communication: Collective message, One-to-one message, File sharing and videoconference.

For collective and file sharing, we decide for google suit, in particular Google Classroom (for the educational institutions), as well as google drive for sharing folders and materials between students.

In addition, the one-to-one communications will be performed in video by Zoom (due to its stability, multiplatform and easy-to-use design). In case of team collaboration, due to the diversity of apps for personal messaging, we recommend the use of telegram, slack or whatsapp, but it is an open selection of the international teams.

Formal courses communication will be delivered via email, which most of the institutions involved is based in a gmail platform.

Strategies for intercultural learning

Modern communication technologies offer an opportunity to innovate new ways of learning, focused on linguistic, professional and international exchange. Those skills required for heterogeneous professionals in the XXI century knowledge sensibility and production. (Eriksmo and Sundberg, 2016)

One elemental option is the exploration of text́s’ translations (or even automatic translation services), which possess limitations for linguists and cultural studies scholars. Currently, an increasing relevance of digital automated translators challenges the previous conception of language requierement in academia. (Doherty, 2016). Nevertheless, some field such History, Anthropology or Philosophy is still a requirement to learn a second or third foreign language to access the research sources. Nevertheless, most of the curriculum (particularly in English speaking countries) do not incorporate this form of knowledge in their plans, due to knowledge inbalance of academic production (Cobo, 2012).

Another institutional strategy are “Study abroad” programs, based on the principle of cultural immersion, in which students are embedded in a controlled visit to a city, country or region to elaborate research. Both of them avoid the interaction with current scholars in the field, and do not facilitate mechanism of collaboration. Both maintain a distance with “the other’s single story” which Adichamanda Adichie contests. Even if we could device the perfectly grammatical and dictionary-based translation program, or achieve the technical mastery of the language, the acknowledgment of the culturally diverse situations, values and conditions, add another layer to the challenge of truly dialoguing with the other. For this reason, decolonial and critical approaches are necessary to go beyond from simple translation to meaningful interpretation of the other as a co-constructor and co-designer of shared knowledge.

Opportunities with digital learning

In this context, Digital technologies are redefining practices and discourses in higher education. Cobo (2012, p.108) define it as a characteristic of the knowledge economy in “a new socio-economic order in which technologies are there drivers of knowledge production and application”. (Hadad, 2017) Nevertheless, this transformation has been largely propelled by hegemonic institutions in the Global North, replicating dominant cultural and scientific agendas (transporting values, methods, and biases through the learning platforms, pedagogical approach, and underlying epistemic values).

Kaplan and Haelein (2016, p. 446) elaborate on the benefits of online education. First, they present a convenient cost/revenue ratio, focusing expenses only during instructional design and material elaboration. Second, online education aim to expand the brand awareness of a company, due to the extension of physical learning spaces. In relation to the last, the other element is the flexibilization of condition of learning based in digital platforms, instead to in-person attendance. Fourth is the opportunity to produce pedagogical innovation, using different digital educational resources to develop skills and experiences in other meanings. Finally, there is a value driven orientation to democratize knowledge. Making classes and content available online increase the opportunities to a top-tier education to people unable to spend money or time for a learning experience in-campus.

Since 2010, innovative pedagogical approaches like flipped classrooms, massive online open courses (MOOC) and other modalities of e-learning have been implemented and scaled around the world. (Kaplan and Haelein, 2016).In addition, The growing field of collaborative online international learning (COIL) courses which use the internet to create international experiences for learners (Marcillo-Gómez & Desilus, 2016). These collaborations most often take the form of students from two universities in distinct parts of the world using digital conferencing to take a course together, thereby creating a “travel abroad” experience through digital means. In this project we perceive this intellectual gap as an obstacle to achieve situated, global and intercultural education, observing that COIL has still challenges with the integration of difference in linguistic and cultural diversity.

As online education continues to expand, differences of educational resources as technological access, publishing/open-access, language, and embedded cultural assumptions have shaped the landscape in uneven ways. For Instance, Wilem and Bossu (2012, p.191) recognize the dominance of English in online resources, despite the great majority of learners are not native English-speakers. Other limitations to access to digital in problematizing e-learning as an imagined cheap way of democratizing education (Porto et al, 2018).