Searching for Harmony in Internationalisation of Teaching and Learning

By Tiffany Ko

“Harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.” Sallust (86 BC- 35/34 BC)

Our community members are probably no strangers to how “the incorporation of international, intercultural and/or global dimensions into the content of the curriculum as well as the learning outcomes, assessment tasks, and teaching methods” (Leask, 2015) might benefit students. By gathering first-handed experiences from our members, CoP – ITL is eager to explore how an array of internationalisation strategies can be integrated into a course or programme harmoniously to multiply these benefits. This article takes a look at the effort made by Dr. Lisa Deng, a HKBU-affiliated member, to strike a chord in delivering a virtual intercultural collaboration experience.

Synchronising the “What” and “How” to Teach
In the course “Teaching and Learning with Information and Communication Technology (ICT)”, Dr. Deng engaged ICT simultaneously as the teaching content and a learning tool that facilitated the development of intercultural competence. This two-credit course which opens to Year 2 students of an English and Education Double Degree programme seeks to provide training on the applications of the latest technologies as well as ICT pedagogy through hands-on activities and group discussions. The teacher enhanced the breadth and depth of training by connecting her students with overseas peers in the teaching and learning activities through ICT. Specifically, she gave students the opportunity to have online collaboration with future teachers undertaking a similar course in the University of Northwestern in the United States for a group project that sharpened one’s cultural awareness and ICT skills at once.

Learning by Doing
Dr. Deng and the corresponding teacher from the U.S. designed a five-phase learning experience in the hope that such experience could enhance students’ intercultural awareness and ICT competence systematically. In the first week, members of each group, which was composed of two Hong Kong students and two U.S. students, were asked to make self-introduction videos for ice-breaking. In the second week, the mixed groups were trained to organise a formal meeting and work out a topic of comparative study on education issues using conferencing tools such as Slack, Zoom, or Skype. Upon finalising research topics such as “mental health of secondary school students” and “application of technology in English Education” by the third week, students were encouraged to collect data by conducting video interviews with their members of diverse cultural backgrounds. Instead of a term paper, each group was then required to present their findings by developing a webpage using WiX or Weebly. Following the website showcase, students wrapped up the collaboration experience and summarised their observations on the application of ICT in education by completing peer assessments and submitting individual reflections.

Some Reflections
This was the first time Dr. Deng introduced the virtual exchange component to the captioned course. The new attempt which tried to orchestrate subject content and internationalisation pedagogy brought her bitter-sweet feelings. She observed, on the one hand, that the majority of students were excited to have a synchronised learning experience with peers studying across the planet. On the other hand, some students found the necessity to work closely with group mates living in a different time zone at all stages of the project restraining. Taking note of the students’ comments, the teacher planned to better prepare the participants on the time commitment and culture-related challenges of the project in the future enactments. With continuous efforts in fine-tuning the course delivery as such, we believe that Dr. Deng could internationalise the teaching and learning with technologies in a pleasing, value-adding harmony.

Acknowledgments
The Editor’s Pick draws on an interview with Dr. Lisa Deng who generously shared with us her experiences and insights, and we hope we have done justice to the wisdom of her practice in the internationalisation of teaching and learning.