Rethinking North-South Education Collaboration and Sustainable Partnerships through International Videoconferencing

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Knowledge collaboration and global governance

Proposal

1. RELEVANCE:
The international videoconferencing approach offers opportunities for sustainable North-South partnerships through low-cost technology. An evolution from North-oriented to a more equitable North-South shared reciprocity, negotiated vision and shared research responsibility reshaped our project into a more sustainable format for education and related research. This collaborative case-study examines how and why international North/South researcher/instructor partnerships facilitated through videoconferencing can expand opportunities for students and faculty in the U. S. and the “global south” to build more sustainable learning and research collaborations. We include in this a critical theoretical analysis of the process and relationships.

2. THEORY/CONTEXT:
There are three components to this research project: reciprocity, equity in global “North”/global “South” international education collaborations in international videoconferencing and related research. Constructivism, Critical Theory and the scholarship of teaching and learning theory frame this portion of our research (Balakrishnan & Claiborne, 2017).
Ivan Illich (1968) said “to hell with [these] good intentions.” He called for an end to the “noblesse oblige” of students from the “global north” in short-term service programs. Freire (1970) called for deep reciprocity between teacher/student and student/teacher. Can a reciprocity help equalize power relationships and benefits for North-South partners? In Roper’s (2002) joint learning model partners collaborate for mutual benefit and sustainability of their project and research. Can equitable research partnerships and efforts towards a collaborative intercultural, international videoconferencing model achieve goals of benefiting students from both the global “North” and the global “South” Canto, I & Hannah, J. (2001)? Can these combined research and collaborative reciprocal education efforts form a sustainable model for internationalizing education?
International videoconferencing is cost-effective tool that removes the barrier of distance and allows learners to take part in live video/audio interactions (Burke, Chaney & Kirsten, 2010) in a global context. As a learning approach it can help unpack the stereotypes participants hold about other cultures (Lee, 2010) and promote cross-cultural understanding.
Collaborative research with an aim at equitable partnerships needs to explore shared decision making and goals (Jull, Giles, Boyer, Stacey, & Minwaashin Lodge. 2018). Sustainable global “North”/global “South” research and education collaborations succeed when all parties see that the partnership benefits their interests (Dean, Njelesani, Smith & Bates 2015). Alter and Hage’s evolutional theory claims that the dynamic nature of collaboration is shaped by political, economic and technological changes and factors (Aniekwe, Hayman, & Mdee, 2012). Sullivan and Skelcher (2002) found that collaboration is a process requiring mutual learning and adaptation and change connected to contextual factors. Those factors may differ between collaboration participants.

3. INQUIRY:
A descriptive case study of international videoconferences was conducted between 2014 and 2018 for the purpose of enhancing undergraduate and secondary student global experiences in languages and cross-cultural understanding through reciprocal service learning (Beck & Barnes, 2007, Smith-Tolken & Bitzer, 2017). The exploration of and movement towards a more equitable, collaborative model for both instructional and research purposes (Wood & Cajkler, 2018) began in 2016.
Qualitative data were collected through synchronous event observations, self-reflections of the participants, post-event written and oral participant feedback. Data from the sources were examined for emergent categories and triangulated (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

4. FINDINGS:
Preliminary findings support the use of videoconferencing as a preferred and effective method to engage in collaborative research and learning partnerships include pre-session joint decision-making for time, topics and format including a jointly constructed agenda, syncing schedules for participants, session structure including moderation by instructors and/or students and cross-cultural preparation in communication styles, address connectivity issues with alternative options and test meetings, flexibility in setting formats and topics, and jointly structure strategies for student empowerment. Sustainability is also dependent on participants benefiting from their engagement in the project. Our data shows that participants felt they benefitted in gaining knowledge and skills that both students and instructor/researchers perceived as important.

5. CONTRIBUTION:
Previous goals of our research team’s international videoconferencing approach described in this paper were to effectively increase intercultural understanding, cross-cultural communication skills, language skills and to develop a global perspective and to provide secondary and post-secondary students and instructors with an opportunity to engage in an international learning experience. Previous and concurrent research on globalizing education through videoconferencing has focused on bringing distant experts into classrooms (Magzan & Aleksic-Maslac, 2009; Mejia & Meraz, 2012), collaborative learning across nations (Kan, 2012) and cross-cultural understanding (Magnier-Watanabe, Benton, Herrig & Aba, 2011). This project case study report expands on our previous research with a focus on our international team’s process of becoming an equitable partnership through strategies to increase project sustainability.

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Authors

• Laureen Fregeau, University of South Alabama

• Ukaiko Ojiambo, St. Paul's University, Nairobi, Kenya

• Suhana Chikatla, Independent Consultant

• William Cornejo, American School, Santa Ana, El Salvador