Defining Digital Internationalization

• In Event: Digital Internationalization in Higher Education: Beyond Virtual Exchange

Proposal

In the community of international education and internationalization, issues around definitions and terminology are common. Because international programming, global collaboration, and internationalization of curricula have emerged simultaneously across different disciplines and administrative areas within institutions of higher education, an equally varied set of programming formats and pedagogical interventions have evolved and been assigned different names and acronyms along the way, resulting in a collage of terms and definitions for the work of the internationalization of higher education that does not always translate to colleagues working in different areas of their institutions.
The term digital internationalization itself offers an example. Internationalization of higher education (IHE) can be defined as “the power and process of integrating an international,
intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions, or delivery of post-secondary education” (Lee, 2021). While Lee’s definition adds the power dynamic to the previous prevailing definition, it loses the intentionality and purposes ascribed to the effort by an earlier definition: “[Internationalization is] the intentional process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of post-secondary
education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff,
and to make a meaningful contribution to society” (de Wit, Hunter, Egron-Polak, & Howard., 2015, p.281). The addition of “digital” to the term highlights that internationalization of campuses has happened via various modalities and technologies. The choice to say digital, rather than online–which implies that something is fully relying on the internet in educational circles—or virtual, which implies lack of reality to some–exemplifies readily how multiple similar terms can emerge at different times and come into use among different communities. The global pandemic and overnight switch to learning opportunities mediated almost exclusively by the internet has further accelerated the evolution and muddied the waters that previously separated different global learning and internationalization efforts.
The motivation for this paper, therefore, emerges from the realization that we are not always well-versed in the terminology employed by colleagues doing similar work in different ways. As such, scholarship and exemplar practices that could potentially be used to continue to improve and grow digital internationalization efforts may be inadvertently overlooked by some. This paper will present a taxonomy that places the primary activities of digital internationalization in relationship to each other along the spectra from entirely online to entirely in-person, and from low focus on intentional collaboration and exchange between participants to high focus and intentionality on collaboration and exchange as a part of the learning experience. The definitions for key sub-areas that fall under the umbrella of digital internationalization, as well as known synonyms or near-synonyms for terms (where relevant), will also be shared to serve as a reference guide for colleagues seeking scholarship on digital internationalization or any of its subcategories and/or practical guidance for advancing and improving digital internationalization in their own professional context.

Author

• Amelia J Dietrich, The Forum on Education Aborad