Access and Equity in Virtual Environments

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

Proposal

Both historically and currently, international education is an area often rife with exclusion and inequity. For example, study abroad opportunities tend to be exclusive to a small subset of students who can afford these programs (e.g, Lingo, 2019; Salisbury et al., 2009; Whatley, 2017) and international students often experience institutional environments that are detrimental, and even hostile, to their academic success (e.g., Buckner et al., 2021; Changamire et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2017). Recently, both researchers and practitioners have highlighted the potential for digital approaches to internationalization, particularly virtual exchange, to address these pervasive equity issues in international education (e.g., Abdel-Kader, 2021; de Wit, 2016; Poe, 2022; Whalen, 2020; Zilberberg Oviedo & Krimphove, 2022). As Helm and Guth (2022) note:
A key benefit of virtual exchange is that it opens up possibilities for international and intercultural exchange among students from different sociocultural backgrounds, those for whom physical mobility is not possible due to the cost, family and/or caring responsibilities, or even cultural barriers. It can also offer international experiences that cover a much wider geographic scope than student mobility programs. (p. 272)
However, recent evidence suggests that this rosy perspective of digital internationalization opportunities such as virtual exchange may not reflect reality for many students and ignores issues around access and equity that arise in the digital environment (Bali et al., 2021; Barbosa & Ferreira-Lopes, 2021; Satar, 2021). Although the conversations in this area have, until now, involved primarily virtual exchange specifically, we suspect that these issues pervade other aspects of digital internationalization as well. For example, Hinshaw et al. (2022) highlight barriers to successful implementation of virtual exchange programs in the primary and secondary education contexts, such as lack of access to necessary technology and competing demands on teachers’ time. Issues around access to technology are certainly not unique to virtual exchange. Whatley et al. (2022) find that certain demographic groups are more likely to access virtual exchange opportunities compared to others in the community college context. Again, issues around who accesses opportunities are certainly not exclusive to virtual exchange in the digital internationalization environment.
This chapter explores the digital internationalization environment with a focus on what it means for access and equity in international education. We focus particularly on barriers to participation in traditional global education programming, such as study abroad, and possibilities for digital solutions to these problems. We also highlight key questions for internationalization in the digital environment with an eye towards access and equity. Given the relative newness of research in this area, answering these questions is key to future efforts to address access and equity issues in international education.

Authors

• Casey Aldrich, SIT Graduate Institute

• Melissa Whatley, School for International Training Graduate Institute