Katherine Winpenny

ONLINE PEDAGOGIES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Katherine Wimpenny

Firstly, I would like to thank Dr Arinola Adefila here at Coventry University (CU) in the UK, and Professor Lucia Garcia at the Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES), Brazil, for the opportunity to speak today as part of our 2TV project funded by the British Council. 2TV, led by Arinola, is, as you may be aware, examining structural, contextual and policy barriers, which limit all forms of educational achievement across our geographies. 2TV has brought together a consortium of transdisciplinary researchers and together we are focused on examining transformative practices in education that can aim to directly benefit vulnerable communities. Importantly, we are exploring how context-designed educational pedagogies and resources can help disrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally.

I am Katherine Wimpenny, Professor of Research in Global Education and Theme lead of Education without Boundaries, one of the four areas of research in the Centre for Global Learning (more details about our Centre themes can be found here.) Our team is made up of 10 researchers; five based in the Centre, and five as Faculty Research Associates (academics researching with us on fractional hours as part of their substantive teaching role in schools/ faculty across campus). Together, we represent a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds including health, computer sciences, peace

studies, engineering, and geography etc. but with a united focus on education, with our Centre mission being to:

“[B]ring an educational lens to societal challenges to provide a better understanding of how to create and sustain a fairer and inclusive society” (GLEA Centre Business Plan, 2021)

Our research within Education without Boundaries focuses, with our local, national, and international partners, on contextualised and comprehensive internationalisation. Drawing on Hudzik’s (2011) definition, this brings into play not only international and comparative perspectives about the teaching, research, and service missions of higher education, as embraced by institutional leadership, governance, faculty, students, support units etc., but importantly, the urgency for universities’ connected engagement with society, not least to address the interconnected local/global challenges we are facing (UNESCO, 2021).

We have identified three subthemes which guide our research practices; Third Space cross-border learning; Challenge-led education for sustainable development; and Hybridity and new imaginaries in transnational education. Additionally, across each subtheme, we seek to address the intersections of decolonisation, digitalisation, co-creation, and creativity, to influence policy and practical implications for educational reform.

With this backdrop in mind, I turn to the main focus of this thought piece, and our research and practice examining online pedagogies beyond the classroom to disrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally, and with particular focus on Collaborative Online International Learning, which I will hereafter refer to as COIL.

As a pedagogical approach, COIL encompasses collaboration in online spaces, transnational interactions, and transformative learning. By the online space this might be synchronously or asynchronously via Microsoft Teams, or an Open Moodle site accessed via a computer, laptop, or mobile phone. The transnational interaction involves how the COIL exchange is underpinned by a

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number of learning activities as part of a course or module, jointly negotiated by two or more academics from different universities in different countries. The transformative learning potential involves students, from different parts of the world, learning together on a common area of focus.

The learning together aspect is key, including how that is facilitated (which is not to be underestimated) as the collaboration and togetherness aspects are to enable students multiple opportunities to learn how to form and maintain relationships. This includes willingness and regard considering the perspectives of others, and to work co-operatively with peers from across different cultural backgrounds to address and reflect upon the challenges of living and working in contemporary societies as global citizens and professionals (Beelen et al., 2021).

The area of focus during a COIL exchange can typically engage learners within and across disciplinary borders. For example, undergraduate nursing students in Coventry might examine Covid front-line care approaches and after-care procedures with nursing students in the Philippines, to discuss and examine respective practices. Or, as COIL can engage learners across disciplinary borders, there is rich opportunity for the focus of learning to be on addressing a significant challenge / or wicked problem (Rittel & Webber, 1973), that would be potentially restrictive for one discipline alone to problem-solve. For example, geography students from the UK could come together with architect and civil engineering students in Canada, and in transdisciplinary ways examine new housing and planning approaches for reducing disaster risk. And, as in this example, we can see how opportunities open up to productively engage with community and industry partners, living and working in disaster risk areas, for example, as part of community engaged scholarship (more on this later).

Whilst COIL initiatives between geographically distant classrooms are not new, particularly in the field of language learning (more typically referred to as teletandem, telecollaboration and/or online intercultural exchange) (see the debate on terminology use in

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O’Dowd 2021), COIL represents an emerging pedagogy for many universities, not least universities in the Global South. Furthermore, as a consequence of the global pandemic, there has been an urgency to rethink internationalisation and in ways that all students can participate.

Importantly, COIL is a pedagogical approach as part of internationalisation-at-home (IaH), which stresses purposeful international and intercultural dimensions in both the formal and the informal curriculum for all students (Beelen & Jones, 2015). IaH, as part of curriculum internationalisation, therefore, looks beyond the exclusionary nature of physical mobility, which has tended to be viewed as the most dynamic aspect of internationalisation, to the increasing focus on the digitalisation of the home curriculum to include more students and geographical locations (Wimpenny & Orsini-Jones, 2021). Indeed, the pandemic has prompted reexamination of the mobility of a minority of students, emphasising instead the resources to be utilised at a local level in the delivery of an internationally focused curriculum, resonating with IaH approaches (Watkins, 2018; Beelen et al., 2021).

Coventry University has been engaging in COIL with international partners since 2011 and whilst practices have grown significantly from small-scale pilots, and with global engagement a core component of strategic orientation, COIL is now viewed as an integral component of the university’s IaH initiatives, and has become an institutional requirement for all courses, not only as part of the university’s Internationalisation Strategy, but also as a core component of the university Education Strategy 20211. For example, in the last academic alone (2020-2021) over 7,000 students engaged across 170 COIL exchanges, led by 141 CU staff delivered in conjunction with 134 institutions from 52 countries2 .

1. https://www.coventry.ac.uk/globalassets/media/global/09-about-us/who-we-are/ corporate-strategy-2021.pdf. 2. https://www.coventry.ac.uk/news/2021/coil/

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Whilst there is much to share about what we have learnt at Coventry, and international research has documented good practices, protocols, as well as resources required, it is clear COIL pedagogies for extending online learning beyond the classroom requires significant regard in appreciating the complexity of the inclusive and equitable considerations required for networked learning (Jacobs et al. 2021). And, including how COIL can engage with community partners beyond the institutions involved.

It is to the ‘inclusive and equitable’ I now turn, and with that a focus on social justice framings and what educational equality is in COIL. Social justice in education demands equity for all students not least in recognising and embracing student diversity. Further, as a mindset, social justice encourages openness, collaboration, and information sharing. For example, COIL as mentioned previously emphasises collaboration, which can be enacted in myriad ways depending on context, confidence, resourcing, etc. Designing COIL therefore includes consideration of access, time for engagement, length of sessions, cultural nuances that capture the voice and representation of everyone, and ample opportunities for feedback and reflexivity. This can be challenging and time consuming requiring considerate development with local educators and learners. (See for example a recent report detailing our collaborative efforts on JOVITAL, a comprehensive capacity building programme designed to facilitate knowledge transfer for using COIL/virtual exchange to offer learning opportunities for academic staff, university students and disadvantaged learners in Jordan). In another example, iKudu is engaging 10 universities (five from Europe and five from South Africa) in which we are focused on setting up a Global South-North community of practice on COIL for curriculum internationalisation and transformation.

I must thank Catherine Cronin (2020) for her chapter “Open Education: Walking a critical path” and for introducing me to Ursula Franklin’s work, quoted by Whitaker (2016) - Meredith Whitaker being an internet researcher and poet who spoke with Franklin having been moved by her public Massey Lecture Series

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in 1989 – which I also have been listening to. Franklin, a GermanCanadian research physicist, author, educator, pacifist, feminist, and Quaker, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, and who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years, has shared profound insights about technology, including her focus on how, “there is no technology for justice - there is only justice,”

“While justice can be understood, can be felt, there is no template to follow, or checklist to work through for ensuring a just outcome. The requirements are humility, a respect for context, and a willingness to listen to the most marginalized voices. Let these define the basic requirements of whatever you do… You must put yourself in the position of the most vulnerable, in a way that achieves a visceral gut feeling of empathy and perspective—that is the only way to see what justice is.” https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-oftechnology/part-1.mp3

What Franklin so eloquently spoke about has inspired me to think again about her framing of technology as a practice, and, to look at our use of technology, when considering COIL exchanges, not merely as a platform or tool, but in terms of its complexity as a multifaceted entity – a system which contains much more than the sum of its components, and which brings into play notions of power, control, and responsibility (linking very clearly with Paulo Freire’s work on critical pedagogy3). Franklin challenges us to view technology as a practice in order to consider the consequences of what happens when we reproduce educational practices in unthinking ways – for example, in the consequences of assuming class-based pedagogies for students shift seamlessly into the online space. And/or that learning online through COIL exchanges must be a more equitable

3. Paulo Freire (1921–1997) was a champion of what today we term critical pedagogy: the belief that teaching should challenge learners to examine power structures and patterns of inequality within the status quo. Freire emphasised how important it is to remember what it is to be human and to view education as a way to transform oppressive structures. His perspectives stemmed from the values of love, care, and solidarity.

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means for learners to experience their ‘internationalised’ curriculum. Herein we need to examine COIL, not as an online pedagogy that is trimmed to fit convenient models and common practices which claim to represent inclusivity, but as a holistic practice for learners across the Global South and North, with a number of dimensions that cannot be assumed nor overlooked.

Building on Stallivieri’s (2020) contention (from a Brazilian perspective) that international online education needs greater support to ensure pedagogies, such as COIL, do not follow a design benefiting some while excluding many more, I have, with respected colleagues Kyria Finardi also in Brazil, Lynette Jacobs in South Africa, and Marina Orsini-Jones - one of the first academics practising COIL at Coventry, been discussing and writing about a number of interconnected student, staff and institutional dimensions, within a particular set of values, which give rise to how ways of knowing, being, relating and expressing might be questioned, contested and transformed in COIL exchange (Wimpenny et al., 2021).

Drawing on Stallivieri, these are • The digitalisation gap - Although approaches to e-learning have been developing since the late 1990s, and whilst we may live in a world that is increasingly interconnected, the pandemic has laid bare the stark variation between pupils’ home-learning environments. Poorer pupils are likely to have more limited device and internet access and are less likely to have home environments conducive to learning.

As such, focus on digitalisation includes not only students’ tangible assets regarding connectivity and hard/software, but also students’ behaviours and digital learning ecologies (Gomes & Chang, 2021), appreciating access to computers and the internet does not guarantee access to digital capital (Ragnedda & Ruiu, 2020). • The linguistic gap - Here we are most mindful of considering verbal and written language proficiency in online learning and differences in particular between learners in rural areas,

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with homogenous indigenous language settings and urban areas creating diverse and very fluid “langscapes” [language/ landscapes] (Isikolo, 2013). There is need to be conscious of how language can serve to silence the voices and marginalise learners fundamentally, and negatively affecting the quality and potential of the cross-cultural learning opportunity. • The structural gap – This is with regards to the necessary regulatory infrastructure to build capacity for academics to pilot and implement COIL within HEIs with diverse histories, contexts, and business models. For example, institutional internationalisation plans which support COIL enterprise and partnership possibility, and in terms of the curricular flexibility to build in COIL, and the necessary time and staff development required for designing COIL, including the important cross cultural facilitation skills required, material dimensions, and inclusive institutional cultures.

Additionally, we have also focused on • Social influence (e.g., Warschauer, 2003), as in, how staff and students can benefit from relationships and memberships that particular COIL (social) networks might prompt. • Psychological issues (e.g., Yang et al., 2021), in students and staff encouraged in the necessary effort to succeed and persist in challenging tasks (in setting up and taking active part in COIL exchanges), by using problem solving ways to redirect paths to goals, and beyond the attainment of success in assessments. • Trust dimensions (e.g., Algan, 2018), we know COIL can be experienced as disquieting and uncomfortable, and it can take time for trust and confidence to emerge, amongst staffstaff, staff-students, and peers-peers, whereby awareness of global issues in relation to local contexts are disclosed, and in sharing knowledge with less territorial approaches.

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Furthermore, we contend values such as mutuality, inclusivity, equity (redress) and equality (equally valued) should guide all interactions in COIL exchanges for more open and authentic interactions, promoting hospitality (Potgieter, 2015) and appreciation (Jacobs et al., 2021). Emphasis here, as with the above, is in how COILing can build /strengthen learning (and life skills) for navigating the world, in supporting social justice, and in consideration of work-readiness, etc.

To further maximise the potential of inclusive COIL exchanges as cross-border learning spaces, linking knowledge to action for positive change at a local level and beyond (following Freire, 1972), university-grassroots community engaged scholarship is called for, where students and faculty can collaborate with civic society organisations including NGOs, trade unions, social movements, grassroots organisations, online networks, and communities in mutually beneficial ways. Such learning creatively questions and embraces ways of knowing, being, expressing and relating in a nonhierarchical manner (Perold-Bull, 2020) for novel inclusive learning which transcends geo-political and perspectival boundaries. COIL offers a fertile space for such Freire-type education, with people bringing their own knowledge, curiosity, and experience into the learning process for knowledge co-creation, offering potential for collaborative and mutually beneficial action, yielding the co-creation of resources for the public good and curriculum transformation.

In bringing this thought piece to a conclusion, issues of power, privilege, and marginalisation in the context of social justice need to be at the fore in designing online pedagogies beyond the classroom to interrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally. Drawing on Oberhauser’s (2019, p.754) feminist scholarship focused on ‘transformation from within’, and Franklin’s refocus on technology as practice, there is a need for more nuanced analyses of power, place, strategy, and social identities in our internationalised learning practices. With this comes the need to turn to lens inwards, to reflect as academics/learners on our ontology and epistemology, our ethical and moral orientation, and the influence of self, our experiences, our

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values, and in our ability to be attuned towards one another in the online space, where participant identities are welcomed, unleashing plural ways of knowing, a culture of listening, building trust, and joint partnership, alongside recognition of context.

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Gomes, C., & Chang. S. (2021). Introduction. In (Eds.), S. Chang & C. Gomes, Digital Experiences of International Students: Challenging Assumptions and Rethinking Engagement. (pp xx - xxix), London: Routledge Taylor and Frances.

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