Innovating Internationalisation: Virtual Teaching and Learning Modules for Outbound Students

Description

Internationalisation is central to the mission of universities around the world. Universities commonly promote endeavours ranging from short-term study tours to year-long exchange programmes in order to enable outbound students to broaden their horizons, enhance their cross-cultural competence, and gain destination-specific expertise that they may employ in their academic and professional careers. However, internationalisation activities may sometimes lead outbound students to encounter stark challenges that stem from cultural and language-related differences between their home and host jurisdictions. Resource and manpower factors may moreover limit the degree of support that universities are able to provide to outbound students.This project proposes to create an original, reusable collection of month-long virtual teaching and learning modules that support outbound students to Japan, a globally significant country with regard to which CityUHK holds 38 active student exchange agreements and memoranda of understanding. The project is centred around PIA3810J, a credit-bearing undergraduate course offered by the Department of Public and International Affairs that enables students from various academic units to study at the partner institution in Japan over a four-week period. The virtual modules specifically aim to enhance students’ language proficiency, cultural competence, and problem-based learning ability destined for real-world application while they are in Japan. Modular content will integrate gamification and augmented reality, and be developed in collaboration with the partner institution. The effectiveness of modules will be evaluated through focus group interviews, and then empirically tested through within-subject randomised controlled trials that compare key measures of students’ abilities prior to, and after, their use of the aforementioned modules. Students’ academic performance at the partner institution, their level of engagement in activities, and their overall self-reported learning satisfaction will be examined as secondary measures of the modules’ effectiveness.Taken together, this project delivers originally developed and rigorously tested virtual modules that will be made available to future students who take PIA3810J, as well as to any academic unit at CityUHK that organises study tours or exchange programmes relating to Japan. The project will contribute to supporting partnerships that CityUHK has established with Japanese universities, and to maximising the longer-term benefits that such endeavours may have for the University, its students, and Hong Kong society more broadly.