Ana Maria Porras is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida in the US. She has undertaken two iterations of her virtual exchange module titled: Comparing Perspectives on Global Health Technology. She partnered with Daniel Suarez Venegas from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia.
Ana Maria has every intention of continuing and expanding her virtual exchange.
Communicating across cultures
“I developed this new module as mentioned above. Before taking it live, I went to seek feedback for my new course at the Office of Global Learning, where I explained I had two objectives mind. These were: comparing global perspectives on a biomedical discipline and the other was communicating across cultures.
Our Director, Paloma loved the ideas but pointed out that I wouldn’t be able to achieve these learning outcomes in the classical conventional way of teaching: in a largely mono- cultural class in the US. That’s despite having students from elsewhere on the course. Paloma said the ‘communicating across cultures’ would be challenging if I did this alone.
She then explained all about Virtual Exchange and encouraged me to do the training set up by her office. Many of us did this and this is why our institution is so active in VE now.”
Finding a VE partner
After her VE training, Ana Maria attended a conference and it was here that she ran into her future partner, Daniel.
“I explained my idea to Daniel and asked if he was interested. He was really enthusiastic about doing it and I wanted to put into practice what I’d learned about VE. We had some common ground too, as he was from Colombia, and I am too, originally.
His course was quite similar to mine. So, the idea was to get our students to work together to identify a global health issue in the partner country. Mine in the US focused on an issue in Colombia and vice versa. They were then tasked with working together to propose a solution for it.
Set up and arrangement of the VE
Ana Maria says they had to play around a bit with the numbers over their two iterations as the first time round she had more students than her partner. But essentially, they made small teams of three or four, trying to even out the numbers as best as possible.
“We became aware of the imbalances second time round and made smaller teams.’
The lingua franca was English, says Ana Maria, but she also had a number of Spanish speakers in her classes. Especially the second time when she managed to get a Spanish speaker in each group, which was helpful.
“We generally spoke in English and to mitigate any uncertainty the Colombian students might have had with English. To help, we sent as much information ahead of time to them to give them time to prepare – even ahead of the one-on-one meetings.
We also encouraged the sharing of questions ahead of time and this helped those who are non-native English speakers (including some of mine).
I also do pre, middle and post exchange reflections where I realised the US students cited a worry about possible language barriers and how to overcome them.”
Outcomes from the VE
One of the best outcomes at the end of the exchange, explains Ana Maria, was that my US students were positively surprised by quality of English spoken by Colombian students.
“And of course, the Colombian students were hugely boosted by this praise. I had told Daniel to share this with them.”
Ana Maria was very pleased at this outcome, as she points out how highly technical the content in the virtual exchange is, and how advanced the English level was.
“It was cool to break down any assumptions my US students might have had in that regard.”
The students also used a number of tools to help with the language issue. These included: using captions on zoom calls for example, as zoom can translate the captions. Ana Maria points out that these don’t always work reliably.
“We also posted videos on Padlet and Padlet can also caption but not translate. But, seeing the written word helps.
Asynchronously, when looking up stuff, I introduced the students to auto-translate captions on YouTube as both sets can access this information. That helps as it’s rare to find statistics on Colombia in English.”
Challenges and hurdles
Ana Maria says there were predominantly two challenges.
The first was the level of the students.
“We had graduate students mixed with undergrads due to issues with numbers, so that was a little bit of a challenge. My graduate students were a bit frustrated by that. But it worked out in the end, I think, as my students were able to mentor the others in terms of applying to grad school in the US. In spite of the imbalances, I feel both sets of students gained from the exchange.”
Outcomes
The main outcome for Ana Maria relates less to the technological aspect of the exchange, and more about the cultural learning that took place, and how the students enhanced their ability to communicate across cultures. “This was interesting and gratifying to see.”
The other challenge was the fact that the academic calendars don’t match exactly so they had to think hard how to embed it effectively.
“Also, I teach this course in the fall, she explains, ‘and fall is hurricane season in Florida. The students experienced one hurricane interruption during the exchange. As a result of this experience, we learned to be flexible! During the second iteration there were two hurricanes during the exchange!”
Future plans
“We will repeat the virtual exchange again in the fall, as it’s pretty embedded in my courses. Students enrol usually as a result of word of mouth. I think students expect a VE when doing my course now and I can’t let them down.
I will partner with a Mexico institution in Monterray and I hope Daniel will join too, so we can have a 3-way exchange. I wanted to increase the diversity element in the exchange and we can do this by adding another partner.
We are working on the tasks for the next iteration and I’m very excited to see what we come up with!”