Towards Learning ‘Self’ and Emotional Knowledge in Social and Cultural Human-Agent Interactions

Original article can be found at: http://www.igi-global.com/articles/details.asp?ID=35052 Copyright IGI. Posted by permission of the publisher.This article presents research towards the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) inhabited by intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and modeling a scenario of inter-cultural interactions. The ultimate aim of this VLE is to allow users to reflect upon and learn about intercultural communication and collaboration. Rather than predefining the interactions among the virtual agents and scripting the possible interactions afforded by this environment, we pursue a bottomup approach whereby inter-cultural communication emerges from interactions with and among autonomous agents and the user(s). The intelligent virtual agents that are inhabiting this environment are expected to be able to broaden their knowledge about the world and other agents, which may be of different cultural backgrounds, through interactions. This work is part of a collaborative effort within a European research project called eCIRCUS. Specifically, this article focuses on our continuing research concerned with emotional knowledge learning in autobiographic social agents.Peer reviewe

Empowering International Students as Global Citizens: Promising Praxis for Virtual Global Learning

The COVID-19 global pandemic disrupted the traditional ways of providing global learning to students in higher education, and offered international students new opportunities to develop intercultural competency in a virtual environment. Anchored in literature, teaching reflection, student reflection, and critical global citizenship education theory and practices, this article analyzes and discusses the andragogic, cultural, linguistic, academic, and technological dimensions of providing meaningful and inclusive global learning and engagement to international students in a virtual/online environment. Placing international students at the centre of critical academic decisions, this article introduces promising practices and strategies for empowering international students as global citizens, such as dealing with sociocultural and geopolitical issues, preparing international students for online learning, creating an open and safe online environment, situating intercultural learning and collaboration in authentic contexts, and practicing critical reflexivity

Employability Through Experiential Delivery of Intercultural Communication Skills Online

International trade, enabled by rapid technological advances, has had a profound effect on the way employees work and communicate in a borderless, virtual environment. Within this context, classroom collaboration through online virtual teams can be an effective strategy to enhance intercultural and employability skills. Research in this area advocates that using digital media to connect students with international classrooms is an easy and efficient way to develop intercultural competence. In this paper we describe and present the results of one such initiative. The authors have designed and implemented virtual and experiential intercultural communications assignments across four countries: Germany, Portugal, Scotland, and the United States. By creating virtual teams and then simulating a real-world team project, we have been able to study how students work with, and react to, teammates from other cultures. We explored students’ views and opinions on the expected outcomes of their international experience in virtual teams and the potential impact of online intercultural learning experiences on their future employability. The findings suggest that collaborative online international learning (COIL) can help to develop the kind of soft skills that employers value and need in the globalized workplace.Crawford, I.; Swartz, S.; Luck, S.; Barbosa, B. (2020). Employability Through Experiential Delivery of Intercultural Communication Skills Online. En 6th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'20). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. (30-05-2020):993-1000. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd20.2020.11185OCS993100030-05-202

Designing, deploying, and studying internationally networked collaboration: The Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) model

Members of today’s diverse and global workforce increasingly perform their work as part of cross-cultural virtual teams (CCVTs). CCVTs are those teams connected via technology and comprised of people in various locations around the globe whose primary objective of virtual collaboration is to launch, develop, and complete its assigned task. In addition to discipline and technical knowledge, today’s working professionals need cross-cultural competence. As the majority of students will be expected to work effectively on CCVTs, it is imperative to include collaborative work on realistic projects as a means to develop language skills, project management skills, application of specialized skills and knowledge, and intercultural competence. Over the past 18 years, the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project (TAPP) has connected 29 universities in 16 countries on four continents, linking writing classes to usability testing and translation studies classes in collaborative projects. TAPP’s main aim is to share insights into collaborative writing across borders and cultures, and, in the course of this work, to gain intercultural competence. The network of partners participating in TAPP establishes links between students in different countries so that each learns from the other. In so doing, students become aware of the diversity of the world community in which their documents travel. The purpose of this workshop is to guide attendees in learning how to join TAPP or to design and run collaborative global virtual collaborative projects on their own. Presenters will share research and practice that addresses the structural, relational, interactional, and technological components of TAPP projects, with emphasis on the study of intercultural competence developed as a result of student global virtual collaboration. Participants will design an international collaborative project based on the TAPP model; this will include how to run and gain support for international collaborative projects in a political environment of rising nationalism

A Genuine ‘Miteinander’: On Becoming a Team in an International Virtual Simulation Game

Megacities is a simulation game which uses the Internet as a transnational virtual space for developing intercultural competence, thereby fostering intercultural dialogue. The experience of over a hundred people of several nationalities in this simulation game is at the core of this study, which aims to understand how individuals succeed in creating a genuine ‘Miteinander’ despite language barriers, the constraints of virtual communication, and expected cultural differences. ‘Miteinander’ is a German word which combines the concept of collaboration with that of cohesion. The introduction of this term allows us to further clarify the focus of this investigation, which aims to observe how a diverse group becomes a team in an online environment. This study is a qualitative one and its corpus is composed of reflection sheets in which participants share the feelings, thoughts and perceptions they had before, during, and after their experience in the game Megacities. The analysis of the data revealed that participants had similar fears and perceptions, despite their diversity. Out of their reflections, an interplay of factors related to individual, social, and technical-organizational dimensions emerges. Two factors which have a particularly high impact on the process of building trust and creating culture are looked at in depth in this paper: language and the virtual setting of communication

Report on the Implementation of Work Package 4 “Selection and Testing New ICT Tools” in the Framework of the IRNet Project

This article, prepared by an international team of authors – researchers from different scientific areas, connected with ICT, e-learning, pedagogy, and other related disciplines – focuses on the objectives and some results of the IRNet international project. In particular, this article describes the research tools, methods, and some procedures of the Work Package 4 (WP4) “Selection and Testing New ICT tools”: Objectives, Tasks, Deliverables, and implementation of research trips. Researchers from partner universities have analysed the results of WP4 in the context of the next stages and Work Packages of the IRNet project – International Research Network

Work in Progress: Students\u27 Perception of Collaborative online International Learning

Teaching and learning in the digital age harness the opportunities created by internet technologies to distribute and learn various information all over the world. This is commonly referred to as connectivism, and it values the impact of stakeholder information appraisal skills, virtual and personal communication skills [1], and the sense of cultural awareness. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a type of connectivism, typically involves instructors and students from at least two geographically and culturally distinct areas who collaborate virtually on a common project for four or more weeks. The objective is to create a culturally diverse virtual environment where students can explore and enhance their interpersonal skills, and also, improve their intercultural competency skills. In this Work-in-Progress (WIP) paper, we present early findings of a COIL project from students’ perspectives. Social constructivism postulates that humans develop and construct knowledge through social interactions with others [2]. Thus, participating in collaborative social activity helps to acquire knowledge [2]. Hence, having students from two culturally distinct regions to collaborate is crucial for the development of intercultural skills. Thus, the objective of COIL is not necessarily to expose students to the experience of virtual collaboration, rather, to enhance intercultural competency skills while collaborating virtually. The project serves as a collaborative tool and must provide a challenge for the teams to design concepts, negotiate, build, or share perspectives to solve a problem [1, 3, 4]. The project could be a client-based or instructor designed project

COLLABORATIVE PORTAL MODEL FOR INTERCULTURAL TEAMS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

In the multinational organizations, more groups of individuals are being involved in the process of knowledge creation in a collaborative manner, of sharing knowledge and learning from it. These individuals can have heterogeneous cultures and they must use a common language. IT has created and is developing the infrastructure for cross-cultural communications and intercultural knowledge management. Nowadays, intercultural knowledge management can be realized with support of Collaborative Technologies and Knowledge Management Support Systems (KMSS). In this respect Collaborative Technologies and Intercultural Knowledge Management Support Systems (IKMSS) will be the appropriate way for supporting intercultural communication, learning and collaborative knowledge management in organizations. In this paper we present a conceptual model of a collaborative portal for Intercultural Team Knowledge Management as a powerful support for increasing team’s performance.: collaborative support, collaboration, knowledge management, intercultural teams, intercultural knowledge management, intercultural knowledge management portal

First-year Engineering Students’ Motivation to Participate in Virtual International Collaborative Experiential Program (VICEP): An Expectancy-Value-Cost Approach

Changes in course delivery mechanisms necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity to develop a Virtual International Collaborative Experiential Program (VICEP) as an alternative to traditional, travel-based study abroad programs. This paper presents the results of an investigation of engineering students’ motivation, perceived challenges, and preferred geographic areas for the VICEP. A sample of 116 first-year engineering students at the University of Cincinnati responded to survey items regarding their perceptions of motivation to participate in the VICEP, including in terms of expectancy, value, and cost, along with open-ended questions. Both male and female students scored the highest on value and the lowest on cost but with different weights. However, gender differences in the expectancy, value, and cost were not statistically significant. Intercultural collaboration and learning opportunities were significantly more important for female students than for males, and the engaged learning environment of the program and career skills development were more important for male students than for females. Time commitment and the structure of the program as well as the stress endured during the study abroad were strongly negative factors, more so for male students. Interestingly, the virtual nature of the project and the existence (or not) of incentives were not encouraging to most students. Structuring the world into seven geographic regions, the most preferred regions for virtual collaboration have the common feature of being technologically developed, except China which was among the lowest-ranking countries/regions. Preferences for geographical regions between male and female students was significant only for some regions. The present research provides valuable information for faculty leading virtual intercultural collaborative experiences