Assessing the Impact of Intercultural Virtual Collaboration on Global Citizenship Education

 

Abstract: The development of the capabilities necessary to foster global citizenship in undergraduate university students is an important goal of many higher education institutions. We assess the impact of intercultural virtual collaboration (IVC) courses on the three key competencies of students – collaborative skills, ethical and social responsibility, and intercultural proficiency – that underpin global citizenship (GC). We analyse pre- and post-course test data related to the learning goals of three IVCs between the universities in the Netherlands and Japan, Spain and the USA, respectively. Using one-tailed paired sample t-tests, we find statistically significant improvements in each of these competencies and conclude that IVC supports the development of GC in university students, even if they have prior international experience.

Keywords: Empirical assessment, Global citizenship, Higher education, Intercultural competence, Internationalisation at home, Sustainable Development Goals, Virtual collaboration