The development of the intercultural communicative competence of a group of 18 students who participated in a three-week online language program is presented. The quantitative and qualitative analyses carried out through questionnaires and oral presentations reveal that even a short-term online language program can become an enriching experience to distance oneself from one's own cultural habits, to show empathy, and even to acquire the ability to communicate with others, as well as improving linguistic and cultural skills. Furthermore, the study highlights the usefulness and advantages of information and communication technologies not only in erasing geographical barriers and providing access to an extensive amount of cultural and linguistic content, but also in enabling effective communication between people of different languages and cultures, and above all in developing, consciously or unconsciously, intercultural communicative competence through contacts with others.
TopIntroduction
In accordance with the instructions of the Spanish educational and health authorities and as a containment measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19, all higher education institutions in Spain were required to adapt their face-to-face academic activities to a fully online environment as of March 2020. The implications of online versus face-to-face learning had been discussed for at least a decade in higher education, but the pandemic made it obligatory to move online overnight during the last months of the academic year. At the start of September 2020, the situation had not evolved favorably enough to return to 100% face-to-face teaching, and universities were required to take every precaution to ensure the health and safety of both students and staff, delaying the starting dates for the majority of on-campus face-to-face teaching in order to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission. This included all undergraduate and postgraduate study programs, as well as any activity organized by international student centers, such as international study programs, international exchange programs, summer programs, language courses, etc.
It is a fact that internationalization in higher education has been challenged by the pandemic. In the face of new dilemmas and constraints, solutions had to be found and consequently lessons had to be learnt.
All of this serves to underline how important it is for universities to ensure the development of international and intercultural competences in our students and staff, fully assuming our mission as educators of active, critical citizens, who are aware of the huge challenges of our globalised, interdependent and interconnected society, precisely one of the major aims of internationalization processes in higher education. (Kelly, 2021, p. 225)
There have been many effects of the COVID-19 crisis and, depending on the countries, these effects have been more far-reaching. In some places like the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, where higher education institutions are more dependent on international student tuition fees, there has sometimes been a severe financial impact. In continental Europe, though, where internationalization strongly depends on student mobility funded through the Erasmus+ program, as well as on the more traditional summer and study-abroad programs, Covid-19 has inevitably led to fewer international students on campus, “a loss of cultural diversity and reduced internationalization at home, with limited opportunities for local, non-mobile students to receive some international and intercultural exposure during their studies” (De Wit & Marinoni, 2021, p. 235).
The main consequence, however, was probably the necessity for higher education institutions to review their internationalization plans and strategies, advocating, on the one hand, for a more inclusive and comprehensive approach to internationalization (Knight, 2011; Leask, 2015; de Wit et al., 2015; Beelen, & Jones, 2015) to ensure more international and intercultural competences for both students and staff; and, on the other, offering more opportunities for international cooperation through technology, placing emphasis on virtual mobility and collaborative online learning to provide both home and international students with an international experience and intercultural perspectives.
The objective of the present study is to analyze the effect of a short-term collaborative online language program at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, where Spanish language and culture Summer and Winter Schools have been organized since 2017 as part of the institution’s international outreach strategy. The 2021 edition of the Winter School was, for the first time, moved to online delivery, thus re-shaping the nature of the experience in international encounters for both students and their teachers and thereby fostering their acquisition of competences in different ways.
Focusing on the development of students’ intercultural awareness, this study analyses the answers of a group of participants in this winter program to a questionnaire aimed at assessing their satisfaction with the experience of collaborative online learning and acquisition of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). The hypothesis to be tested is whether a three-week online program (five days a week, four hours a day) is long enough to start developing ICC.