Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension

INTERNATIONALIZATION AT HOME, COIL AND INTERCOMPREHENSION: FOR MORE INCLUSIVE ACTIVITIES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH FELIPE FURTADO GUIMARÃES Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo ANA RACHEL MACÊDO MENDES Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo LISIANE MENDES RODRIGUES Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo RAQUEL SOPRANI DOS SANTOS PAIVA Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo KYRIA REBECA FINARDI Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo Abstract This study aims to explore the concept, benefits, challenges and activities related to Internationalization at Home (IaH), defined as the integration of international/intercultural dimensions into the formal/informal curriculum in domestic learning environments (Beelen & Jones, 2015), as an alternative for more inclusive activities in higher education, within the process of internationalization. The study also offers a review of studies carried out mainly in Brazil by a Brazilian research group. Considering the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in current practices of education and international exchange, this study explores possibilities of approaches such as COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning), allied with the Intercomprehension approach (IA) to suggest the development of more multilingual and inclusive activities, which foster IaH as an alternative to current and hegemonic internationalization practices. The paper concludes with some suggestions for the incorporation of such approaches, assuming that IaH should be prioritized in the internationalization agenda once it caters for a larger audience and, as such, is more inclusive and democratic. Keywords: internationalization at home, internationalization, COIL, intercomprehension Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License Copyright is retained by the author(s) - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 91 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension 1. Introduction: Globalization and Internationalization Internationalization of higher education (IHE), defined by de Wit, Hunter, Howard, and Egron-Polak (2015) as the process of “integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of post-secondary education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff and to make a meaningful contribution to society” (p. 29), is one of the most echoing phenomena in the last decades, acting as both an agent and a consequence of globalization (Amorim & Finardi, 2017). As a complex phenomenon, there is no consensus around the definition of IHE, once it has various meanings in different contexts (Robson, Almeida, & Schartner, 2018) and different impacts depending on the geopolitical location of higher education institutions and the language spoken/adopted in each country (e.g.: Finardi, 2019b). Regardless of this caveat, the expansion of education around the world (in general) and IHE (in particular) is increasing, fueled by global policies such as the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG)1 of United Nations (UN), “Education for All” (EFA)2 of Unesco, and the “World Conference on Higher Education” (WCHE)3 of UN. IHE can be understood as the expansion of academic activities beyond national borders and, in that interpretation, it has become an increasing concern of agents related to the provision of services in the higher education area (e.g.: de Wit, Jaramillo, Gacel-Ávila, & Knight, 2005). As a consequence/agent of globalization, IHE can also be interpreted as the change in the flows of people, goods, information and languages, with consequences in contemporary societies in general and in education in particular (e.g.: Finardi & Rojo, 2015; Finardi & Csillagh, 2016). The clashes between local and global values promoted by globalization (Guimarães, Amorim, Piccin, Finardi, & Moreira, 2019) are interpreted in IHE as a need to glocalize4 as an alternative to current hegemonic practices of IHE (Patel & Lynch, 2013). An example of such clashes is the choice of the language(s) to be used as a medium of instruction at universities (e.g.: Taquini, Finardi, & Amorim, 2017). On the one hand, there has been an increasing movement of “anglicization” of higher education (Knight, 2011a; Ljosland, 2015), with a wide adoption of English as the academic lingua franca (Jenkins, 2014, 2015) while local and non-hegemonic languages struggle to survive in the academia (Ricento, 2006; Shohamy, 2006; Wright, 2016). Examples of such movement can be found in studies about academic publications (and their languages), which show that though Brazil is placed 13th in the global ranking of publications, it does not have (a big) impact in the academic world, because most Brazilian publications are written in Portuguese – a language which is considered non-hegemonic in the academic world (e.g. Finardi & França, 2016). Another example of anglicization is the increasing number of courses offered in English at Brazilian universities, as shown in the Guide5 to English as a 1 More information at: https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ More information at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/jakarta/education/education-for-all/ 3 More information at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000189242 4 It refers to both global and local aspects/values in the internationalization of higher education. 5 More information at: https://www.britishcouncil.org.br/sites/default/files/guide_to_english_as_medium_of_instruction_2018-19.pdf 2 Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 92 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension Medium of Instruction in Brazilian Higher Education Institutions 2018-2019, published by the British Council (BC) and the Brazilian Association for International Education (FAUBAI). The language of academic production also plays a key role in these clashes (Finardi & Csillagh, 2016). Hamel (2013) showed the bias involved in the scientific production, circulation and indexation in the world, when it comes to the choice of language(s). Furthermore, Finardi, Santos and Guimarães (2016) showed the importance of languages in IHE in general, and Finardi and França (2016) showed the correlation between languages and academic production in Brazil, claiming that the academic visibility and impact of Brazilian research is seriously affected by the language in which most of this production is circulated. Whether the emergence of modern internationalization is related to the end of public support to finance higher education in neoliberal times (e.g.: Finardi & Rojo, 2015) or a wish to expand the ability to research (and to produce relevant knowledge in a global scale), higher education institutions around the world and in Brazil are increasingly concerned about becoming “internationalized” (e.g.: Vieira, Finardi, & Piccin, 2018). Other motivations to internationalize include the wish to promote intercultural skills in the local academic community, or still to increase the visibility and competitiveness of higher education institutions in the global scenario (to make profit). In the European context, internationalization has been expanding rapidly, especially after the implementation of the Bologna Process (BP) in 1999, in which the autonomy of universities was challenged. This process affected the decision-makers in higher education (Bianchetti & Magalhães, 2015; Albuquerque et al., 2019), mainly because of decreasing public funding (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Knobel, 2012; Manços & Coelho, 2017) and the choice of the language(s) of instruction (Knight, 2011a; Hamel, 2013; Martinez, 2016; Baumvol & Sarmento, 2016). The BP became a new paradigm for the conceptualization, organization and operation of the higher education enterprise in Europe, since it allowed the transfer of credits among the member universities in order to promote, according to Bianchetti and Magalhães, (2015): a) the compatibility of systems of education; b) student and staff mobility; c) employability of graduates. In the Brazilian context, despite national efforts in the form of public programs and calls such as the Science without Borders [SwB]6, the English without Borders [EwB], the Languages without Borders [LwB]7 (Finardi & Archanjo, 2018) and, more recently, the CAPES PrInt Call [CPC]8 (Guimarães, Finardi, & Casotti, 2019), internationalization is an incipient process (Nicolaides & Tilio, 2013; Amorim & Finardi, 2017). The EwB program was initially launched in 2012 as a complementary program for SwB to develop English language proficiency in Brazilian university students, through the offer of three (free of charge) activities: online courses, face-to-face classes (English for Academic 6 More information at: http://www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br/web/csf-eng/ More information at: http://isf.mec.gov.br/ 8 More information at: https://www.capes.gov.br/cooperacao-internacional/multinacional/programa-institucional-deinternacionalizacao-capes-print 7 Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 93 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension Purposes [EAP] and English for Specific Purposes [ESP]), and proficiency exams (TOEFL). Two years later, EwB was renamed LwB to include other languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL) 9. CPC was launched in 2017 and represents a shift in public funding for IHE, since (unlike SwB) it aims to promote the internationalization of graduate programs in Brazilian universities. These programs are summarized in Table 1. Table 1 Internationalization Programs in Brazil (government-funded) Program SwB Beginning 2011 End 2016 Purpose Mainly academic mobility EwB 2012 2014 LwB11 2014 Present CAPES PrInt Call 2017 Present Development of proficiency in English and preparation for SwB exchange experiences Development of proficiency in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL) Internationalization of graduate programs Audience Mainly undergraduates from STEM10 areas Students and staff of public universities Students and staff from LwB member institutions (public and private) Members of selected graduate programs in a few Brazilian universities Source: Authors Therefore, this study aims at exploring the concept and implementations of Internationalization at Home (IaH), through bibliographic research. It also suggests best practices for IaH, in order to promote a more inclusive internationalization. Innovative approaches to be jointly developed with IaH strategies, such as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and the Intercomprehension Approach (IA), are also discussed, with the purpose of fostering more balanced and inclusive internationalization activities. 1.1. Criticism of Internationalization Authors such as Knight (2004) and Altbach and Knight (2007) suggest that internationalization is seen as a set of policies and practices that higher education institutions develop to deal with the current global academic context. In that sense, there are various indexes to measure the level of internationalization of a given institution: number of publications along with foreign researchers, number of international students in local campuses, number of foreign lecturers12 and researchers, just to name a few (Robson, 2018). However, according to Finardi and Guimarães (2017), these indexes, especially those of rankings, are not adequate to capture the reality of universities in the Global South (De Sousa Santos, 2011) in general, and in Brazil in particular, because they use criteria which favor the 9 Portuguese as a foreign language (PFL) was included to foster incoming mobility. STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. 11 LwB is no longer offered in the same format as when it was launched. In the beginning, universities received direct funding from the federal government , while now they have to manage their own funding to keep the program running. 12 It refers to professors in higher education. 10 Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 94 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension institutions from the Global North, located mainly in English-speaking countries, or the ones which adopt English as the medium of instruction (EMI) as shown in Finardi (2017) in a comparison between Switzerland and Brazil. Examples of such criteria include the number of publications in English or publications coauthored with researchers from the Global North. Another criticism that has been raised against internationalization is made by Vavrus and Pekol (2015), who claim that this process benefits more universities in the Global North than those in the Global South. Likewise, Lima and Maranhão (2009) claim that Brazil has a passive internationalization for it sends more academics abroad than it receives in local institutions, thus, financing universities of the Global North. Leite and Genro (2012) indicate that globalization (and internationalization) promoted the commodification of education, due to policies created for the evaluation of higher education, which are aligned with concepts of hegemony, imperialism and neoliberalism. These authors discuss the emergence of a new form of imperialism (benevolent imperialism) to create strategies connected to the Bologna Process, in order to design a common area of higher education in Latin America, the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union, sustained by hegemonic interests. Indeed, regarding the IHE in the LAC region, Bernheim (2008) distinguishes between IHE and transnationalization of higher education, linking the former to an academic motivation for academic international cooperation with an emphasis on horizontal and supportive relations, and the latter to an economic agenda and the view of higher education as a service or commodity. According to Streck and Abba (2018), in the Latin-American context there is still a strong colonial heritage, which (in education) translates into the adoption of transnationalization models, with their acritical import of supposedly capable and redeeming proposals, often treating IHE as a synonym of development. Moreover, the aforementioned authors claim that IHE can be used to either perpetuate/reinforce the colonization heritage, or to free the colonized from this heritage. Therefore, hegemonic countries generate consequences in non-hegemonic ones (Garson, 2016), because they can promote models and values which deny public spaces and affect democratic subjectivities (Leite & Genro, 2012), through inter-agency relations, accreditation procedures and networks of evaluation agencies (with institutional indicators at the global level). 1.2. Internationalization and Mobility As previously stated, IHE has become a relevant theme in the globalized world, often equated with academic mobility, as defined in the myths (Knight, 2011b) and misconceptions (de Wit, 2011) around IHE. However, academic mobility serves a small part of IHE in academic communities throughout the world, whether because of the high costs associated with it, or due to the high level of requirements for funding and transfer of credits involved in academic mobility programs. In addition, international academic mobility is considered one of the most “visible” internationalization activities (Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2009). One can see international mobility as the geographical displacement of students, faculty or researchers, to a foreign higher Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 95 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension education institution (HEI), for a certain time, to develop academic activities (Wang et al., 2014). Currently, it is estimated that 2.5 million students are studying out of their home countries, and it is expected that in 2020 this number should reach 7 million students (Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2009). Academic mobility can arguably represent an internationalization strategy which goes beyond personal development, and scientific/cultural progress for the institution and region (Souza Júnior, 2010). However, it is remarkable that such activity serves a small part of the academic community. In Brazil, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) 13, 52,515 students participated in a program for academic mobility abroad in 2016. According to UIS, this figure represents only 0.3% of higher education students in that year (UNESCO Institute of Statistics [UIS], 2016). As such, academic mobility is arguably an activity that benefits only a few, perhaps even more so in developing countries such as in Brazil, just as some critics claim that internationalization benefits more the North than the South (De Sousa Santos, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013; Vavrus & Pekol, 2015; Stein & Andreotti, 2016, 2017). Considering the end of the SwB mobility program and the current political/economic scenario of Brazil, it is possible to claim that few people can afford the costs associated with international academic mobility. Besides the economic limitation to finance academic mobility, many Brazilian students cannot meet the requirements for mobility programs, especially in terms of foreign language proficiency (in general) and in English (in particular). Indeed, this was one of the greatest challenges of the SwB program (Altenhofen, 2013; Finardi & Archanjo, 2018) which was addressed, to some extent, by the creation of the LwB program, whose direct financing by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC) was cancelled in May 2019. For many students, especially the ones in the Global South and in Brazil, where the authors of this study work (in a federal university), mobility is a distant reality. Therefore, the authors understand that internationalization needs to be more inclusive, expanding its focus beyond academic mobility, to promote internationalization for everyone, and not for a small part of the academic community (de Wit et al., 2015). As such, the potential of some approaches such as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and the Intercomprehension Approach (IA) are explored by Finardi (2019a) as an alternative to more inclusive internationalization activities, and such approaches will be briefly discussed here. 1.3. Internationalization at Home (IaH) An alternative for promoting inclusive IHE activities which has been gaining worldwide visibility is the concept of “Internationalization at Home” (IaH), which, according to Beelen and Jones (2015), consists of an intentional integration of an international and intercultural dimension into the formal and informal curriculum, for all students, within local/domestic learning environments. IaH is about actions and initiatives that take place on campus, in the academic community, in the classroom, as well as in the incorporation of international, intercultural and/or 13 More information at: http://uis.unesco.org/ Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 96 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension global dimensions into the content of the curriculum, learning outcomes, and teaching methods (Leask, 2015), to promote internationalization in local campuses. Among the possible activities of IaH, one can mention the internationalization of the curriculum, the inclusion of aspects related to intercultural and international dimensions into the process of teaching/learning, relationships with local ethnic groups, welcoming international students at local campuses, the presence of foreign lecturers, etc. As an alternative to current IHE models, IaH has gained attention in the academic area, becoming an increasingly explored and inquired topic. A bibliographic search of related terms in Portuguese and English using the terms “internacionalização em casa” OR “internationalization at home” AND “ensino superior” OR “higher education” in the Google Scholar search engine (considering the last 10 years) shows a significant increase in the publications about this topic, as shown in the figure below. 400 Number of publications 350 321 338 300 250 200 237 2015 2016 172 150 93 100 229 60 70 73 2010 2011 109 50 0 2009 2012 2013 2014 2017 2018 Figure 1. Number of publications about IaH between 2009 and 2019 (Source: Authors). Considering this trend and the objective of this study, we aim to explore ideas around IaH, looking for alternative practices for the promotion of internationalization beyond international mobility, expanding the impact of internationalization initiatives within the context of higher education institutions [HEIs] (in general) and in the context of Brazil (in particular). With that aim, the next sections explore two approaches to more inclusive and multilingual practices involved in IHE that may prove relevant. 1.4. Internationalization, languages, and the affordances of the COIL and Intercomprehension approaches Due to the centrality of language (Spolsky, 2004) to education in general and to internationalization of higher education in particular (e.g.: Finardi, Santos, & Guimarães, 2016), and following the suggestions in Finardi (2019b), some approaches are discussed in this Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 97 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension subsection as possible alternatives to be jointly developed within IaH actions, so that local needs can be considered in the face of global demands. The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) approach was developed at the State University of New York (SUNY)14 and its designers propose the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote international learning experiences (which can be considered “virtual mobility”), especially for students who do not have the opportunity or resources to participate in academic mobility programs which demand geographical displacement. A recent study carried out by Hildeblando Junior and Finardi (2018) analyzed 23 COIL experiences, concluding that though COIL may be an interesting alternative to academic mobility (in the form of virtual mobility), this approach should be used to expand the use of languages (beyond English) and approaches to incorporate the Intercomprehension Approach. The Intercomprehension Approach (IA) was developed within the context of the European Union to promote multilingualism among speakers of similar languages such as the romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, for instance). Doyé (2005) states that IA is a form of communication in which each person uses his/her own language and understands that of the others. In other words, it is the ability to understand other languages without having previously (and intentionally) studied such languages, and without extraordinary effort (European Commission, 2012). Various authors discussed the possibilities, limitations and recommendations for the use of IA, such as Meissner (2010), De Biase (2013), Araújo e Sá and Simões (2015) and De Oliveira (2016). These studies indicate that IA can be a relevant approach for countries which use romance languages (as in the case of Portuguese, in Brazil), especially for the promotion of multilingualism. Indeed, Finardi (2017) claims that this approach can be used to counteract the hegemonic use of English in Brazil. In addition, IA can give space for other romances languages such as French, Spanish and Italian, because the teaching of these languages was jeopardized by educational reforms that made English the mandatory foreign language in elementary education in Brazil. In addition, IA can be seen as an alternative (or complementary activity) to the use of a lingua franca (LF), because a “non-critical” use of a LF (Doyé, 2005) can have serious consequences related to issues related to linguistic imperialism, insufficient communication, devaluation of the mother tongue, and the impossibility of using a LF without the ideologies and practices associated with that language. 2. Materials and Methods For the purpose of finding relevant bibliography to compose a corpus for analysis, the authors used the Google Scholar search engine to find articles published in 2019, using the expressions “internationalization at home” OR “internacionalização em casa” AND “higher education” OR “ensino superior” – yielding 144 results. The first criterion for the exclusion of articles was their titles – those which were not directly connected to the main theme of this study 14 More information at: http://coil.suny.edu/ Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 98 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension were removed from the corpus, yielding 37 articles. A second criterion included the relevance of the studies according to their abstracts – relevance of studies was determined by the presence of definitions of IaH, the implementation of IaH activities in the context of higher education institutions, the year of publication, and keywords (in titles and abstracts) such as: internationalization, universities, research, staff, mobility, experiences, activities, curriculum. After reading the abstracts of these remaining articles, 10 of them were chosen, according to their relevance for this study. Among the 10 articles that compose the corpus, 5 of them explore concepts and implementations of IaH and the other 5 represent case studies of specific IaH activities. A discussion of IaH based on the 5 conceptual articles is offered first, followed by a systematic analysis of the case studies (of specific activities) presented, considering best practices in IaH. 3. Results and Discussion As mentioned earlier in this study, IaH is a topic which has increasingly been discussed in the higher education area. Table 2 presents the 5 publications chosen, which explore the concepts and implementation of IaH. Table 2 Concepts about IaH Authors Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019 Title Internationalisation at home in Finnish higher education institutions and research institutes Harrison, 2016 Internationalising the curriculum: internationalization at home and engaging academic staff Almeida et al., 2019 Understanding internationalization at home: perspectives from the global north and south Intercultural dialogue for internationalization at home: the case of Albanian universities At-home international education in Vietnamese universities: impact on graduates’ employability and career prospects Panajoti, 2019 Nghia, Giang, & Quyen, 2019 Concept of IaH The dimensions, processes and international/intercultural activities implemented in higher education for the development of intercultural competences, for all students and staff. IaH focuses on the people who do not participate in international mobility programs. Activities to offer opportunities for students who do not participate in mobility (so that they can have similar benefits), including the ability to understand different points of view and improve the skills for intercultural interaction and critical thinking IaH definitions are not clear. The singularity of this concept (IaH) is based on the epistemology of equity that is embedded in IaH Attention to the internationalization of the experiences of students and staff at the local campus, which outnumber the people who participate in mobility An alternative to mobility, in which students can acquire international and intercultural elements integrated to the formal and informal curricula, while staying at their home country Source: Authors The authors observed the centrality of the inclusive aspect of IaH within the concepts presented in the articles chosen – such aspect aims to promote intercultural experiences which are beneficial for all. Some other aspects related to IaH highlight the possibility of getting results Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 99 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension similar to the ones provided by international mobility, without the need of displacement. Therefore, one can see the notion that international and intercultural competences can be equally developed through IaH activities, allowing all academic community (not a small part of it, engaged in international mobility) to be in contact with intercultural experiences (Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019). As such, IaH is arguably a means, rather than an end in itself. It is an instrument to reach the goal of providing students, in their educational process, with international and intercultural skills, which are relevant for the globalized world in which we currently live. The benefits and challenges of IaH were summarized in Table 3 below. Table 3 Benefits and Challenges for IaH Authors Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019 Harrison, 2016 Almeida et al., 2019 Panajoti, 2019 Nghia, Giang, & Quyen, 2019 Benefits of IaH It offers global perspectives in study programs for all students and includes international and intercultural perspectives in the standard curriculum; diversity in the classroom is integrated to learning; opportunities for virtual mobility; purposeful integration with foreign students. The development of the ability to use multiple points of view; improve the skills for intercultural interaction and critical thinking It promotes the equality of access to international university experiences (since most students do not participate in mobility); also integrates foreign students The adoption of IaH strategies would benefit universities, making the students competent for a more connected and diversified society It helps students to develop human capital, expand social networks, improve the cultural understanding, improve the adaptability of the career and develop a professional identity; it contributes for the development of contextualized employment competences in students Challenges for IaH Teachers think that they are internationalizing the curriculum when they use English as a medium of instruction. Teachers need to be trained for the multicultural classroom, with an intercultural pedagogical training; students need intercultural skills to facilitate interaction with other students Many students do not feel comfortable in the interaction with foreign students Lack of governmental acknowledgement; lack of engagement of educators. IaH cannot be understood without the internationalization of the curriculum, which includes a relevant role for teachers in this process. IaH is more demanding than mobility because it requires efforts from universities, staff and units – especially teachers. Decide the level of the internationalization of the curriculum; the skills and the availability of teachers who are familiarized with international practices and standards; the academic skills and learning styles of students, resources, facilities and services for academic support Source: Authors A recurring theme in the comments about the benefits of IaH is the integration promoted by its activities for international students at local campuses – “participants view IaH as a mechanism that should support the social integration of diverse individuals in higher education” (Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019, p. 31). The interaction with people from other realities and cultures, promoting conversations with other knowledge and people, can be said to be beneficial for the education (in general) and for IHE (in particular). This interaction is also important to expand knowledge and perspectives for each field of education worldwide – to understand how occupations function around the globe, for instance. For this reason, one can see Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 100 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension that IaH (through activities which promote the interaction with international students) can promote critical thinking and important skills to adapt to cultural diversity. An IaH activity suggested by Harrison (2016) is the “positive use” of international students at local campuses as a resource for teaching, where they can act as promoters of IaH at the host institution. Accordingly, Weimer, Hoffman and Silvonen (2019) suggest that local students act as tutors of international students at local campuses. Consequently, international students should be encouraged to share their cultural experiences, and lecturers should promote the production of knowledge in partnership with such students, since the interaction with foreigners is a possibility for the development of intercultural skills, so that academic partners can develop mutual trust for dealing with people from various cultural backgrounds (Harrison, 2016). At the same time, this intercultural exchange should not be limited to international students at local campuses, because online learning environments can also be used to foster intercultural skills. In fact, information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the digital age can be very useful in IaH because they can promote international experiences (Almeida, Robson, Morosini, & Baranzeli, 2019) through online activities for learning and online collaboration (Nghia, Giang, & Quyen, 2019). Weiner, Hoffman and Silvonen (2019) recommend the use of online courses with students from different countries (as an IaH activity), who perform joint tasks and get together through web conferencing systems, much in the same format as suggested in the COIL approach. The aforementioned authors also suggest that HEIs promote the participation of international lecturers in local courses, with the use of web conferencing tools. Another IaH activity mentioned in the analyzed studies is the internationalization of the curriculum, so that such curriculum should be remodeled according to “real world” problems and global perspectives (Harrison, 2016). For Panajoti (2019), an internationalized curriculum should promote intercultural skills in the processes of teaching and learning. Nonetheless, when dealing with an internationalized curriculum, some lecturers might think that it is simply about teaching with the use of a different language of instruction, as in EMI or Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), when in fact such curriculum deals with the adaptation of the content to be taught (Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019), in order to expand the views of students beyond the ones they have in their own cultures/countries. Consequently, IaH comes along with challenges. In the studies analyzed here, one can see a lack of engagement and training of faculty and administrative staff to deal with multicultural aspects, as well as a lack of knowledge about the topic of internationalization. One of the challenges mentioned in the studies is that the sole contact with cultural diversity is not enough for students to develop intercultural skills – it is necessary to establish measures to ensure engagement and interaction (therefore, the role of the lecturer is essential). Lecturers should be aware and prepared to promote cultural interaction. Concerning the challenges discussed above, the authors recommend training sessions, so that faculty members can understand and implement IaH. Other ways to promote IaH would be Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 101 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension evaluating lecturers in relation to the use (or not) of IaH activities and reward lecturers who implement innovative strategies for IaH (Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019). One of the studies analyzed also mentions challenges related to the discomfort of students when participating in workgroups with international students (whether online or face-to-face). One of the concerns is that foreign students may hinder the performance of workgroups, due to difficulties in communication related to languages, and due to the fear of disagreements related to cultural differences (Harrison, 2016). Therefore, the authors of the present study noticed a lack of preparation of students and faculty to deal with cultural differences and language barriers. For this reason, one suggests the inclusion of intercultural perspectives in the formal curriculum to prepare students for intercultural contact, the implementation of language courses for all academic community with the inclusion of multilingual approaches such as the IA, and the creation of mandatory courses on intercultural communication for all careers (Weimer, Hoffman, & Silvonen, 2019). The proposals presented by the authors cited in this study are just some of the many activities related to IaH that could be implemented in HEIs. In the following table, five case studies from 2019 are analyzed, looking for the best practices in IaH. Table 4 Case Studies Authors McCollum et al., 2019 Lee & Cai, 2019 Carlson et al., 2019 Machado, 2019 Title Overcoming barriers for implementing international online collaboration assignments in Chemistry Evaluation of an online “internationalization at home” course on the Social Contexts of Addiction IaH Activity Online collaborative tasks, pair work activities Instrument Video conferencing software Conclusion Students were successful for overcoming barriers Moodle Platform, discussions forums, lecturers from various countries Development of awareness concerning the different social and cultural contexts; students recognized the universality of their field of knowledge; changes in opinions about their own cultures and societies Nursing students’ perceptions of peer learning through crosscultural student-led webinars: a qualitative study Online interactive course about cultural differences. The final assessment was evaluating an article written by colleagues from other countries Presentation of online seminars; groups of 10 students with (at least) two members of each country “Zoom” platform for audio and video interactions Os MOOCs como possibilidade para internacionalização da Use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Educational environments available through the web Learning based on the interaction among students was better than expected; this activity created new opportunities for internationalization, without compromising individual and institutional financial resources Establishment of meaningful learning, development of attitudes and professional knowledge through interaction; intercultural competences; development Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 102 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension Hyett et al., 2019 educação superior em casa15 Trialing virtual intercultural learning with Australian and Hong Kong allied health students to improve cultural competency Students enrolled in three different courses, in two universities. Blended learning: face-to-face and online classes Not specified of cognitive and noncognitive skills. Development of intercultural skills using experiences out of the “comfort zone”, in which students learn during intercultural experiences and interactions Source: Authors In all the IaH activities analyzed, there was interaction among students from various nationalities, brought together by information and communication technologies (ICTs). As previously discussed, technologies are important tools for IaH. Technology-based activities could promote equal access to internationalization opportunities, for all students (Beelen & Jones, 2015) and we think that they can be used in a COIL format together with IA to potentialize these benefits. Considering limitations to academic mobility/displacement (such as decreasing funding and restrictive migration policies – e.g. Wright, 2008), advances in ICTs created more options for IaH in the form of virtual academic mobility. As such, ICTs can promote more opportunities for all students to get involved with colleagues and lecturers who are located in geographically distant areas, in order to produce knowledge and raise intercultural awareness and skills (Bhat & McMahon, 2016). Like mobility, IaH initiatives that use ICTs have the potential to facilitate experiences for a transformative and intercultural learning experience, in order to build intercultural competencies fostering employability in increasingly globalized and cosmopolitan societies (Hyett et al., 2019). The interactions in these virtual exchanges can happen through discussion forums (text, audio or video) and evaluation activities which should be jointly developed, promoting exchange of knowledge. However, one of the studies analyzed by the authors indicates that online interaction (by itself) among students is not enough – “faculty presence and direct instruction has been found to be essential to depth and quality” (Lee & Cai, 2019, p. 375). It is essential for the success of IaH that educators understand and value the cultural diversity of students across courses and classrooms (Hyett et al., 2019). It was possible to verify in the studies analyzed that IaH activities can be developed to promote online collaborative interaction and virtual academic mobility among participants of different countries, fostering the development of intercultural skills, without the need to participate in international academic mobility. Therefore, by integrating this type of activities into classes and curricula, lecturers can create a favorable learning environment for the internationalization of institutions and for educating global citizens. Moreover, one of the assumptions of this paper is that when virtual mobility activities in the form of COIL are 15 Title in English: MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) as a possibility for the internationalization of higher education at home. Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 103 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension expanded with the use of the IA, the inclusion of more languages, peoples and knowledge can be potentialized. 4. Final remarks Considering the objective and results of this study, we suggest that IaH is a relevant alternative for HEIs to integrate international and intercultural perspectives into the experiences of students, whether they occur through virtual collaboration or at the local campus, especially because IaH can serve a larger part of the academic community. When IaH is expanded through the use of virtual mobility (in the form of COIL) and the use of the IA, the audience can be significantly expanded to other languages and knowledges. For the purpose of IaH implementation, the use of technologies for interactive collaboration among students from different countries, within a formal curriculum, with constant intervention of educators, is seen as a token of good practice. Taking this into account, it is necessary to develop more research to analyze and develop IaH activities which are more inclusive and comprehensive. Acknowledgements This study was developed within the context of the Center for Studies in International Relations as the Federal University of Espirito Santo (NERI-Ufes). Author Kyria Rebeca Finardi would like to thank Fapes for support (Edital Fapes Universal 03/2017). Simon Fraser University Educational Review Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 2019 / sfuedreview.org 104 Internationalization at Home, COIL and Intercomprehension References Albuquerque, C. P., Seixas, A. M., Oliveira, A. L., Ferreira, A. G., Paixão, M. P., & Paixão, R. P. (2019). Higher education after Bologna. 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