Abstract

In November 2019, scholars and practitioners from ten higher education institutions celebrated the launch of the iKudu project. This project, co-funded by Erasmus+[1], focuses on capacity development for curriculum transformation through internationalisation and development of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) virtual exchange. Detailed plans for 2020 were discussed including a series of site visits and face-to-face training. However, the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the plans in ways that could not have been foreseen and new ways of thinking and doing came to the fore. Writing from an insider perspective as project partners, in this paper we draw from appreciative inquiry, using a metaphor of a mosaic as our identity, to first provide the background on the iKudu project before sharing the impact of the pandemic on the project’s adapted approach. We then discuss how alongside the focus of iKudu in the delivery of an internationalised and transformed curriculum using COIL, we have, by our very approach as project partners, adopted the principles of COIL exchange. A positive impact of the pandemic was that COIL offered a consciousness raising activity, which we suggest could be used more broadly in order to help academics think about international research practice partnerships, and, as in our situation, how internationalised and decolonised curriculum practices might be approached. [1] KA2 Erasmus+ Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (capacity building in the field of Higher Education)

Highlights

  • AND BACKGROUNDIt is essential for Higher Education (HE) to stay at the forefront of knowledge production and knowledge transfer as well as to prepare students for the ever-changing future

  • We based this study on principles of Appreciative Inquiry3 (AI) (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005; Elliott et al, 2020), focusing on opportunities, appreciating strengths within the project, its consortium partners and their diverse contexts, and inventing the better self through dreaming and enacting the dream even when faced with adversity

  • To build in some chronology, certain themes are repeated in our collective writing to narrate the situation before and after the period when the pandemic threatened to derail the project

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Summary

Introduction

It is essential for Higher Education (HE) to stay at the forefront of knowledge production and knowledge transfer as well as to prepare students for the ever-changing future. Curricula should focus on global knowledge and competences, but at the same time ensure local relevance (Canen et al, 2014; Niemczyk, 2019). Niemczyk (2019:11) argues that “relying solely on the notion of globalisation is limiting, since it neglects the complex interconnection between the global. Higher education institutions (HEIs) should develop competences in students “to recognize [themselves] in the narrative of the interconnected world as well as local realities” (Niemczyk, 2019: 13). HEIs should offer internationalised curricula and provide students with internationalised learning experiences, but in ways that embrace locality and diversity, and enable transformation (Mheta et al, 2018)

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