Abstract
Culture plays a central role in the creative economy, not only in terms of developing creative products and services but also in terms of shaping the processes by which products are crafted. Among various pedagogical approaches for the development of creative products, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) emerges as a promising vehicle. Educators can leverage audio, visual, and written communications technologies to connect learners from geographically distant cultures and place culture at the center of the creative product development processes. The University of Minnesota Duluth’s introductory class on cultural entrepreneurship, CUE 1001, hosted a semester-long COIL project with Ocean University of China’s Cultural Industries Management program to facilitate such innovation in cross-cultural teams. An ex-post evaluation of the project suggests that learners can appreciate the overall significance of culture when conceptualizing creative services and products. They develop an intercultural mindset and acquire the tools to work effectively in cross-cultural settings. Institutions of higher education can leverage COIL in a variety of domains, while studies comparing traditional and COIL-based approaches can further add to the body of knowledge regarding intercultural awareness and the internationalization of learning in higher education.
Highlights
Culture and the Creative EconomyThe creative economy occurs at the intersection of creativity, culture, and organizations, and it is here that knowledge and skills about a wide variety of cultures are necessary for innovation to occur
Faculty and administrators from University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD)’s Cultural Entrepreneurship (CUE) program and OUC’s Culture Industries Management (CIM) program have worked collaboratively on significant initiatives that led to the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project: a joint UMD and OUC summer course taught at OUC, a dual degree arrangement between the two programs, and a summer study abroad program designed for students in UMD’s Chinese Area Studies program
Scholars have experimented with COIL projects in other contexts, such as in the arts (Kan, 2011), intercultural communications and rhetoric (O’Brien & Eriksson, 2010), marketing (Jie & Pearlman, 2018), design (Asojo, Kartoshkina, Jaiyeoba, & Amole, 2019), and integrated into a study abroad program Esche (2018)
Summary
The creative economy occurs at the intersection of creativity, culture, and organizations, and it is here that knowledge and skills about a wide variety of cultures are necessary for innovation to occur. Individuals and organizations participate in, and contribute to, the creative economy in many different ways: entrepreneurs, leaders, administrators, creators, producers, distributors, and businesses and nonprofit organizations They create cultural value for players in the creative value chain that links creators, producers, distributors, and consumers. Luckman (2013) argues that creatives in the industrialized world will find themselves functioning as sole proprietors working from contract to contract, or as employees in small, medium, and micro-sized enterprises where they are required to work in teams rather than as single individuals Preparing such persons for this workforce demands greater attention to curricula and pedagogies that intersect with culture and identity, developing intercultural awareness and interpersonal communication competencies among creative workers. As regards creative industries, higher education curricula regarding creative industries lack the necessary focus on the intercultural aspects of the product development processes (Luckman, 2013)
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