Transnational Communications in Action: A Critical Praxis

Abstract

This article examines two video-conferences between students in the UK and USA as illustrate examples of the possibilities of transnational communications as a critical praxis in contemporary university settings. The Trans-Atlantic Classroom project offer theoretical and practical insights into the hands-on uses and perceptions of digital media and communication technologies by culturally diverse student bodies in different locations. At the time and on reflection we note how this undertaking throws into relief a ‘disconnect’ in the way institutions, academic staff, and students regard the relationship between research excellence, higher learning, and virtual technologies in a digital age. Tracing the project through its genesis, student-led implementation and follow-up in light of critical pedagogy literature and debates about information and communication technologies in learning and teaching, we reflect on what happened as participants left their respective intellectual comfort-zones to collaborate with distant others and each other in a computer-mediated scholarly undertaking.