Marginalisation and Underrepresentation in Virtual Exchange

About the project

This project was funded $19,619 by the Steve's Initiative, and ran between January and October 2021. Dr Müge Satar was co-investigator, along with colleagues from four other international partner universities.

Although Virtual Exchange (VE) is now well established as an impactful mode of studying abroad, various region-specific challenges remain. In some regions and in various contexts, challenges in VE implementation have resulted in some populations being underrepresented and marginalised in global VE networks. 

To explore these challenges, this project used a mixed-method approach. This began with a global survey to explain reasons for underrepresentation in terms of the following challenges:

• political
• governmental
• institutional
• administrative
• technological
• pedagogical
• cultural
• personal

To gain further insights, semi-structured interviews were conducted with instructors, administrators and educational decision makers.

The findings showed that funding for training in VE project design and incentives for VE implementation are especially needed in:

• Africa
• South America
• the Middle East
• Central Asia

Raising awareness is crucial to change the perception that VE is  mainly an opportunity to practice language skills (English) and is only suitable for the humanities. This will help promote VE for all students. It will also contribute to overcoming detrimental language ideologies and linguistic hegemonies.

Publications

Findings from this project are published open access in the Journal of International Students:Alami, N., Albuquerque, J., Ashton, L., Elwood, J., Ewoodzie, K., Hauck, M., ... & Satar, M. (2022). Marginalization and underrepresentation in virtual exchange: Reasons and remedies. Journal of International Students, 12(S3), 57-76.
https://ojed.org/jis/article/view/4665/2338