Creative Cross-cultural Connections: Facebook as a Third Space for International Collaborations

Abstract:

As industries are increasingly globalized, our students’ future workplaces require facility with cross-cultural collaboration, yet curricula often remain situated within the home culture. This chapter presents a qualitative case study on a collaborative project between students in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. An overview of the process is given drawing on the experiences of the teachers and students involved, informing a discussion around the issues inherent in the internationalization of the curriculum. Tutors created a shared private Facebook group to connect London College of Fashion students with students at City University Hong Kong and LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore. Students worked on separate but aligned briefs that mirror contemporary working patterns and allowed co-creation of educational experiences beyond the geographic and time constraints of working internationally, specifically addressing issues around global and local communications. The Facebook platform was used separately and collaboratively to support students’ learning and the digitally mediated collaboration allowed for flexibility in when and how education took place, providing a third space for co-creation of learning: a global classroom.

About the book:

This volume examines the diverse ways in which universities and colleges around the world are partnering and collaborating with other institutions to fulfill their missions and visions. University partnerships not only include collaborations between universities but also include university-school (basic education) collaborative partnerships to improve local school systems. The increasing pressures to remove access and participation barriers, and the increasing pressures to mitigate practices restricting free flow of education across borders have created a growing global space for educational services of all types. As a result, traditional institutional boundaries have expanded to better respond to increasing pressures on them by the growing demand for higher education services. The boundaries between educational institutions and other entities such as government, business, and non-profit organizations have become more fluid and this has resulted in increased involvement by institutions, faculty, and students in activities outside the traditional boundaries of the classroom. This edited volume will specifically explore university partnerships for academic and program development.