Project leader and national coordinator in Norway, Gunhild Brænne Bjørnstad (Østfold University College), and project coordinator in Zanzibar, Dr. Maryam Jaffar Ismail (The State University of Zanzibar), presented the NoZa – Intercultural Mobility Project at the NERA conference 2023: Digitalization and Technologies in Education - Opportunities and Challenges - OsloMet in Oslo 15th -17th March 2023. NoZa is funded by the NOTED programme administered by DIKU, the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education, for the period from 2019-2024. The project is a cooperation between the two teacher education entities, Østfold University College, the School of Education of the State University of Zanzibar and local schools in both countries. Our quest is to foster a global mindset for future teachers, and to prepare their intercultural competencies in order to be able to work in a complex, changing world. Through this partnership, we want to internationalize teacher education programmes in both institutions, as international dimensions provide crucial knowledge, skills, and attitudes for 21st-century teachers.
#NERA2023
The title of the session #NERA2023 was Learning together – digital challenges and opportunities when designing a joint course across continents. The two presenters used a postcolonial lens to look at the equality of the project, before focussing on the experiences of the project participants with digital tools in the design process of developing their joint course. They further used these experiences to encourage equality when executing the course, implementing certain strategies to ensure access and participation for all students, by using digital tools and platforms.
Digital experiences in the joint course design process
As pointed out by keynote-speaker, Neil Selwyn (Monash University, Australia), digitalisation is not always simplifying our work as educators. The experiences from the project indicate that the initial phase of getting to know each other and brainstorming ideas for a joint course did not benefit much from being forced into a digital sphere during early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Much of the initial work being done online needed to be revised when the project team met in person in August 2022. The creative design workshop that took place in Zanzibar provided the team with inspiration and tools to find common interests and build on each others’ ideas, collaborating at equal grounds to develop the joint course (for more information Learning together - education for multicultural democracies). After the project meeting it was easier for the team to reconnect through the digital platforms, using Teams and WhatsApp for communication in the process towards approval of the course.
Our joint course: Multicultural Pedagogies/Learning together – educating for multicultural democracies
One of the aims for the NoZa project was to develop a joint course to strengthen the future teachers’ intercultural competence through a joint program and practical training in a foreign country, as well as to increase the teacher educators’ capacity of inclusive and innovative teaching practices as good role models for future teachers. Dr. Maryam Ismail says: - We want both student teachers and staff to gain formal and informal experiences, reflect on practices and work collaboratively with local practitioners at schools and departments of education.
Even though the joint course is built on the initial ideas that the project team shared, it has been necessary to develop it with separate course outlines to meet the accreditation requirements of each institution. In Zanzibar, the course is called Multicultural Pedagogies, while in Norway it is named Learning together – educating for multicultural democracies. The joint course itself is ready to launch in the end of March 2023, with four Norwegian student teachers travelling to Zanzibar (Instagram #hiofzanzibar) to meet up with their Zanzibari fellow students. They are getting a real experience of learning and teaching in a culturally different environment, with lectures mainly provided by Zanzibari university lecturers and educational videos provided by the Norwegian staff members. Topics of the course include, amongst others, conceptualisations of culture and multicultural pedagogies, myths and oral traditions, democracies, communities of disagreement and classroom observations. After completing the course also six Zanzibar students will have the opportunity to travel to Norway for classroom observations in Norwegian schools. While in Zanzibar, the Norwegian students may learn Kiswahili through Kiswahili for foreigners if they want.
Educational videos
In the execution of the course, the project team has decided to use educational videos as a tool to engage the students and ensure that also the Norwegian staff contribute with learning and teaching materials. This decision is based on experiences from the early online project meetings, where challenges such as access to technology devices, weak internet connectivity and bad sound provided evidence that synchronic digital teaching methods would not be a good option. Educational videos that have been pre-recorded and made available through a link will be distributed through digital platform such as LMS, Google drive and WhatsApp to the students in advance of the relevant lesson. The communication through WhatsApp is very common in Zanzibar as students tend to prefer this over other digital platforms and the LMS at university. This way the students may download and watch the video whenever they have the opportunity, without being dependent on good internet connectivity. The educational videos have however forced some of the Norwegian staff members to gain more digital competences in creating such videos, which also necessitate the need to build capacity of our partners at SUZA for sustainability purposes.
Take home message …
From a postcolonial perspective, how do digital tools enhance or hinder equality when designing and executing a joint course across continents?
In the presentation, Ismail and Bjørnstad summed up the digital challenges and opportunities in designing a joint course across continents with a ‘take home message…’ for the audience to reflect on:
- The issue of equality in such projects needs to be addressed at an institutional level, in regards to opportunities, capacity building, power structures and economy. Awareness about the needs and potentials of each other’s institution is key to working towards a more equal distribution of voices.
Ismail and Bjørnstad.
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