Dovrat, Liz and Passey, Don (2024) A Descriptive Multiple Case Study of the Factors and Practices of Sustainability in Co-Designed Virtual Exchanges. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
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Abstract
Higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world have pursued internationalization policies for various reasons, including preparation of their graduates to thrive by developing their global competences. Virtual exchanges (VEs), online collaborative courses for students in geographically and culturally separate locations, have become a tool of internationalization, especially internationalization at home (IaH). The last decade has witnessed an explosion in the number of VEs and research on the subject. While this research has demonstrated the benefits of VEs for improving global competences and outlined effective VE course design, little research has explored how to sustain VEs after initial implementation. In this thesis, I aimed to fill this gap by describing factors and practices that contribute to the sustainability of co-designed VEs. I conducted a descriptive, multiple case study consisting of six cases of long running co-designed VEs, two primary and four secondary cases, to identify sustainability factors and practices. Interviews with VE facilitators, course documentation, and institutional and national internationalization policy documentations comprised the data set. Assumptions from social constructionism informed the theoretical underpinnings of the research questions and the data collection and analysis. Categories and constructs from implementation science guided the structure of the research questions and the data analysis. My findings indicate the central role of facilitators in VE sustainability, whether through utilizing their existing professional experience and networks or building new professional relationships and social practices. Moreover, they suggest that “flexible fidelity,” the balance between the fidelity of learning objects with adaptations to course design and institutionalization of VEs, contributed to sustainability. The main contributions of this research are highlighting the importance of VE facilitators and their social practices in sustainability, demonstrating the application of constructs from implementation science to small-scale but complex educational programs, and showing the impact of institutional IaH policies and practices on VE sustainability.