Finalist

Innovation and Collaboration Space of the Year Award

Virtual innovation and collaboration space

Finalist of the Innovation and Collaboration Space of the Year Award

Falmouth University - United Kingdom

"Better together: The benefits of co-creating in an innovative and collaborative space."


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Summary

We are Dr. Sue Langford, Academic Partnership Manager, Cornwall Business School, Falmouth University Cornwall, UK and Blaise DePaolo MFA, Associate Professor of Sculpture, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. We created and team taught a virtual international exchange that brought Morgan community art students and Falmouth social action students together in cyber space for four weeks in the summer of 2021. When the pandemic forced academia to pivot to online education a whole new realm of possibilities opened up for student interaction across borders. Without the expense of travel, and with state-of-the-art video conferencing, Morgan State University, an HBCU (Historically Black College or University) and Falmouth University, a TWI (Traditionally White Institution) students came together to work in teams to develop either a social enterprise proposal or a public service announcement. Our collaboration brought science, science fiction, art, sustainability, social justice, and social entrepreneurship together, all while widening the aperture of the national lens to the international lens for our students.

Key People


Professor E.Blaise DePaolo MFA
Associate Professor of Sculpture
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA



Dr. Sue Langford
Academic Partnership Manager
Cornwall Business School,  Falmouth University Cornwall, UK


Acknowledgements

In Praise of Professional Development:
Both Falmouth and Morgan State University were prepared to meet the challenges posed by Covid. One of Morgan’s responses was to offer an opportunity to participate in a six-week online training course given by DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. The course provided a roadmap of best practices in conducting an International Virtual Exchange experience. Without the training the process by which the collaboration was conducted would not have been as seamless as it was, given we were pioneering international virtual exchanges at our respective institutions.

Images

Falmouth University

Falmouth University

Morgan State Logo

Falmouth Uni Logo

Student

Morgan State Uni

Blaise and Sue on-line

Student satisfaction data

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

At a time when student engagement in higher education was low across the world, and students were physically and emotionally isolated, the opportunity to interact with an intercultural cohort was extremely attractive. Working in groups, students gained invaluable cultural competencies by interacting with peers internationally, mirroring the collaborative workforce model of today’s global economy. One outstanding story from this collaboration was Mark’s, a student who often struggled to attend in-person sessions and felt awkward and often excluded by his own peer group. In this online environment, working with a new cohort of students, he was able to fully engage and thrive, producing a highly creative and informative Public Service Announcement addressing men's mental health. He sums his experience up in the following quote, ‘The collaboration element of the class is eye-opening and beneficial not just in the classroom but to life. The information shared, gained and found is uniquely connected through the class - something which cannot be artificially replicated’. He had found a connection that allowed him to realise his true potential, only made possible by this space.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’
There were many obstacles to overcome in the planning of this exchange. At any given point along the six-month journey of planning, we could have given up because the circumstances were not ideal, but we cheered each other on. What made the collaboration such a success was the technology. It was critical that we were not technology adverse, had kept up with our skills and added to them to create a successful online experience. What we discovered is that students are attracted to unique experiences that take them outside of the confines of a traditional learning space. Creating a curriculum in virtual space allowed us to collaborate with anyone globally. This enabled us to invite diverse guest speakers who otherwise would not have been able to interact with our students. We discovered that professionals and stakeholders from industry were as interested in interacting with our students as we were with them. Without the expense and inconvenience of travel, we were able to bring in a great diversity and variety of speakers and networking opportunities that in a traditional classroom would not have been possible. Our advice to you is to embrace interdisciplinary partnerships because they create space for the unexpected.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

Now that we have pioneered the framework for virtual cultural interaction in higher education, we are highly motivated to build upon it. We now know what works, what doesn’t work, and are keen to realise the full potential of this collaborative and innovative space. In the digital age, authentical student engagement is the highest aspiration, we demonstrated an effective strategy to address this issue. It is a thrilling and exciting time to be part of higher education!


KEY STATISTICS

2

Diverse Universities: Unlimited Learning opportunities

92.4%

Student satisfaction

72% of the students

Rated the speaker series as very good or excellent

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