Digital technologies across universities: A collaboration of AUC and AUP faculty and students

In this community idea exchange we want to report from our own experiences with technology in the classroom. By showcasing a recent co-teaching experiment across two AMICAL Universities (AUP and AUC), we want to show how technology can be used in practice to allow student collaboration across two continents. We connected an undergraduate course on lifespan development at AUC with a course on Personality and Individual Differences at AUP. Students were divided in groups of 3 with two students from AUC and one student from AUP each. They had two tasks to complete:

1. Set up a video conference for the group, get to know each other and complete a discussion task. The meeting was recorded and later analyzed by the participants deploying positioning analysis.
2. Conduct a life story interview with a person outside of class.

The results were evaluated based on grounded theory coding schemes and later discussed in the group. Two sessions about research methods were co-taught by the instructors, one at AUP and one at AUC. Both sessions were recorded and distributed to all students to allow them to revisit the methodological guidelines whenever they felt the need. During the project, the students acquired a several skills: They understood how to set up an online telephone conference, record and transcribe the event. They learned how to conduct an autobiographical interview and discuss and assess the results in a group. They understood how to make use of instructional videos as a blended learning setting. They managed to navigate cultural differences and similarities which often resulted in overcoming prejudices. And, maybe above all, they understood how to coordinate a research project remotely across continents, cultures, and universities.