Exploring Cultural Horizons: Connecting with Asia via Videoconferencing

Abstract

More than ever Australian school students need to develop a strong understanding of Asian culture as both a social and an economic priority. This has been recognised in the cross-curriculum priority, 'Asia and Australia's Engagement with Asia', of the Australian Curriculum and now needs to be realised in Australian schools. School students in rural and remote Australia have limited opportunities to engage with Asian people and learn about their culture. The 'Australia-Korea ConneXion' (AKC) Program digitally connects Australian and Korean schools to develop cultural exchange. In particular, lessons incorporating videoconferencing enable interactions that enhance the cultural values and attitudes of the students involved. While recognising the potential of videoconferencing to enrich their students' experiences of other cultures, teachers in rural and remote schools may not feel confident in the practicalities of incorporating videoconferencing into lessons to connect their students with students in other countries. This paper aims to inform teachers, who may want to their classes to engage in such an experience, on the analysis of lessons utilising video-conferencing as part of the AKC Program. Each Australian school in the program is connected with a school in Korea and the students synchronously engage in a series of lessons. Although, there is a cultural focus, each pair of teachers has flexibility in the choice of lesson content. Guidance is provided for teachers who might want to begin videoconferencing with classes in another country, in this case Korea. This includes steps from making first contact with the Korean teacher to planning the learning, setting up the technology and finally facilitating the lessons. As part of research evaluating this program, a rubric was developed to code the quality of a videoconferencing lesson. Data was collected from lessons between five pairs of schools. Analysis of the coding provides insight into the videoconferencing lessons and a range of pedagogical and technological advice to assist teachers in improving the quality of their use of videoconferencing to connect students and allow them to explore new cultural horizons.