PROFILING DIGITAL AND COLLABORATIVE COMPETENCIES IN INTERNATIONAL ONLINE LEARNING (COIL) IN ...

PROFILING DIGITAL AND COLLABORATIVE COMPETENCIES IN INTERNATIONAL ONLINE LEARNING (COIL) IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Maria Del Pilar Garcia-Chitiva, Tecnologico De Monterrey, Mexico

(Presented at the International Conference on Research in Education and Science (ICRES) which took place on April 27-30, 2024, in Antalya, TURKEY (https://www.2024.icres.net/) and at the International Conference on Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology (ICEMST) (https://www.2024.icemst.com/) organized by the International Society for Technology, Education and Science (ISTES) http://www.istes.org).

Collaborative international learning (COIL) is one of higher education's most recently adopted activities, particularly after the pandemic (Zhu et al., 2023). In COIL, students from two countries come together through digital communication tools to participate in academic activities coordinated by faculty from both countries. Despite frequent academic activities, studies analyzing these activities still need rigorous exploration. Although the COIL strategy proposes collaboration as one of the central nuclei, few studies examine the competencies students require for optimal team performance. Possessing digital and collaborative competencies can be a determinant for learning students. This study conducted statistical profiling to identify the relevant collaborative and digital competencies that require further development. Collaborative competencies were examined with the collaboration itself (what happens within the groups) instrument, validated by (Garcia-Chitiva, 2021). The digital skills were examined in terms of the Instrumental, Strategic, and Expansiveness use with the Conde Jiménez (2017) scale. The COIL experience developed in a six-week course with students from two Latin American universities in Ecuador and Colombia. The sample consisted of 65 students, 30 men and 35 women between 18 and 43 years old, belonging to four different disciplinary programs: Bachelor of Social Sciences, Bachelor of Pedagogy, Bachelor of Architecture, and Medicine. The results showed a distribution of the participants' perceptions of collaboration in two clusters. In cluster 1, there is a tendency to perceive high levels of Specialization, Credibility, and Coordination in collaboration while reporting a lower perception of digital competencies. Cluster 2 shows a mirror effect in which there is a high perception of digital competencies and a lower perception of collaborative competencies. This work contributes methodologically to measuring the levels of two crucial competencies for developing online collaborative learning. It provides teachers and researchers with lessons learned to improve this valuable intercultural collaborative learning process.