Best Practices to Effectively Engage Diverse Participants in Virtual Exchange Programming

ABSTRACT:

This article delves into best practices for effectively engaging diverse participants in virtual exchange programming. While global learning experiences are essential for student development, in-person exchanges often face barriers limiting access for underrepresented minority students. Virtual exchange programs present an opportunity to overcome these obstacles and offer inclusive learning experiences. Drawing from Soliya's extensive 20-year experience in impactful program design, this article highlights strategies to expand access and foster inclusion for youth in underserved communities. Key insights include building partnerships with institutions serving diverse demographics, identifying champion educators, and supporting program implementation by addressing specific needs. Additionally, the article emphasizes the importance of inclusive program design, platform accessibility, and trained facilitators to create safe and equitable learning environments. By implementing these practices, virtual exchange programs can empower students from various backgrounds to access meaningful global learning experiences.

Authors:

• Nahid Ahmed | Director of the Connect Program, Soliya

Global learning experiences equip students with a broad range of cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills (Sanger, 2017). While in-person exchanges have played an important role in this aspect, at peak, they only reached 1.7% of youth in the United States (Digest, 2018), and minority students have been historically underrepresented in these programs (Digest, 2018) due to a range of barriers to entry, including access to study abroad programs, financial constraints, and fears of not belonging or being accepted in their host communities (Norton, 2008).

Over Soliya’s 20 years of experience in designing and implementing impactful programs, we’ve found that virtual exchange programming has unparalleled power to expand access to global learning experiences for all students and address these barriers to create greater access for youth in underrepresented and underserved communities. We have engaged diverse participants at over 250 institutions for learning across 37 countries and 31 states in the United States, and below is a snapshot of the diversity of Soliya’s American participants, demonstrating the impact of our efforts.

Breakdown of U.S. students in Soliya's programs compared to U.S. population by race in 2022

*(U.S. Census Bureau, 2022)

In feedback collected through post-exchange surveys from Soliya’s participants in the 2022-2023 academic year, we found that 87% of participants felt that they belonged in the program, 88% felt valued by the other young people in the program, and 89% felt included in all aspects of the program.

The recommendations below are drawn from institutional practices at Soliya that have resulted in the diversification of Soliya’s participants and their positive feelings of inclusion during their virtual exchange experience.

Engaging Partners and Institutional Champions

Engaging diverse participants begins at the planning and design phases. We recommend that you begin by building an understanding of the breadth of diversity factors that exist within the communities you seek to engage. You can then seek out partnerships with institutions that serve those hard-to-reach communities. For example, in the United States, Soliya aims to work with a cross section of youth, hence we forge partnerships with minority-serving institutions, public universities, and community colleges to engage a wide spectrum of youth in underserved communities.

We’ve found that focusing recruitment efforts on institutional partners—rather than individuals —allows us to have a better understanding of the broader opportunities and challenges in different communities. Institutional partners are also more effective in engaging larger, diverse groups of students by drawing upon existing networks to target individual student recruitment efforts, and they can provide critical support in addressing local infrastructural challenges and other obstacles that might affect program implementation.

Once you’ve identified the right partners, it is critical to identify a champion educator who will lead the partnership and the implementation of the program at the partner institution. These champions can be almost anyone at the institution: university administrators, professors, program coordinators, or, in some rare cases, highly motivated students. The common traits they share are a passion for bringing global exchange opportunities to their institution, an understanding of the diversity of the student body, a willingness and capacity to engage different stakeholders at the institution to secure buy-in for your program, and access to one or more groups of students to whom they will offer the program

Building Capacity and Supporting Educators

One of the crucial lessons we’ve learned is that aligning around initial programmatic goals and forging a partnership does not guarantee success. Different institutions and demographics have varied needs, challenges, and access to resources; students are juggling their studies with work and other competing priorities, educators need to make programs accessible to students who have physical or learning disabilities, and educators themselves may have limited resources or support within their institutions to implement new programs. As such, making time to understand the needs of each partner and co-designing effective systems for their participation is critical to successful recruitment and retention.

Here are 3 key ways we’ve supported educators across the globe in recruiting students, implementing our global programs, and engaging diverse participants:

1. Understand the needs of the educators and students, and engage educators around how your program can help meet their goals. Then, support them in building incentive structures that will help them engage their students and achieve your combined learning goals.
2. Develop customizable materials aimed at informing and orienting students around the program, with an emphasis on what they will gain and why it is important to their learning. Often students in underserved communities do not have adequate information about opportunities that exist. This will also help educators recruit and prepare students for your program.
3. Engage champions at one or more partners in building a community of practitioners, where educators can share their experiences, exchange best practices, and learn from each other.

Designing Inclusive Programming

Finally, you will need to ensure that your program content and delivery allow for participants of diverse backgrounds, access, and abilities to engage in your programming in safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments.

Here are the 3 most important considerations in designing inclusive programming:

1. Use inclusive and adaptive technologies, and ensure that your platform accommodates different abilities and learning styles. Having tools such as automatic transcription built in or using platforms that are compatible with assistive devices greatly expands access to students who may otherwise not be able to engage in virtual programs. Since financial constraints often pose a significant challenge for students from underserved
2. In designing your curriculum, consider the needs of your target demographics and how you can create an inclusive space for students to express their identities and perspectives fully. Use these considerations to drive your decision making around which topics you choose to highlight and how you frame them. To bolster participants’ ability to explore diverse perspectives, consider including activities that iteratively build their capacity to be respectful and constructive in their engagement with each other, such as setting ground rules early in the process, and investing in icebreakers that build positive relationships amongst participants.
3. Have trained facilitators lead participants' engagement in program activities and discussions. Facilitators can ensure all students have an opportunity to share their perspectives and be heard, they can type out short summaries for those who might be struggling with technical issues or poor language comprehension, and by paying attention to underlying power dynamics facilitators can support students' ability to dig deeper into the dialogue and address those dynamics constructively.

After each program iteration, we collect feedback from partners and students on how our programs are meeting their needs, and what challenges they continue to face, in order to understand how we can continue to improve our programming and reach more young people in underserved communities. We invite you to do the same so that together, we can harness the power of virtual exchange and enable more students from diverse backgrounds to access meaningful global exchange experiences.

References:

Farrugia, C., & Sanger, J. (2017). Gaining an employment edge: The impact of study abroad on 21st century skills & career prospects in the United States. Institute of International Education Center for Academic Mobility Research and Impact. https://www.iie.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gaining-an-Employment-Edge-The-Imp act-of-Study-Abroad.pdf

National Center for Education Statistics. (2018). Digest of education statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/current_tables.asp

Norton, I. (2008). Changing the face of study abroad. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 55(5), B12. https://www.chronicle.com/article/changing-the-face-of-study-abroad/

U.S. Census Bureau. (2022). U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222