Introduction
Adults aged 25 years and older account for a significant portion of higher education enrollment (OECD, 2022). As current and aspiring professionals, adult learners need access to learning and engaging with colleagues in different cultures, practicing intercultural communication skills, and examining the global, interconnected dimensions of their chosen fields. Adult learners—particularly those in graduate programs—are often in leadership roles where they can model global and intercultural awareness, diversity, knowledge, and skills for others.
Virtual exchanges offer an avenue for expanding adult learner access to global learning. These exchanges use technology to connect people in different parts of the world, and promote and expand the inclusion of diverse and underrepresented learners (e.g., Sabzalieva, et al., 2022). Minimal attention has focused on the unique needs and priorities of adult learners in order to fully participate in virtual exchanges (e.g., Stevens Initiative, 2020). In this article we review key principles of adult learning and learners, and offer design suggestions for virtual exchanges that maximize learning for this population and support diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. We draw on the virtual exchange literature and our experiences conducting Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects with graduate students in the United States, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Saudi Arabia.
Understanding Adult Learners
Virtual exchanges for adult learners should be designed with their learning preferences, priorities, and constraints in mind. These considerations will shape their experience and possibilities for activating deep learning. Adult learners are typically self-directed and goal-oriented (e.g., Jarvis, 2010; Knowles, et al., 2005; Merriam et al., 2007). They exercise greater autonomy over their learning and seek relevance to personal goals. Adults tend to possess a more fully developed sense of self. Their life experiences serve as reference points when encountering new ideas and experiences. As working professionals, adult learners may have spent extensive time training and working in their field that will inform how they engage with new knowledge, perspectives, and skills (Kolb & Kolb, 2017). Experiential learning is a powerful strategy to activate critical reflection. Virtual exchanges require adults to engage with diverse people and perspectives in ways that prompt reexamination of their lived experience and new understandings about people, ideas, cultures, their profession, and the world.
Unlike younger learners pursuing a higher education degree may be secondary to an adult’s work, family, and community responsibilities (e.g., Bergman, 2021). Study abroad can feel out of reach or not a priority. By removing the financial, logistical, and physical challenges of travel, virtual exchanges expand access to all adults including those from traditionally marginalized and underrepresented groups. For adults with little international travel experience, these virtual encounters with individuals from all over the world can provide a low-risk entry point for future in-person travel.
Design Considerations
These design considerations can broaden adult participation and incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion to optimize learning in the virtual exchange. While many are common to all virtual exchanges, these strategies specifically address adults’ practical realities and ways of knowing. Suggestions center on logistical and instructional supports for adults to communicate, collaborate, and learn in intercultural encounters.
Time Differences and Scheduling
Adults with inflexible work schedules and caretaking responsibilities often have an extremely difficult time navigating different time zones to participate in synchronous exchanges. In response, we limit synchronous whole-class meetings, schedule such meetings well in advance and record them, increase asynchronous communication, and delegate responsibility for determining when and how to communicate to the smaller intercultural learner teams. Team members then devise a communication plan that works best for them.
Technology
As the use of technology continues to expand, online collaborations and partnerships have led to making social connections, sharing experiences, and creating new knowledge with rapid dissemination (Scott, 2015). To facilitate full participation, we use communication platforms that can record and produce written transcripts. Recording meetings provides learners with the opportunity to review information and continue to participate in the project. This supports accessibility, language assistance, schedule conflicts, and internet connectivity challenges.
Learners have many options when choosing technologies for communicating and completing assignments. Adults who did not grow up in the digital era may need additional time and support to select and use appropriate technologies (Dimock, 2019). When designing and evaluating assignments and activities, we weigh priorities for intercultural relationship-building and idea exchange with the learning curve to use specific technologies.
Adult Learner Matching
Matching adult learners with international peers offers many possibilities for deepening professional knowledge, connecting on a personal level, and expanding collegial networks. We leverage adults’ specialized knowledge, training, and real-world experiences to explore common challenges and diverse solutions that can spark new insights about their profession and world. Adults can also connect on a personal level when they share multiple identities as learners, workers, caretakers, and community members. Relationships that begin in a virtual exchange create opportunities for continued communication and collaboration.
Intercultural Teamwork
The foundation of any successful international collaboration is understanding and addressing power dynamics. Uneven power can shape “the knowledge that is made relevant and the terms under which the exchanges are set out and implemented” (Helm & Guth, 2022, p. 275). Although present for all learners, for adults these power dynamics may include—but are not limited to—language, hierarchy, and professional roles. English is often the language used in international collaborations and may result in an unequal balance of power (Helm & Guth, 2022; Stevens Initiative, 2022). Every culture has expectations regarding roles and hierarchy related to positions of power that privilege some voices over others. Adults bring established conceptions regarding these power arrangements that may differ from those of their counterparts. Adults in positions of authority may need to renegotiate their ways of communicating to be collaborative, intercultural team members. These are opportunities to enhance communication and teambuilding skills. A few strategies to support intercultural teamwork for adult learners include:
- Prioritize class time for learners to safely debrief about their teams; discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion; explore cultural differences; reflect on their professional roles; and share team-building strategies. For example, doctoral students pooled their collective personal and professional knowledge and skills to strategize ways to reduce their privilege (i.e., age, leadership role, and language) to encourage participation from their international counterparts.
- Focus on the specific skills that each learner brings to the collaboration. For example, learners in a graduate course at a partnering university had acquired technology skills that the multigenerational teams relied on to develop the presentation.
- Create opportunities for adult learners to practice intercultural two-way communication skills. For example, graduate students introduced both languages as part of their presentations.
Conclusion
Virtual exchanges hold exciting possibilities for expanding adult access to global learning by removing obstacles to in-person travel. When designed to accommodate adult learner preferences, priorities, and constraints, virtual exchanges offer authentic opportunities for adults to step out of familiar roles to engage with new perspectives and practice intercultural collaboration. Virtual exchanges hold potential for professional growth and expanded collegial networks. Adult engagement with diverse perspectives and enhanced intercultural communication skills can also benefit their organizations and communities.
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