Emerging educational technologies for cross-cultural collaboration: Current perspectives and future directions

Emerging technologies, such as virtual worlds, virtual reality, and augmented reality, may have the potential to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration between students from schools and universities in different countries and cultures. Due to the increase in internationalization in education, the development and implementation of such technologies is now required. However, as yet, the particular challenges and future opportunities associated with the use of such technologies has not been fully investigated. We have conducted interviews with teachers in Ireland and China, to establish their perspectives on the use of of emerging technologies, their current practice, and their future needs and hopes. We found that both teachers had experience with the use of emerging technologies, but only the teacher in China was based in a school which implemented such technologies formally, and this was only in recent years. Novelty was identified as a major reason why students would be expected to embrace emerging technologies in the future. The teacher in China also pointed out potential challenges relating to the availability of high-speed internet in parts of China. We suggest that future research should investigate the perspectives of teachers in Ireland, China, and other countries, on the use of emerging technologies for cross-cultural collaboration, in order to develop a more detailed understanding of the specific needs and challenges such international digital collaboration will bring about.