Digital Storytelling: Meaning-Making of Cultures and Intercultural Competence in a Collaborative Online International Learning Project

The growing impact of globalization on communities underscores the importance of intercultural competence development in higher education. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a platform for global academic exchanges and cross-cultural engagement through digital storytelling, holds significant potential for enhancing intercultural competence. A COIL project focusing on the exploration of culture was designed and implemented in two courses, one in the United States and one in France. This case study examined how digital storytelling was used for students’ meaning-making process of culture and its impact on the emergence of their intercultural competence. We used content analysis of students’ digital stories about culture, their virtual conversations, and reflection papers to answer the research questions. The findings indicated that students used a variety of digital storytelling tools such as personal narratives, visual storytelling, reflective audio narration, and multimodal storytelling to represent their culture. With these tools, students demonstrated emergent outcomes of intercultural competence. This study supports the notion of creating authentic international learning communities in which students effectively use digital technologies to express and negotiate cultural representation. Implications for students, higher education professionals and administrators are offered.