A cooperative virtual exchange within the economics curriculum: A pilot study on embedding elements of global competence within an economics course

The increasing interconnectivity of the global economy has fuelled higher education (HE) efforts to promote international exchange projects; however, these are not an option for many students. Virtual Exchange (VE) projects have gained traction over the last decade and are now well-established in higher education as a tool to build intercultural communication and global competence (Dooly, 2022; Stevens Initiative, 2023). Building on this established practice, our study contributes to the literature by augmenting a VE with a cooperative group-based learning exercise embedded within an economics module (course), an intersection that remains underexplored in both theory and implementation, and one which we believe combines the benefits of both virtual exchanges and cooperative learning. This combination presents an opportunity for economics students to develop deeper learning of the subjects they are studying while developing elements of global competence. This paper presents a novel pilot cooperative VE learning program between students at a university in the USA and a university in the UK. Students jointly undertake a cooperative learning exercise to produce output for a summative assessment. We measure their intercultural sensitivity, an element of global competence, pre and post the VE and find preliminary indications that this experience positively impacted students, particularly in the dimension of interaction engagement and confidence and particularly for female students and students who are multilingual. The paper contributes to the literature by presenting the novel combination of cooperative learning within a VE, outlining a timeline of practical steps for implementation to support other educators who may want to replicate this project and providing preliminary evidence of the potential impact of such projects on students’ intercultural sensitivity, a key subset of global competence.