THE JOURNEY OF SELF EXPLORATION BOOSTS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS

Tóm tắt

Nowadays, lecturers tend to explore creative and qualitative methods in higher education (HE) research across international contexts to gain innovative ways of teaching. The purpose of this research is to examine a new approach to the learning journey of university students and justify how effective it is to HE students. The study was carried out with 50 first-year students at Nguyen Tat Thanh University (NTTU). The first phase involved an augmented reality task in which students created their own “lively” products and reflected on their experience through Flipgrid. Then, students were asked to carry out another task, more reflective and practical. For the task, students were asked to venture into real-life, recording good deeds of normal people or even their own actions that they considered “kind,” and reporting what they found out. Their findings were then introduced to the community around the world as part of “Everyday Kindness Project” via Flipgrid. Then, students were surveyed about their new experience. The number of interactions were analyzed to see if any international communication happened. The results show that triggering students’ self exploration gave them motivations to act and communicate internationally. The study suggests  further research on integrating creative approaches into teaching HE students.