Online Journalism Teaching and Learning Processes Beyond the Classroom and the University: Experiences in International Virtual Collaboration on Multimedia Projects

Abstract

The current media need for employees capable of producing multiplatform content and thriving in collaborative environments. This has made digital journalism one of the fields considered to have the greatest potential today for promoting professional, research, and teaching innovation. In fact, online journalism has played a major role in the renovation of communications curricula over the past two decades. This article examines a case study on a teaching innovation project in online journalism based on the Internationalization at Home (IaH) transversal perspective. It can be considered as the first project examining this perspective in the journalism-teaching field. The examined project was carried out by teachers and researchers of five Ibero-American universities with the aim that virtual international students of the five universities collaborated for the production of multimedia in-depth news reports. The article thus analyses the teaching innovation experience and discusses it in terms of advantages and disadvantages.

Keywords

online journalism teaching innovation IaH Ibero-American

Introduction

Since the turn of the century, news organizations have been immersed in a process of technological, structural, and professional transformation driven by multimedia convergence and the emergence of social networking. This has led the sector to seek for multiskilled journalists capable of cooperating with other professionals in multimedia working environments. Online journalism has played a major role in these transformations and, consequently, in the renovation of communication curricula over the past two decades (Bhuiyan, 2010; Cochrane, 2014; Finberg, 2013; Gillmor, 2016; Greenberg, 2014; Larrondo Ureta & Peña Fernández, 2018; Mensing, 2010; Salaverría, 2011), initially prompted by the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2010.

The School of Communication at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in Spain has been a pioneer in this respect, having introduced as far back as 1996 an elective course in electronic journalism. More recently in 2010, the school made Online Newswriting a mandatory course for all second-year students enrolled in the three undergraduate communication degree programs it offers: journalism, advertising and public relations, and audiovisual communication.

Over the past few academic years, Online Newswriting has served as an incubator for classroom teaching innovation thanks to an educational innovation project (EIP) funded by the UPV/EHU and administered by KZBerri, a research group specializing in teaching innovation with a focus on the development of new methods for teaching online journalism that has received a special mention from the University of the Basque Country for its work related to cooperative and dynamic (IkD) learning. During this time, KZBerri has sought to enhance the teaching–learning process associated with Online Newswriting by adopting an Internationalization at Home (IaH) approach (Beelen & Jones, 2015; De Wit & Leask, 2017) and boosting interactivity in the classroom through virtual collaborative content production assignments (Wächter, 2002) that allow students to work with counterparts in other countries toward a common goal.

In spite of its novelty, IaH is receiving a growing amount of attention at institutions of higher education (Almeida et al., 2019; Beelen & Jones, 2015; De Wit & Leask, 2017; Wächter, 2003). The concept is based on the notion of giving students the opportunity to have an international academic experience without traveling to a foreign country. IaH provides a framework for teaching–learning experiences not related exclusively to foreign language acquisition in which various strategies are employed to foster intercultural exchange. “At home” internationalization opens up new opportunities to refresh courses by incorporating assignments in which intercultural exchange takes place in the form of virtual contact, interaction, and collaboration between students in different countries. This article will examine one such initiative underway at UPV/EHU.

As Beelen and Jones (2015) note, IaH fosters group problem solving in the classroom and the development of critical thinking. While this sounds good in theory, in practice, various aspects of the IaH concept make it difficult to systematically apply at the classroom level, the most important of which is the question of language, which in the case of most IaH initiatives is English. Not all students have the ability to acquire more than one language and, those who do not, may feel inhibited to the point that their academic performance suffers. Students with an instrumental perception of academic success may also not be motivated to participate in educational initiatives that require them to make an extra effort to communicate in a foreign language and collaborate with peers in another country.

Teaching projects with an international dimension produces results at two levels: the institutional, which is measureable in terms of the number and quality of collaborating partners, and the academic, which is measureable in terms of intercultural competences a student acquires by means of the initiative and the ability that he or she develops to function in an international context. The EIP examined here constitutes one of the first in which professors teaching and students enrolled in online journalism courses offered simultaneously at universities located in Latin America and on the Iberian Peninsula have been involved in a collaborative IaH learning experience. This analysis will therefore attempt to determine to what extent international learning experiences involving journalism students in various countries replicate the working experiences of international teams of journalists and what benefits they offer beyond fostering multilingualism at the university level. In other words, this article highlights the professional development training interest of online journalism IaH experiences in comparison with other journalistic and nonjournalistic disciplines.¹

A Professional and Academic Framework for Innovation in Online Journalism

University communications professors are looking for ways to align their teaching methods with labor market demand; in other words, to ensure that graduating students have acquired the skills and competences that sector businesses expect entry-level employees to have today. According to the criteria established by the Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation, a competent 21st century journalist is a professional capable of communicating not only in the languages of traditional media but in combinations of these media in digital formats (multimedia) (ANECA, 2005).

For more than a decade, teaching efforts at the university level have centered on exposing students to the potential of cutting-edge technology, which continues to be primarily web based. Instructors have sought to update the teaching–learning process by introducing into coursework innovative tools such as blogs, social media sites, and apps. This focus has been particularly important in the area of online journalism, given that genre’s continual incorporation of new cutting-edge technologies and the web-related professional practices inherent to the field.

Online journalism training began to be offered at the university level in a minor way during the 1990s concurrent with the emergence of digital media. It started out in the form of elective courses meant to complement core curricula that basically reframed content covered in traditional courses on news writing, technology, design, and ethics to suit the new subject (Tejedor, 2006; Anàlisi, 2008).

The consolidation of online journalism in university communication degree programs has been in large part driven by academic research. Within the Ibero-American world, universities in Brazil, Spain, and Portugal have played a particularly proactive role in making online journalism an integral part of curricula thanks to the work of research teams funded in the 1990s through various national R&D programs.

Some of the pioneering groups in Spain in this area are the Laboratorio de Comunicación Multimedia (MMLab) at the University of Navarra, the Laboratorio de Comunicación (LabCom) at the University of Malaga, the Grupo Novos Medios at the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Gureiker Group at the University of the Basque Country, the Laboratori de Comunicació Digital (Digilab) at the University Ramon Llull and the Observatorio de Periodismo en internet (OPEI) at the Complutense University of Madrid. Research groups in Brazil working in the same area include the Grupo de Pesquisa em Jornalismo On-line (GJOL), founded by the Communications faculty of the Federal University of Bahia. Online journalism studies in Portugal are closely linked to the highly successful Laboratorio Labcom.ifp, at the University of Beira Interior (UBI).

Interuniversity collaboration at the international level in the form of transnational networks and research projects has been widely supported in Brazil, Spain, and Portugal (Tarcia & Marinho, 2008). These three countries have provided sustained leadership in the field of online journalism at the professional, research, and academic level and have worked together to develop teaching material related to the subject (Díaz Noci & Palacios, 2008; Palacios & Díaz Noci, 2009).

Online journalism became a mandatory subject in undergraduate communication curricula in Spain and Portugal in 2010 as part of a greater effort to meet new EHEA standards. In her analysis of university-level journalism training during the initial phase of EHEA implementation in Spain, Pilar Sánchez (2016, p 135) concluded that although the changeover from licentiate degrees to “first-cycle” bachelor degrees led to the incorporation of a greater number of courses focusing on new technologies, university communication departments in Spain did not take advantage of this period of change to embed digital and multimedia journalism firmly into their curricula.

New national guidelines for journalism training at the university level introduced in Brazil in 2013 did not extend beyond specifications for existing courses such as Introduction to Digital Media and internet Journalism and Cyberculture (Larrondo Ureta & Fernandes Teixeira, 2019). Researchers and professors in the field of social communication have therefore drawn upon the findings of initiatives such as the one described in this article when developing strategies for updating and improving online journalism courses (Flores Vivar, 2016; Ivars Nicolás, 2010; Larrondo Ureta & Fernandes Teixeira, 2019).

Case Study: A Teaching Innovation Project in Online Journalism

Online Journalism Training at the University of the Basque Country

Online journalism training at the University of the Basque Country began with the introduction of elective courses titled Electronic Journalism and Multimedia Production into its communication curricula in 1996 and Multimedia Electronic Journalism in 1999. As part of the rollout of a new curriculum designed to comply with EHEA standards, Online Newswriting was introduced into departmental curricula as a mandatory course for second-year students enrolled in undergraduate journalism, audiovisual communication and advertising, and public relations undergraduate programs at UPV/EHU during the academic year 2019 to 2020. Approximately 200 students enrolled in these three degree programs at UPV/EHU to take this course every year.

Since its integration in these three curricula, the theoretical and practical content of this course have been designed to foster students’ acquisition of the competences required to create effective messages for online dissemination, produce content in real time, and work collaboratively on digital journalism projects. The teaching methods employed in this course have therefore focused not only on content, genres, narrative styles, and formats but also the skills students need to develop in order to “learn to learn” what they need to know about networked culture and become familiar with the internet media ecosystem (Larrondo et al., 2014). The course has also attempted to contextualize online journalism by covering such topics as the genesis and history of online journalism, the framework under which networked media function, ethical issues specific to the field of online journalism, the evolution of the field in the context of media convergence and the emergence of social media, and trends in multimedia and transmedia website design. The course has focused on providing a dual foundation that covers both the specific skills required in online journalism and more generic journalistic skills applicable to web-based media. This approach has been adopted in order to avoid placing an excessive emphasis on technological and instrumental aspects of journalistic practice that will quickly become outdated.

Practical exercises, which are grounded in the concept of project-based learning (PBL), require students to carry out sophisticated journalistic multimedia and transmedia assignments. Coursework includes the creation and maintenance of a blog and the use of web tools that foster student collaboration on complex digital projects involving various formats such as multimedia and interactive websites and special reports devoted to specific topics. Student output is expected to address the full spectrum of journalistic expression from news writing (news articles, short reports, full-length exposés, and opinion articles) to visual and audiovisual production (video news stories, news articles, photo galleries, infographics, opinion pieces).

This teaching approach requires students to carry out certain established tasks and resolve a series of challenges. On the one hand, they must chart out the content they plan to address, deciding the formats (hypermedia news stories or in-depth reports, video news and audio components, simple infographics, opinion segments, photography galleries, etc.) that will work best for each aspect of the project they are working on while keeping in mind the human resources available to cover each element (number of students involved, who will be responsible for what, who will coordinate these tasks, etc.) as well as the sources and materials available. On the contrary, they must attempt to achieve the highest quality product possible, given the manpower at their disposal and time frame within which they must complete the assignment.

By imposing such a structure, professors seek to replicate in the classroom (especially during lab hours) the conditions under which professional journalists function in the real world. This approach allows students to work in what is basically a simulacrum of a modern newsroom and become aware of the responsibilities that communications professionals at every level (director, content editor, news writer, and search engine optimization [SEO] technician) shoulder on a daily basis. Lab sessions expose students to routine aspects of online content production such as topic selection, planning, website design, and the dissemination of content via social media that allow them to hone their ability to approach subjects from creative, innovative perspectives, and go beyond what they know about media as digital natives.

Another interesting facet of the teaching approach applied in Online Newswriting that sets it apart from other journalism courses is its emphasis on the virtual nature of the medium it addresses. As structured, the course allows students to use tablets, smartphones, and other electronic tools to carry out work in places other than the classroom.

In brief, the ultimate objective is that students interiorise the specific type of planning that online projects require, the rhythm at which the tasks such as projects entail must be carried out, the responsibilities and competences associated with multiplatform content production and management, the need to be constantly aware of new content that sources are generating and user response and reaction to disseminated content, and last but not least, the need to collaborate with other journalists working on their own or other news organizations.

Planning Related to Methodology and Objectives

The EIP on online journalism training examined in this article was carried out by the research group KZBerri at the UPV/EHU during the academic years 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019. Researchers and professors’ main objective was to ensure that students enrolled in Online Newswriting acquired “social” skills they needed in order to thrive in a digital environment as well as the more instrumental and writing skills covered by core communication courses. During the 2017–2018 phase of the project, the course featured a virtual component (Carvalho et al., 2014) designed from an IaH perspective that allowed students to interact with peers taking a similar course at universities in other countries.

First phase

During the first phase of the project, which was carried out under the title “A Cooperative Learning in Online Newswriting through Web 2.0: a Brazilian–Basque Experience”, UPV/EHU teaching staff collaborated with professor Gerson Luiz Martins, lead instructor of Cyberjournalism Lab I, an online journalism course offered at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMGS) in Brazil.

The principal objective throughout the initial year of contact and collaboration was to embed a strong IaH component into the online journalism courses of partner institutions consisting of collaborative active learning projects carried out by means of information and communication technology (ICT) and social media during which students performed similar tasks in tandem with peers in another country whose cultural, social, and learning environment differed from their own.

To this end, students enrolled in Cyberjournalism Lab I at the UFMGS in Brazil and Online Writing at the UPV/EHU in Spain disseminated the multimedia news projects they created in their respective classrooms using Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This allowed students on both sides of the Atlantic to see and comment upon each other’s work and share what they had learned via messages and social media commentaries.

Students were asked to share their opinions about their learning experience at the end of the course and a content analysis was conducted of peer interactions. These exercises revealed three significant issues that had to be addressed before relaunching the project the following academic year: students needed more real-time contact and interaction with their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, the use of English as a vehicular language was difficult for young people accustomed to communicating in their native languages (Spanish and Portuguese), and student commitment to the project needed to be strengthened. The assessment process also included student feedback sessions and a series of events that gave professors involved in the project an opportunity to share their perspectives face-to-face: a workshop organized on 29 November 2017 at the School of Social Sciences and Communication on the UPV/EHU campus, the IX International Congress on Cyberjournalism (Ciberpebi, UPV/EHU, Bilbao), and a Congress on Cyberjournalism organized by the UFMG in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

Second phase

Efforts were made during the second phase of the EIP to improve students’ internationalization experience and identify new and more effective ways of preparing them to practice online journalism.

The second phase of the initiative, which was carried out during the 2018–2019 academic year under the new title “Virtual Collaborative Learning in Online Newswriting: a Brazilian–Portuguese–Basque Experience,” was based on the results of classroom observation sessions and teacher–student discussion groups conducted at all five universities involved in the project (Table 1) described further on in this article.

Table 1.

Participating Universities and Instructors.

University	Teacher	Subject
Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMGS) Brazil	Gerson Luiz Martins	Cyberjournalism Lab I (September–January)
Piauí (UFPI) Brazil	Author	Advanced Web journalism ( September–January)
Covilha (UBI) Portugal	João Canavilhas	Advanced Web journalism (September–January)
Oporto (UP) Portugal	Fernando Zamith	Journalism Techniques II (September–December)
BASQUE COUNTRY (UPV/EHU) Spain	Koldo Meso Ayerdi Jesús Á. Pérez Dasilva Author (Project coordinator)	Online Newswriting /Ziberkazetaritzako Idazkera ( September–January)

The second phase of the project pursued a more ambitious goal: virtual collaboration between students enrolled in online writing courses offered by participating universities. Professors adopted a new pedagogical approach that positioned students as active agents capable of resolving challenges in a professional manner as members of collaborative, international teams. Four project upgrades were implemented:

The scope of the project was broadened to include more universities and hence the number of teachers and students involved.

As can be observed in Table 1, the number of universities participating in the project increased from two (the University of the Basque Country in Spain and the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil) to five: the three new collaborating institutions being the University of Pirauí (UFPI) in Brazil and the Universities of Beira Interior (UBI) and Oporto (UP) in Portugal. To be included in the second phase of the project, candidate schools needed to have the following:

A course similar in terms of content and objectives to the “Online Newswriting” course taught at UPV/EHU in their curricula (Fernandes Teixeira & Larrondo Ureta, 2016). Table 1 provides a list of online journalism courses offered at the universities selected to participate in “Virtual Collaborative Learning in Online Newswriting: a Brazilian–Portuguese–Basque Experience”).

Faculty members recognized for their knowledge of the theoretical and practical aspects of online journalism, their contributions to existing literature on the subject and their active participation in relevant group activities.

Established teaching innovation labs.

Experience in organizing international conferences related to online journalism (the online journalism congress “ObCiber,” University of Oporto, Portugal; the International Congress on Cyberjournalism “Ciberpebi,” UPV/EHU, Spain; and the online journalism conference “CiberJor,” Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil).

b. The course focused more heavily on interactivity, especially in the classroom, and constant feedback at every point of the teaching–learning process.

The objective in this area was to boost interactivity throughout the entire teaching–learning process and ensure a higher level of engagement not only on the part of students directly involved in a given collaborative reporting project but also on the part of their classmates and between students and professors.

A stronger emphasis was placed on fostering more meaningful contact between students enrolled in the various schools participating in the project by means of frequent 2.0 interaction and active collaboration on content production classroom assignments. The idea was to expand upon the end-of-semester student surveys and focus groups and communication via email and social media commentaries utilized during the first phase of the project and create an environment in which students would interact and provide feedback more freely and frequently throughout the entire course. Although they might coincide in some instances, it was decided that different methods should be applied to the virtual collaboration aspects and feedback components of the courses.

c. A new student coordinator position was created.

Given that students would be collaborating virtually, a new student team coordinator position was created to ensure fluid communication between team members and teams and instructors.

d. English was established as the vehicular language for all communication between students participating in the initiative.

Planning and Implementation

The practice of dividing students into work groups that simulated professional production teams was retained during the second phase of the project with a new twist: instead of comprising students attending the same school, teams were now composed of a mix of students from the various universities participating in the initiative. Five students enrolled in each of the courses listed in Table 1 were selected on a voluntary basis to be members of an international production team. Each of the five teams assembled in this manner had five members: two located in Portugal, two located in Brazil, and one located in the Basque Country, Spain. English was designated the vehicular language for all five groups. Table 2 summarizes the main steps given to organize participants’ tasks and the process timing followed in the project.

Table 2.

Time Line for EIP Implementation at UPV/EHU.

September (second fortnight)	Start of first quarter and courses involved. Basic theory and practice in the classroom and familiarization of teachers and students with course characteristics and objectives. Selection of students for international work teams.
October (first fortnight)	Final decisions regarding the composition of work teams. Compilation of coordination documents (time line, programmed activities, and dossier on each group (email addresses of teachers and students, WhatsApp accounts for communications between UPV/EHU faculty members and UPV/EHU students and UPV/EHU faculty members, work sessions with project coordinator and UPV/EHU student team members, etc.)
October (second fortnight)	UPV/EHU students take the initiative of establishing initial contacts with counterparts in Brazil and Portugal via email, create WhatsApp accounts for communication between teams, Dropbox or Google Drive accounts for sharing content and information and separate social media accounts for the dissemination of multimedia news projects carried out by each student work team.
October, November, and December	Teams produce special reports. Teachers devote two specific lab sessions to face-to-face interaction between faculty members and members of student teams and the rest of the students enrolled in the course. The first (scheduled to take place in November) was meant to provide an opportunity for members of international student to talk with classmates about their implication in group projects to date, describe production process in detail: selection of topic; distribution of tasks (sourcing of photographs, production of written news reports and interpretative and opinion pieces, website design, video recording and editing, etc.), share impressions and describe problems and new things learned. Classmates were expected and encouraged to provide feedback throughout this presentation about these aspects of the project as well as others such as the interest level of the chosen topic, the breakdown of topic into sections and use of genres, quality of elements within the overall multimedia production and issues related to grammar and style. During the second session (scheduled for the end of the course) was reserved for the presentation and group critique of the final product and an assessment of the class’s participation in the EIP.
January	Feedback from participants (student focus groups at each university and opinion-sharing sessions involving faculty members and faculty members and students).
February–May (second semester)	Preparation of final report. Dissemination of findings and the development of innovation strategies for the next phase of the project.

Note. EIP = educational innovation project; UPV/EHU = University of the Basque Country.

At the design stage of the project, it was decided that the UPV/EHU members of the five international student teams would be responsible for making initial contact with their counterparts at participating schools in other countries and serve as coordinators for each of these groups. The five UPV/EHU students assigned to carry out this task did their best to foster fluid communication between team members, created an atmosphere conducive to online collaboration and ensured channels for interaction remained open throughout the project. All of these coordinators opted to use WhatsApp, email, and Facebook chat sessions to stimulate dialogue and the exchange of feedback. These established contact and introduced themselves to fellow team members via the following messages:

First message sent by coordinator to fellow members of team UPV/EHU-1:

Hi girls! How is everything going? What do you think about deciding the report topic and the digital tool we are going to use to create the report’s web? If you have got more ideas apart from the ones I wrote on the email, we can discuss them, maybe between today and tomorrow, in order to start with the research and the part each one of us is going to cover. Talking about the Web, I don’t know if you have worked with a web design page calle wix, which is really useful and easy. Maybe we could use it for this project. I am looking forward to reading your thoughts. Kisses

Message sent by coordinator to fellow members of team UPV/EHU-2:

I have created a project gmail called: reportgroupbsp@gmail.com with the password: (anonimizado) in order have an account to where we can send all the information we find and write and we all have access.

Coordinators also planned and assigned tasks related to topics agreed upon collectively by team members. One message of this nature was:

Message sent by the coordinator of team UPV/EHU-3:

Hi! What have you been up to? I was thinking that by the end of this week (19-25 of November, maybe by Saturday), we could all try to write some kind of mini-report on the topic in each of our own countries, like a page or so, to have a small base. And once we have read all of our mini-reports we may start writing a comparison or comparing dissertation on euthanasia over the three countries, the view of different parts of society, etc. I have created a simple wix page where we can upload our individual and collective writing process. What do you think? Is Saturday a good deadline day for you?

In addition to establishing the structure of individual teams, course designers also compiled a list of tasks that each category of project participant would be responsible for (Table 3). Specific responsibilities were assigned to the following groups:

Faculty members (5, one from each university).

Student team coordinators (5 UPV/EHU students).

Students enrolled in online journalism courses at participating Brazilian and Portuguese (10 Brazilian students and 10 Portuguese students).

Students enrolled in online journalism courses at each participating university (groups of between 30 and 80 students, depending upon the particular school).

Table 3.

General Assignments.

Faculty members	• Explain the general nature of the project as well as specifics such as implementation phases, class presentations, evaluation, and feedback sessions with professors, and assistance provided during the course to participating students. • Prepare a final report assessing the experience from a course perspective (benefits, problems, utility in terms of the teaching–learning process, etc.) • Maintain continuous contact with other professors involved in the project via email and WhatsApp. • Help disseminate project findings.
UPV/EHU student team coordinators of internal team communication and team multimedia projects	• Create an atmosphere conducive to fluid communication and exchange of information between team members (email lists, Google Drive, WhatsApp, accounts etc.; push messages regarding the selection of project topics and the coordination of tasks to be performed by each team member, progress monitoring, constant communication with faculty coordinator concerning problems that arise and how they should be resolved). • Maintain regularly updated notebooks recording key accomplishments and a general description of project progress and implementation. • Make classroom presentations regarding progress and the final team project to fellow students. • Participate in meetings and tutoring sessions organized by the faculty member responsible for the online newswriting course they are enrolled in. • Maintain constant contact with project coordinator. • Participate in group feedback and assessment sessions organized by UPV/EHU professors. • Participate in activities related to the dissemination of project findings (conferences, seminars, etc.)
Student team members enrolled in participating Brazilian and Portuguese universities	• Interact on a regular basis with the relevant UPV/EHU student team coordinator as well as other team members and carry out assigned tasks related to the production of a multimedia news story such as writing texts, taking photos, recording video footage, and web design. • Make classroom presentations explaining projects to fellow classmates. • Maintain contact with faculty members responsible for the course on a regular basis to solve problems exchange ideas, etc.
Classmates of team members enrolled in the same courses	• Attend classroom presentations related to the project. • Participate in classroom activities and provide constructive feedback to team members. • Participate actively in feedback and assessment sessions concerning the EIP.

Note. UPV/EHU = University of the Basque Country; EIP = educational innovation project.

Results and Conclusions

Of the five international production teams assembled during the second phase of the EIP, three were able to finish their news projects on time. The multimedia news stories completed were: The Secrets of Our Country (Image 1), A Long Way to Go (Image 2), and Euthanasia: the dilemma of current democracies (Image 3).

Image 1.

Screen shot of multimedia news story The Secrets of Our Country.

Image 2.

Screen shot of multimedia news story A Long Way to Go.

Image 3.

Screen shot of multimedia news story Euthanasia: the dilemma of current democracies.

The outcome of each of the project upgrades implemented during phase two was assessed at the end of the course on the basis of the multimedia news projects produced by international teams of students, feedback provided during discussion group sessions and classroom observation. The following conclusions were reached on each point.

Broadening the Scope of the Project to Include More Universities and Hence More Teachers and Students

As the students participating in the EIP knew little about IaH at the inception of the course, it was particularly important to examine the advantages of teaching–learning processes with a strong IaH component, which in the case of the EIP discussed here entailed collaboration that extended beyond the classroom as well as the additional challenges that carrying out a team project on the basis of virtual communication supposed (Wächter, 2002). As the testimonies below attest, students were interested in the concept for various reasons.

It was a way to practice and work in English and participate with students from other countries. (Brazilian student, UFMGS)

It is something you are not able to do every day and it involves lots of teamwork and communication, two basic skills in the journalist’s future. (Portuguese student, UBI)

Team coordinator feedback indicates that IaH components embedded into courses focusing on online journalism can boost student motivation and implication in coursework:

I’m proud of the final outcome ( . . . ) This project has been very gratifying because in addition to having the opportunity to practice a foreign language, I’ve made a new friend with whom I’ve shared a lot of laughs and I’ve learned a lot about his country that I didn’t know before. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-1)

The opportunity to participate in the production of an international multimedia news story and collaborate with students in other countries is, in itself, one of the most rewarding aspects of this project, another being the chance to coordinate the work of a team of people I didn’t previously know. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-2)

I’d like to say that in spite of all of the problems we’ve had to overcome along the way, it’s been an incredible opportunity to work and have contact with people in other countries. What’s more, I found the topic of our news story (the feminist movement) to be really fascinating given its current relevance, and I loved searching for information about its history and working on a story that covered from Brazilian and Portuguese perspectives on the subject. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-3)

Focusing the Course More on Interactivity, Especially in the Classroom, and Constant Feedback at Every Point of the Teaching–Learning Process

Online communications courses must be continually reviewed and updated to ensure they keep pace with sector trends. The emergence of the “learning culture” (Ruiz, 2010) has supposed a shift in teaching methods toward a greater emphasis on student participation and effort and interaction between professors and students. Once interactivity has become an indispensable aspect of a teaching–learning process, the next logical step is embedding new layers of complexity into existing courses. This became the thrust of the second phase of the EIP examined in this atricle. In the case of the schools involved in this project, adding complexity to courses supposed requiring students to assume roles aligned with actual professional newsroom practice and engage in collaborative content production and exploiting the possibilities of both horizontal (teacher–teacher and student–student) and vertical (student–teacher) coordination schemes.

During a discussion session organized shortly after the second quarter of the 2018–2019 academic year had concluded, faculty team leaders shared their impressions of various aspects of team dynamics (the level of efficiency with which students performed tasks, their behavior in a collaborative work context, how they went about solving problems, etc.). Comments made during student feedback and focus group sessions facilitated the identification of the most important problems related to teamwork and other aspects of the project. The student coordinator of the UPV/EHU-2 team noted:

As far as I’m concerned, the most difficult part of project management has been ensuring that all team members did what we were supposed to do by established due dates, which had to be extended on more than one occasion. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-2)

Regarding specific problems students grappled with, the most important were related to communication between team members, which was hindered by the fact that students never had the opportunity to meet face to face, and some found it difficult to express their ideas in English, the vehicular language for the project. Team coordinators shared the following observations about the challenges they faced at different points throughout the course:

The last two weeks of October, I tried to contact the other four members of my team (names withheld). Communication was difficult from the beginning because they didn’t answer until a week later and email didn’t allow for direct communication between all five of us at the same time. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-2)

I started out on this collaborative project sending emails to my four future partners explaining the work we needed to do. (Name withheld) answered my message the same day, whereas (name withheld) and (name withheld) got back to me on October 16. Today is the 28th of October and I still haven’t heard anything from (name withheld). As (name withheld) was the first person to answer my message, I contacted her before creating a group WhatsApp account to talk about a topic we could work on over the next few months. We agreed that it should be about the countries we lived in. That was on October 16th. I’ve just created the WhatsApp account and (name withheld) and I have started to work on the idea for our news story. I still haven’t heard anything from (name withheld). (Coordinator UPV/EHU-1)

Problems have also been part of the process. Due to the lack of communication from two members of the team and the need to keep up with rest of our regular academic workload this quarter has meant that the final report is not going to be as good I originally imagined and expected it would be. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-1)

A lot of communications problems have prevented us from finishing our project. Although professors helped us a lot, it has been impossible to response to each other quickly enough. We could have tried to contact each other by a more rapid method like Skype, for example, but the difference in time zones between Brazil [and Europe] and our other daily obligations made it impossible. In spite of everything, it’s still been and interesting experience. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-4)

The project got going but everything has gone really slowly due a lack of communication and we haven’t had time to complete certain assignments or elements of the multimedia project yet. The fact that the project we were supposed to produce had to be in English made things more difficult because it meant a greater degree of control over everything that went into the news story ( . . . ) The experience hasn’t been what I expected it to be like given that team members took a long time to contact me and it was difficult to get started because we couldn’t agree on a topic. You could also say that we put everything off until the last minute and as a result we’re still working on the project when we should have been finished in December. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-5)

Of all the tools at their disposal for virtual communication, it was striking that students made very little use of document-sharing tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Skype. The student coordinators of all five groups admitted they relied mainly on WhatsApp (with advantages and disadvantages that instant messaging service supposes) to communicate with team members. The advantages of WhatsApp as a mechanism for making initial contact are clear in the following extract of a chat maintained by members of one of the international work teams²:

[30/10/18 11:50:47] You have created the group Journalism newswriting.

[30/10/18 11:50:47] Journalism newswriting: The messages of this group are now protected by end-to-end encryption.

[30/10/18 11:51:05] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: Hello to everybody!! We can finally communicate with each other easily. I’m anonymised [sic] Spanish student that will coordinate this project of ours. I am very looking forward to work with you in this experience.

[30/10/18 11:51:21] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: I believe that you have read the document that I sent you in the first e-mail. So knowing this, First we should talk about what topic we will choose to create our journalism newswriting.

[30/10/18 11:51:35] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: Also, as I have all your e-mails, I thought about creating a Document in Google Drive so we can write together the newswriting.

[30/10/18 14:01:40] anonymised sender (Brazil CIBERPERIODISMO): Hello! I’m anonymised from Brazil.

[30/10/18 14:02:26] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): Hey guys! I’m anonimizado from Portugal, Covilhã

[30/10/18 14:02:37] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I study Journalism in University of Beira Interior

[30/10/18 14:02:47] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): Can’t wait to work with you all

[30/10/18 14:04:04] anonymised sender (Brazil CIBERPERIODISMO): I study in Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul

[30/10/18 14:06:28] anonymised sender (Brazil CIBERPERIODISMO): I think it’s a great idea. Does anybody have an idea of what we can talk about?

[30/10/18 14:29:59] anonymised (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I thought about the Dead [sic] Sentence in several countries

[30/10/18 14:30:09] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): And states in the United States of America

[30/10/18 14:55:43] anonimised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): Hey! I’m anonymised from University of Porto. I’m very excited about working with you all!

[30/10/18 14:56:25] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I like it. Sounds great!

[30/10/18 14:57:08] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): But I was think about something that would be, in a way, related to your countries. It would be easier for each one of us to portray a reality.

[30/10/18 14:57:16] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I was thinking*

[30/10/18 15:55:27] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): But what?

[30/10/18 16:28:06] anonymised sender (Brazil CIBERPERIODISMO): Hey! I’m Anonymised from University of Brazil- UFPI. I’m happy to be in a group.

[30/10/18 16:29:29] anonymised (Brazil CIBERPERIODISMO): We could talk about democracy. What do you think?

[30/10/18 16:45:07] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): Democracy in what way? I think we need a more specific topic.

[30/10/18 16:45:59] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I suggest a topic that could be linked to our countries. But I honestly don’t know what.

[30/10/18 17:11:03] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): What topic did you suggest?

[30/10/18 17:15:01] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I haven’t suggested any specific topic yet. I was just saying that it would be interesting to approach a subject linked to our 3 countries instead of something outside our reality. But I don’t know which subject.

[30/10/18 17:31:59] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): Yes. . . It’s hard

[30/10/18 17:35:17] anonymised sender (Portugal CIBERPERIODISMO): I’ll think about something

[30/10/18 18:05:23] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: I will create de Drive later!

[30/10/18 18:06:40] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: I asked my teacher about the topic and she told me that, the more specific is the topic, the easier will be for us to work with it

[30/10/18 18:07:34] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: In my opinion, I think is a great idea to talk about a topic that involves the three of our country but it’s difficult to find one

[30/10/18 18:07:58] anonymised sender UPV/EHU Coordinator-1: So if we can agree in one topic that all of us like it it’s also okay

[ . . . ]

One of the drawbacks of using WhatsApp for student communication became clearer as the project progressed and coordinators began to comment how hard it was to keep chat sessions focused on the project and that they became a more of a distraction than a plus once issues became more complex. This negative feedback took some of the shine off the positive points of WhatsApp messaging such as its brevity (a virtue considering the information saturation that communication via email often supposes) and rapidity. Teachers involved in the EIP tended to use email much more often than WhatsApp chats to communicate with each other, by and large reserving WhatsApp to send colleagues reminders to check their email inboxes for new messages.

The Creation of a New Student Coordinator Position

Virtual collaboration between members of international student teams was structured around a hybrid coordination system that facilitated virtual/face-to-face and horizontal/vertical contact between students and faculty members and between faculty members of the various universities participating in the EIP (Image 4). The need for student team members to communicate in a vehicular foreign language and meet a series of deadlines made collaboration between them especially challenging. Horizontal coordination between students was therefore monitored and supported by means of a horizontal–vertical coordination system that established a hierarchical link between each group and an overall project coordinator at UPV/EHU. Student coordinators could discuss problems that were hindering their progress with vertical coordinators (instructors they could meet with face to face or contact virtually at their own universities and/or the UPV/EHU Teacher and Student Coordinator), who maintained contact between teachers at participating universities to ensure they were aware of, and sought solutions to, their students’ dilemmas and determined the whys and wherefores of these problems.

Image 4.

Scheme for vertical and horizontal contact between students and teachers.

It was interesting to note that student coordinators attempted to find operative solutions to previously mentioned problems related to work pace, language barriers, delays in completing tasks and asynchronous communication by means of this hierarchical coordination system. One coordinator noted:

One thing I would like to mention is the attention I have received from teachers in response to my worries and complaints as well as my more technical questions related to the production of our news story. On numerous occasions, the coordinator also has helped me solve communication problems I have had with team members, always responding to my queries in a personal and friendly way regardless of the time of day, or whether the contact between us was via phone, email or WhatsApp. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-3)

Designation of English as the Vehicular Language for Communication Between Members of Student Teams

Although students perceived the possibility of communicating in English as a motivating factor, the significant gap between the proficiency levels of team members hindered the coordination of the tasks they were expected to carry out. Findings on this point ran parallel to those regarding the use of WhatsApp, which was positive in terms of the speed and spontaneity of communication it offered but negative in the sense that it tended to foster conversations unrelated to project tasks and objectives. One student coordinator observed:

From the very start, (names withheld) told the group via WhatsApp that they had problems communicating in English, which did not bother me at first because I did not think it would have a negative impact on the project. However, these team members stopped answering messages after a few days and subsequently did not contribute anything to the project. (Coordinator UPV/EHU-1)

Table 4, which is based on feedback provided during group discussion and coordination sessions, documents students’ motivations for participating in the project at the outset and what they considered to be the positive and negative aspects of the virtual IaH collaboration once they became fully involved in the course.

Table 4.

Motivating Factors and Student Perceptions Regarding the Positive and Negative Aspects of IaH and Virtual Collaboration.

Main motivating factors	Main difficulties and obstacles (negative aspects)	Main advantages (positive aspects)
Opportunity to practice English	Coordinating activities in English	Opportunity to practice speaking a foreign language
Opportunity to take a course taught from a different angle	Coordinating the pace of work carried out in different locations	Continual coordination with teachers
Opportunity to get to know more about other cultures and how things function at other universities	Using digital platforms to communicate and coordinate tasks (WhatsApp, Wix, Google Drive, and Skype, the last of which proved difficult due to differences in time zones)	Continual virtual coordination and dialogue with team members (WhatsApp)

Note. IaH = Internationalization at Home.

An analysis of the outcomes of EIP “Virtual Collaborative Learning in Online Newswriting: a Brazilian–Portuguese–Basque Experience” reveals both an interest in applying the IaH concept to courses related to online journalism and the value of virtual collaboration in the context of teaching–learning processes in this field. Findings indicate, however, that learning strategies for classroom and nonclassroom work performed by students in relation to projects of this nature should take into account the upside and downside of tools available to students for communicating with each other and coordinating tasks.

To conclude, this study demonstrates the interest of promoting IaH perspective in online journalism teaching, contributing to define best practical pedagogical practices in this area. This case study thus furthers existing research on IaH in the context of specific educational fields such as journalism.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all of the instructors and students who participated in this education innovation project led by KZBerri during the 2018–2019 academic year, especially Alberto Almazán, Emma Arriortua, Beatriz Olaizola, Usune Ortiz de Zarate y Lierni Zinkunegi, whose motivation, effort, and top-rate work as the volunteer coordinators of second-year communication student groups 1, 16, 17, and 31 added much to the project.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study forms part of the scientific production of the “Gureiker” Research Group (IT1112-16, Basque University System) funded by the Basque Government.

ORCID iD

Ainara Larrondo Ureta

Notes

Author Biographies

Ainara Larrondo Ureta, PhD in Journalism, is a senior lecturer in online media, reporting and innovation (UPV/EHU). She is author and co-author of articles and books on online journalism. She is currently leading the research group Gureiker, funded by the Basque Government, and a teaching innovation project on how to develop journalists’ skills.

Simón Peña Fernández, PhD in Journalism, is a professor of journalism, and he lectures in online media and design (UPV/EHU). His main research interests cover online journalism, communication and social media, and social innovation. He is author and co-author of articles and books on these issues. He is also an active member of several funded projects on journalism training.

Juliana Fernandes Teixeira is PhD in Contemporary Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) and in Communication Sciences from the University of Beira Interior (Portugal). She is currently teacher of communication at the Federal University of Piauí. She is author and co-author of articles and books on digital culture and online communication.

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