– Are we teaching the right things?
Mervi Varhelahti & Marjatta Rännäli
Abstract
Digitalisation and globalisation are changing the operational environments in working life. These changes have made work multi-locational and increased the share of virtual work independently of the field. Technology mediated communication skills and un-derstanding different cultures have become increasingly important in virtual work. The mission of the universities of applied sciences is to provide the working life with skilful professionals who have the competences needed in the market, and therefore the need for virtual communication competence as well as language and cultural skills have to be taken into account in teaching and curricula work at the universities of applied sciences.
The aim of the present article is to discuss the skills and competences needed in virtual and multicultural communication situations when English is used as a lingua franca.
The research questions were the following: what skills needed in virtual communication in English one wishes to improve and does the awareness of the cultural differences influ-ence virtual communication. The discussion is based on the results of electronic surveys (N=58) and on five theme interviews conducted with representatives of working life. The electronic survey results were analysed by using descriptive statistical methods and cross tabulation. The method applied to the interviews was thematic content analysis.
According to the results, due to the increase in video conferencing in working life
versations and negotiations was the most prominent one. In addition, the results show that the respondents are aware of cultural differences in virtual communica-tion and adapt their own communicacommunica-tion style according to the other party. Univer-sities of applied sciences need primarily to define the current communication com-petences and secondly integrate teaching of these comcom-petences, particularly virtual negotiation skills in English and in multicultural settings, in all teaching.
Introduction
Changes in the working environment, such as globalisation and advancing infor-mation technology have had an effect on today’s working life. At the same time, re-quirements regarding language skills and multiliteracy have also changed. As com-panies compete in the global market place, a workforce with good language and communication skills has become a key factor and thus new forms of working have brought new requirements with them also in the field of teaching communication skills at educational institutions.
More and more, both employers and employees tend to work outside the traditional office environment (Hyrkkänen & Vartiainen 2005) and communication technolo-gy is being utilised for mobile and virtual communication with stakeholders. Global virtual communication increases the requirements for language skills as well as the need for understanding of different cultures (Huhta 2010; Lönnblad & Vartiainen 2012). These changes should have an impact on what the students are taught; it is not enough that they learn to manage the new tools technically but they also need to learn to know how they can communicate effectively in a virtual or mobile envi-ronment with people from different parts of the world.
Thus, these changes challenge the teaching and teachers of languages and communi-cation in higher educommuni-cation. Vocommuni-cational and higher educommuni-cation need to be modernised to better match the students’ skill sets with the expectations and requirements of working life. This modernisation process calls for constant dialogue and partner-ship between educators and working life. This issue has been acknowledged in The Higher Education Modernisation Agenda (2011) published by the European Com-mission, which highlights the importance of digital know-how.
In order to improve the development of language and communication skills as a part of higher education, Turku University of Applied Sciences is coordinating an interna-tional project called CoMoViWo (funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture
Executive Agency EACEA of the European Union; Erasmus+), which maps out the language and communication skills needed in mobile and virtual work and creates learning modules in English and Spanish for teaching these skills. The goal of the project is to, together with working life, modernise higher education to better cor-respond to the changing skill requirements of working life. Our long-term goal is to improve students’ employment prospects, as well as offer a skilled workforce to work-ing life and thus improve the competitiveness of enterprises in the global market.
As a part of the project, a survey regarding the views of working life on virtual com-munication in English was conducted in all of the participating countries i.e. in Finland, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK. The survey views language and com-munication know-how as knowledge, skills and attitudes (Ferrari 2013) that arise in everyday working life situations where social interaction plays a role (Newton &
Kusmiersczyk 2011). Based on the information gathered in the survey, the partners create three learning modules for learning how to communicate in a cross-cultural environment using virtual and mobile tools. The modules will be piloted in the par-ticipating organisations during the spring term 2016 and will later be published, to-gether with a teacher’s guide, as open educational resources (OER).
The survey was confined to communication in English as a lingua franca in a vir-tual or mobile environment. This means that we are looking at online interactions in English, between individuals whose first language is other than English. This type of communication can be influenced by different national, local and individual cul-tural identities. (Hülmbauer, Böhringer & Seidlhofer 2008.)
This article presents the findings of the survey conducted in Finland and discusses the challenges and possibilities in teaching communication skills in higher educa-tional institutions. The aim is to raise awareness of the new skill requirements and, through a better understanding of the importance of these skills, enhance the inte-gration of them into all teaching. In addition, we also want to highlight the fact that it is not sufficient to teach the technical skills for management of the new tools but, in addition, attention needs to be paid to how to use them from the communication point of view to reach the expected results.
We start by discussing the impact of the changes in the operational environments on communication and continue by describing the methods used to explore virtual com-munication at work. Next we will present the main results of the survey and finally dis-cuss how these results should be taken into account in teaching and curricula at HEIs.