DiLLeMa: A Framework for Collaborative Multi-Cultural Lecturing Material in International University Colleges

As computer science lecturers, our goal is to create an engaging learning environment and encourage students of different backgrounds to become self-reliant thinkers, capable of reflecting on the impact of their learned concepts on various social, cultural and global issues, and able to apply them in the context of a multi-cultural professional world with evolving needs and practices. While this goal is hard to achieve in regular universities, it is even more challenging in the context of multi-cultural international colleges where lecturers teach the program of Anglophone Western Universities to international students in their home country (in this case, teaching computer science in China). In this paper, we describe the DiLLeMa framework which leverages digitisation to facilitate the collaborative generation and sharing of localised and multi-cultural lecturing content by/between students of an international college. DiLLeMa aims to provide non-native students (i.e., Chinese) with a content that they could revisit at their pace by putting at their disposal audio/video recordings of lectures, along with transcripts (in English and Chinese), markers, and annotations to improve their comprehensiveness. Furthermore, the framework provides students with an opportunity to comment/discuss learning content directly within the platform, while also leveraging cultural diversity in the classroom by enabling students to suggest/analyse localised and multi-cultural examples/use-cases from their personal background. Overall, we have seen in a case study that we conducted in an international university college that this framework has been well received by students, increased their engagement, and improved their performance.