Abstract

In the first semester of 2024, The University of Auckland offered ‘Central Europe and the South Pacific’ as the institution’s first Virtual Student Exchange course in the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) network. Redesigned for online, asynchronous delivery by the lecturer and learning designer, the course focused on relational and student-centred learning through the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model and Universal Design for Learning principles (UDL). This chapter examines the successes and challenges of developing and fostering a relational learning approach in a virtual classroom for students from the South Pacific, South America, and Asia.

Rather than focusing only on knowledge acquisition, the team adapted the learning outcomes to include the development of empathy as a core skill. This approach fostered self-awareness, respect for diverse perspectives, and the ability to engage thoughtfully with others’ experiences. A key learning activity involved a virtual travel journal, where students chose and role-played a character. This activity aimed to encourage students to engage with and learn from each other’s diverse travel journal experiences.

This course retrospective uses an autoethnographic approach to unpack the successes and challenges encountered in implementing inclusive and accessible teaching practices while fostering global collaboration and encouraging students to engage with diverse perspectives in a virtual classroom.

Keywords

Learning design, relational learning, assessment strategies, lifelong learning, educational innovation

Introduction

A ‘fairytale forest’ is what Frieda Zieschank, a German colonialist living in Sāmoa, called the island (Zieschank, 1918, p. 44). Like many European travellers before her, Zieschank’s romantic gaze reflected a complex legacy of cultural misconceptions that have shaped relations between Central Europe and the South Pacific for generations. Originally titled The German Connection with New Zealand, then later renamed Central Europe and the South Pacific, the course at the heart of this chapter interrogates the complicated cross-cultural engagements and entanglements of a colonised and romanticised South Pacific. The aim was to reverse this historical lens by challenging students across the Pacific Rim to examine cross-cultural encounters from multiple perspectives. The chapter authors’ intent was to encourage students to discover their own capacity for empathy and global understanding.

Because of its layered and weighty subject material, the course itself has been subject to numerous revisions and reinventions, and has been on hiatus since 2018. Previous iterations of the course concentrated primarily on New Zealand and the South Pacific. They looked only at various biographies of German New Zealanders, and focused on the biographies of first-and second-generation German-speaking New Zealand migrants and their impact on New Zealand society. In 2018, when Perry inherited the course, she revamped it to incorporate German language fiction and examined the legacy of German colonialism in the South Pacific. Additionally, the final module of the course reversed the lens to consider how the South Pacific views Germany through film, museum studies, and art. This is significant as it fostered a reciprocal understanding and applied a decolonising lens, thereby granting agency to the South Pacific.

In 2024, Perry redesigned the course once again, this time as part of the Virtual Student Exchange course in the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) network, a network made up of 61 research universities with the objective of fostering economic, scientific, and cultural advancement in the Pacific Rim. The course redesign also focused on delivering engaging virtual content in a post-COVID teaching and learning environment. Perry updated the materials in line with her expanded understanding and research on Germany and the South Pacific. Included was her desire to emphasise the importance of having Indigenous South Pacific voices from beyond New Zealand contributing to the discourse.

The authors were particularly interested in emphasising the outlandish nature of the content written about the South Pacific by Germans, to foreground the exoticism that drove German colonialism in the late 19th century. The life of August Engelhardt, a German who in the early 20th Century travelled to the South Pacific, bought an island and subsequently founded a ‘coconut cult’ – he eventually died of malnutrition – is an example of the outlandish antics included in the course. A fictional account of his life by the award-winning Swiss author, Christian Kracht, was also built in.

When the course was approved by the University of Auckland (UoA) for the programme, Perry was both delighted and overwhelmed. The reality of creating a brand-new online course was daunting and challenging, especially considering that the delivery and assessments needed to be asynchronous and flexible enough for students studying across a range of time zones. She sought out support from the University’s Learning and Teaching Design | Ranga Auaha Ako (RAA) team. When the authors first met to discuss the redesign in November 2023, they knew the timeframe was tight, with the course due to start at the end of February 2024. The team engaged in a massive course overhaul with a tight timeframe, international stakeholders looking on, and the reputation of the University on their shoulders.

In this chapter, the authors engaged in reflective autoethnography as a method for research. Their reflections and discussions included the successes and challenges they encountered while designing and then implementing a cross-cultural course; a course that prioritised inclusivity, accessibility and global collaboration in its design and deliverables, all in a flexible virtual classroom.

Background and context

Our reflective journey begins with the foundational elements that shaped the course redesign project, from its initial conception through to its theoretical underpinnings. This section discusses the collaborative process between learning designers and academic staff, the systematic approach to design, and the pedagogical frameworks that guided our decisions.

In early 2023, Perry was approached by a senior member of the European Languages division in the UoA’s School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics (CLL). As the former Associate Dean International (ADI) for the Faculty of Arts, she asked Perry to consider offering her course, ‘Central Europe and the South Pacific’, to the APRU network as UoA’s first course contribution. The former ADI believed that the course was an excellent fit for the Virtual Student Exchange programme as it was the only course of its kind to examine both German/Western and South Pacific/Indigenous perspectives and was, as a result, unique to the university. The course also highlighted the diverse offerings found across European languages and literature majors. It could thus strategically advertise further course options to students at a time when language majors are under threat in New Zealand. To achieve this goal, Perry reached out to the RAA team at UoA, which plays an important role in enhancing educational experiences.

RAA is multidisciplinary and made up of learning designers, application specialists, and software developers. Teaching staff can utilise their diverse expertise to support their innovative teaching practices. Learning designers work in collaboration with teaching staff to provide support in all aspects of learning design with the intention to create engaging and inclusive learning experiences. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all solution, at UoA a team consisting of two to three learning designers work closely with the teaching staff from the course to understand their unique context, disciplinary needs, and pedagogical goals. Two learning designers were assigned to this project. This collaborative process ensures that course design decisions are informed by both pedagogical best practices and discipline-specific requirements, ultimately enhancing the learning experience for both educators and students (Thornley & Schwenger, 2003).

The project began with a discussion between Perry and the learning designers, focusing on establishing rapport and clarifying their respective teaching philosophies, areas of expertise, and pedagogical approaches. This initial exchange was critical for ensuring productive collaboration and alignment on the frameworks that would guide the course design. The authors identified a shared commitment to relational learning (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004, p. 15) and culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2018, p. 28) principles that shaped key design decisions. These approaches were rooted in their mutual belief in equity, particularly in respect for diverse identities (including gender, cultural background, and cognitive differences) and a conviction that all students should have the opportunity to express their ideas and develop as learners.

To apply these principles, the authors selected the following frameworks and models:

1. ADDIE^[1] (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) served as the foundational process model for systematic course design.
2. Community of Inquiry (CoI) (Garrison et al., 2010) structured the learning environment into social, teaching, and cognitive presences to foster collaboration and critical thinking.
3. Student-Centred Learning (SCL), Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT), and ako were interwoven to create an inclusive, learner-driven environment.

• • SCL (Weimer, 2002, p. 74) prioritises learner autonomy and active participation, ensuring students shape their own learning pathways.
  • CRT (Gay, 2018, p. 28) centres cultural identity and equity, validating students’ backgrounds in course design.
  • ako (Bishop et al., 2009) is a Māori concept that embodies reciprocal teaching and learning, emphasising knowledge co-construction between educators and learners.

4. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (CAST, 2024) ensured accessibility and flexibility in engagement, representation, and expression.

Together, these frameworks and models encouraged a personalised, equitable, and dynamic learning experience for students. Below, we unpack their roles and intersections in greater detail.

Harrison introduced the systematic ADDIE framework as their preferred framework for course design. They explained how this iterative process would help transform Perry’s subject matter expertise and vision into an engaging virtual learning experience. The cyclical nature of ADDIE enabled the team to continuously refine ideas while moving steadily toward implementation, preventing the course design process from becoming overwhelmed by details at any single stage.

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison et al.,1999), with its emphasis on social, cognitive, and teaching presence, was suggested by Harrison as the course’s pedagogical foundation. In an asynchronous, online classroom, the three elements were crucial for fostering genuine engagement and deep learning, and connecting students across the Pacific Rim. Social presence enabled students to express their unique identities and build trust across cultural and geographical boundaries. Cognitive presence encouraged critical reflection on historical narratives, with students applying insights to German-Pacific relations through structured activities.

Teaching presence was applied in three ways, blending direct instruction with self-directed learning (Garrison et al., 1999):

1. Design and organisation: clear module structures and scaffolded self-paced learning activities provided autonomy within a supportive framework.
2. Facilitation: Perry hosted weekly hangouts and moderated discussion forums to deepen dialogue, while students pursued topic-aligned independent tasks.
3. Direct instruction: timely, directive feedback (e.g. 24-hour email responses, office hours) clarified student misconceptions and complemented rather than replaced student-led exploration.

The course design prioritised student-centred learning (SCL) and culturally responsive teaching (CRT) as its core pedagogical approaches for multiple purposes. It reflected the university’s strategic vision, fulfilled Perry’s teaching philosophy of relational pedagogy and included te ao Māori’s concept of ako, which means to simultaneously teach and learn. Ako recognises the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning, where both educators and students bring knowledge to the learning space and learn from each other (Bishop et al., 2009).

This emphasis on relational pedagogy emerged from deeply personal insights. Drawing from their own experience as Canadian immigrants to New Zealand, both Perry and Harrison understand firsthand the profound importance of cultural roots and identity in learning spaces (Altugan, 2015). Their personal understanding drove their desire to engage students as active participants in their educational journey. They were excited at the potential depth and richness of learning (Aspelin, 2020) for students if they were encouraged to bring their whole selves, their cultural backgrounds, lived experiences, and unique perspectives into the learning environment (Gay, 2010). They felt that the adoption of this approach would be particularly powerful in a cross-cultural virtual exchange setting, where creating a sense of belonging and a safe learning environment felt both more challenging and more crucial. Perry and Harrison aimed high with their vision of the redesign, it needed to consider cross-cultural and geographical boundaries, share diverse worldviews, and foster a deeper understanding of others’ perspectives (Rātima et al., 2022).

Embedding Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to ensure inclusive and accessible learning experiences for students across different cultural contexts and learning preferences was important. Following CAST’s (Center for Applied Special Technology) UDL framework, the course provided multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression (CAST, 2024). For engagement, students created a ‘historical’ character for a travel journal. This activity sparked interest by letting them draw on personal passions (e.g. art, storytelling, local history); sustained effort by requiring regular journal entries tied to learning outcomes; and supported self-regulation through instructor feedback on each entry, which helped students monitor their own progress. Multiple means of representation were achieved by offering course materials in various formats, including text, audio, and visual elements, while ensuring that content was culturally responsive and acknowledged diverse perspectives from both Central European and South Pacific contexts. For action and expression, students had flexibility in how they demonstrated their learning through the travel journal entries, allowing them to incorporate multimedia elements, written narratives, and/or visual representations. The UDL framework also supported the course’s emphasis on empathy development by mitigating potential barriers to learning and allowing students to focus on meaningful cross-cultural engagement rather than struggling with accessibility issues.

Research approach

The research employs an autoethnographic approach to examine and reflect upon our experiences in designing and delivering this course. Autoethnography, as described by Ellis et al. (2011), combines personal experience (auto), cultural analysis (ethno), and systematic description and interpretation (graphy) to illuminate broader cultural and social phenomena through the lens of individual experience. As both participants and researchers in this educational initiative, we systematically documented our journey through personal reflections, collaborative discussions, and detailed observations of the course development and delivery process.

This methodological approach allows us to weave together our lived experiences as lecturers and learning designers with theoretical insights about cross-cultural perspectives, relational pedagogy, and online learning. Through our narrative accounts, we critically examine the successes and challenges that emerged during the process of transforming a traditional face-to-face taught course into an inclusive online and asynchronous course. This reflexive practice not only deepens our understanding of virtual cross-cultural education but also provides valuable insights for practitioners facing similar challenges in designing virtual exchange programs.

While autoethnography yields rich, insider perspectives, it also carries inherent constraints. First, the subjective nature of the personal narrative can introduce researcher bias and limit the extent to which findings can be independently verified. Second, because our reflections are based on one specific course context – its institutional setting, participant cohort, and cultural mix – the transferability of insights to other disciplines or learner populations is restricted. Third, retrospective reflection may be affected by memory distortions or by interpreting past events through the lens of later outcomes. These autoethnographic reflections offer valuable insider insights while remaining inherently subjective and specific to this single course context.

Successes and challenges go hand in hand

Through our reflective analysis, we identified four key themes that emerged from the course design and delivery: changes to teacher mindset, assessments, student belonging and engagement, and learning activities. The following sections examine the successes and challenges within each of the themes.

Changes to teacher mindset: Successes

Our first meeting showed the power of collaborative design thinking; it buzzed with creative energy and possibilities. However, we encountered our first hurdle when the crucial task of defining learning outcomes came about. Perry openly acknowledged her struggle with articulating what she wanted students to learn, beyond traditional academic content. Harrison guided the process thoughtfully, asking questions such as what skills Perry wanted students to take away from this course and what skills students can learn from this course which could add to their employability kete (basket of knowledge) (Lund et al., 2021; Rohm et al., 2021). As the conversation evolved, the team moved beyond traditional knowledge-based outcomes to embrace a more holistic approach to learning. This led to the identification of empathy and global citizenship (World Economic Forum, 2020) as one of the three learning outcomes. This shift in focus was more aligned to a course where students from different cultures would be learning together. The final learning outcomes ultimately balanced traditional academic knowledge with three broader human capabilities, and set the foundation for meaningful cross-cultural learning experiences. The learning outcomes asked students to:

1. Demonstrate the ability to research scholarly information and communicate effectively on the relationship between Central Europe and the South Pacific in a historical and contemporary context.
2. Develop empathy and global citizenship through understanding the dynamics of German colonialism in the South Pacific.
3. Understand and critically evaluate a range of literary genres, artworks, historical texts, and film in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

Changes to teacher mindset: Challenges

The transition from face-to-face to online and asynchronous teaching challenged deeply ingrained teaching habits. As someone who thrived on spontaneous classroom discussions and responsive teaching, Perry initially found the structured nature of online course design constraining and a big challenge to overcome. The realisation that every element needed to be planned, prepared, and uploaded before the course began felt overwhelming. “Harrison was very persistent,” Perry recalls, “calmly finding a different way to say the same thing in little digestible bites” as they discussed the pedagogical reasoning behind each design decision.

Perry determined from the outset that a strong teacher presence in an asynchronous course would help students feel included and heard in that space. Both Perry and Harrison believed that the key to effective teacher presence online was the consistency of the teacher’s voice throughout the course. In an online, asynchronous course, Perry’s usual spontaneity during face-to-face teaching was not possible. Just how much adaptation and change were required to her usual mindset of teaching was highlighted when standing in the recording studio, recording each week’s overview. It brought back memories of COVID-era teaching. The recorded overview gave the weekly announcements, summarising the past week, then continued with a brief explanation of the week’s content and highlighted what was to come next.

Asynchronous communication with the students was another adaptation. Recognising that student-teacher communication would occur primarily via email, students were advised that, due to the time difference between countries, they should not expect immediate responses. Instead, Perry committed to replying to queries within a 24-hour period, during her standard working hours (NZST). Perry also had to shift her mindset on the timings of messages. Her welcome message to students was published two weeks prior to the course starting. This gave students the opportunity to see the teacher’s face and hear her voice. Another opportunity for teacher presence was the icebreaker activity. This required Perry and the students to pin their geographic backgrounds on a shared world map. This exercise served dual purposes: (1) humanising participants by situating them in a global context and (2) establishing common ground for cross-cultural dialogue. Perry’s modelling – pinning her locations in New Zealand and Canada, alongside a personal anecdote – not only created the teacher’s presence but set a tone of openness that students mirrored in their contributions (M. N. & Quick, 2016).

Because there were no face-to-face teaching commitments, Perry realised she could shift her energies into the feedback given to the students after each of their weekly travel journal entries. She ensured that students received feedback before their next entry was due, thereby allowing them to incorporate constructive suggestions into subsequent work. This also provided another connection to the students individually each week.

The redesign process offered valuable opportunities for personal growth, particularly in understanding the power of collaboration with the learning designers. While institutional culture often discourages frequent engagement with support staff, embracing the expertise of learning designers proved crucial for the course’s success. Perry initially hesitated to ‘bother’ professional staff but gradually shifted her mindset over several weeks. She came to realise that not only was it their role to provide support, but they were eager to do so. Due to Perry’s hesitation, Harrison recalls her own anxiety about approaching publication dates with incomplete modules. However, the true value of this collaborative approach became evident towards the project’s end, when Perry recognised how this partnership ultimately enhanced the student experience.

Assessments

Following the confirmation of learning outcomes, the course assessments were designed through a process of constructive alignment. Initial discussions prioritised innovative strategies to engage geographically and culturally diverse students. Perry advocated for a balanced approach, combining high and low-stakes assessments to sustain engagement across the 12-week semester. These included traditional tasks targeting core academic competencies, such as essay writing, presentations, and collaborative work, alongside creative components to cultivate empathy and critical thinking. To promote student agency, flexibility was embedded in at least one assessment. Harrison further proposed a scaffolded structure, enabling iterative feedback integration and progressive skill development. The resulting interconnected assessments reinforced both alignment with outcomes and cumulative learning (Hamdoun, 2023).

The assessments were as follows:

• Weekly travel journal and artefact collection. A formative assessment, students wrote reflective narratives while curating online artefacts related to course content. This provided students with an opportunity to complete research and receive feedback to support preparation for the three summative assessments.
• Structured debate and persuasive essay. In this two-part assessment, students worked in pairs to record a formal debate presenting opposing perspectives. The collaborative research and development of their argument directly informed their subsequent individual persuasive essays.
• Newspaper article. Drawing from their weekly journal entries, students composed articles from the viewpoint of their adopted historical personas, contextualising experiences for their character’s hometown audience.
• Online presentation or digital art exhibition. Students collated their artefacts into a presentation or digital exhibition to showcase and critically analyse their artefacts.

Assessments: Successes

The weekly travel journal was a foundational component of the assessment structure, designed to develop students’ historical understanding and empathy. It required students to write a weekly 150–200-word entry that documented their historical persona’s journey from Central Europe to the South Pacific. The weekly entry served multiple pedagogical purposes: it fostered engagement with both the teacher and fellow students, it spread the workload through regular writing, and it developed research skills.

Perry guided students in the selection and development of their historical persona, challenging them to consider factors such as their character’s background, motivations, and intended journey. The personas ranged from a ship’s captain, to a stowaway, to a Pacific Islander returning from Europe. Each week, the students responded to prompts such as “You’ve been at sea for nine days. What are your feelings?” intended to guide them on their journey. Students illustrated their understanding of empathy through the eyes of their chosen persona as they faced situations from different perspectives and performed research about the social situations of the time, while developing their writing skills. The entries were submitted via the Learning Management System (LMS) discussion forum, enabling social presence by allowing students to present their authentic voices, learn from one another’s perspectives, and strengthen communal ties through peer responses. Regular feedback from Perry further reinforced teacher presence, guiding the students’ development while maintaining historical accuracy. Students were encouraged to use both peer and teacher feedback to improve their learning and create new knowledge (Nicol, 2020). The journal entries were a delight to read each week, with one student’s final journal entry standing out because of the reflective quality of the passage and the core values of empathy and global citizenship it embodied.

The final prompt was:

Reflecting upon their lives, your character is now close to death. Was it a tragic death (war, conflict) or peaceful (surrounded by loved ones). Do they regret their travels? What have they seen in their lifetime? What changes globally did they experience? Any wars or conflicts? Do they have any wise words for us as readers of their travel journal?

The student’s^[2] character, Wilhelm Wolff, who began his journey as a poor, young stowaway aboard a ship leaving Germany, wrote of his life:

It is now 1927… How time passes. Since my arrival in 1880, Samoa has undergone profound changes. The political turmoil of the 1890s, the New Zealand administration following World War I, and the 1918 influenza pandemic have all influenced the island of Samoa and our lives on it. Despite these hardships, the Samoan people have been resilient. Through these years, my bond with Luisa and her family deepened, and I had the joy of seeing our children and grandchildren grow, navigating a changing world. But now my health is failing, and I know I do not have much longer. I am surrounded by Luisa, my three children, and my grandchildren. To anyone who may read my journal, I wish to say this:

… I offer this wisdom: seek out the unfamiliar, for it is in those moments of uncertainty that we find growth. Embrace the world with an open heart and cherish the connections you make along the way. Life’s greatest adventures often lead us to places we never imagined, but it is the people we meet who truly make the journey worthwhile. Embrace change with an open heart, cherish the bonds of community, and strive for understanding and respect across cultures. In the end, it is the connections we make and the love we share that define the true meaning of home.

– Wilhelm Wolff.

The wisdom Wilhelm Wolff left the reader with was indeed profound and exceeded any of our expectations by a wide margin. The student was also able to reflect upon the history of Sāmoa and articulate the resilience of the Sāmoan people during these tumultuous times, showcasing the independent research the student had conducted.

The digital art exhibition/presentation was a showcase and demonstration of students’ engagement with the course themes: historical travels to the South Pacific, the interplay between travel writing and fiction genres, and the role of museum practices (in settler versus non-settler nations) in contemporary colonial discourse. It required students to synthesise their learning of historical contexts, cultural perspectives, and cross-cultural encounters. This multimodal approach followed UDL principles and enabled students to articulate their understanding through various forms of expression while developing a broader range of communication skills.

The design of the assessment structure lay in its intentionally scaffolded approach and was evident in the quality of the students’ submitted assignments. Early work on historical contexts and cultural encounters systematically progressed to advanced critical engagement with archives, preservation practices, and Indigenous interventions in museum spaces. The structured debate exceeded expectations in both student effort and quality of work. This success suggested to us that the structural support and engagement strategies were successful regardless of students’ geographical locations.

Assessments: Challenges

The short time frame for design was a challenge, and while we envisioned using gamification and avatars to create an immersive storytelling experience, our time constraints prevented the full implementation of our ambitious ideas and we ended up compromising with the travel journal – a more achievable creative solution that still accomplished many of our original objectives. The travels of the two ‘avatars’, August Engelhardt mentioned above and the Slovenian Alma Karlin (1889-1950), who toured the globe in the interwar period as a solitary female traveller and wrote extensively about the South Pacific, were placed at the beginning of the travel journal exercise as inspiration.

Once all participants began their respective semesters, initial student enthusiasm for the course was high. However, an important lesson emerged regarding assessment design and student motivation. Despite clear instructions that the weekly travel journal entries were building blocks for their second (newspaper article) and third (online presentation/exhibition) assignments, the lack of allocated marks for individual entries led to declining participation over time. This highlighted the delicate balance between maintaining student autonomy and providing sufficient motivation through assessment structure (Patzak & Zhang, 2025). There was also a direct correlation between the quality, and therefore grades, of students who consistently completed the weekly travel journals versus those who did not. Their collections and artefact explanations seemed rushed and were often not well sourced or cited. For future iterations, we are considering implementing low-stakes marks for weekly entries, perhaps 1-2% each, to encourage consistent engagement while not overwhelming students.

Belonging and student engagement: Successes

Creating a sense of belonging and whanaungatanga (close connection between people) within the course was extremely important for Perry. Research shows a clear correlation between students’ sense of connection and their confidence in learning (Kahu, 2023). We recognised that online learning often presents challenges for meaningful interactions between students and teachers and among students (Broadbent & de Barba, 2023; Shea et al., n.d.). Understanding that students in different cultural contexts and time zones would connect with the course in different ways, we created a combination of discussion boards with structured prompts, and optional synchronous sessions for students to engage and create strong learning relationships.

The weekly discussion board was designed to be asynchronous. Perry posted a Socratic question to encourage students to share their personal perspectives and put them into their cultural contexts. The intention was to foster both a social and cognitive presence in the course, transforming standard online discussions into meaningful cross-cultural dialogues.

The optional synchronous sessions were called the weekly ‘hangout’. It was scheduled at a time when students across all time zones could connect online. While not mandatory or tied to any assessment, these sessions were only attended by New Zealand students. Despite the lack of overseas students, these sessions provided valuable opportunities for spontaneous discussion about the impact of the German colonial legacy in the South Pacific and provided a place to build a stronger learning community. Lemoa Fesulua′i, a colleague of Perry in Sāmoan studies, regularly joined the sessions to add a Sāmoan/South Pacific/Indigenous perspective to the students’ primarily Western-focused readings.

Two face-to-face opportunities were also presented, which Perry felt couldn’t be overlooked. Both opportunities fostered strong levels of engagement with the local students. One was a visit to the Special Collections at UoA, where students living in Auckland were able to view objects relating to Central Europe’s presence and legacy in the South Pacific. They learnt about the importance of archival material and preservation in learning about the past. To maintain equity of access, the session was recorded and items photographed, later becoming resources for students’ online exhibitions. Similarly, the second opportunity emerged spontaneously and quite organically. Fesulua′i suggested they hold a kava session for students while Perry was in Sāmoa. Made from the ground roots of its namesake plant, kava is a drink from the South Pacific known for its soothing characteristics and can be drunk in both informal kava circles and in more formal circumstances, surrounded by culturally informed protocols. Through this experience, students learnt about the distinctions between formal and informal kava ceremonies in Sāmoan culture, providing authentic cultural context to their studies.

To humanise the digital space and create continuity in the learning journey, Perry introduced an unexpected element: Remington, her cat, as a roaming traveller who periodically checked in with students. As she attested to the learning design team, “students love cats.” This creative touch not only humanised Perry – demonstrating teacher presence by revealing her personality and approachability – but also broke down the traditional lecturer/student barriers, and supported student wellbeing through humour (Zhou & Lee, 2025). The success of this approach was evident when the class representative embraced the initiative and introduced their cat in their biography. The comments from Perry’s class in the following semester were centred largely around the fact that the second course did not use new photos of Remington!

The success of the sense of belonging in the course was evident from one student’s email to Perry. They said, “I enjoyed being in your class … I felt for the first time in a long time that I belonged in a class, and I felt very welcome by everyone in this class” (Student B, personal communication, June 4, 2024). The student went on to explain that they often struggle to feel heard and culturally respected as a Sāmoan of German descent.

Belonging and student engagement: Challenges

Despite the best of intentions, the launch of the course had its obstacles. The short marketing timeframe of one month resulted in a small cohort. Out of 25 students who were offered a place to study, only 10 were able to enrol due to visa issues. Administrative hurdles in the international exchange program, particularly around visa applications, deterred many potential students, especially those who had attempted to enrol. Further, different semester start dates across countries meant some students were disadvantaged by only beginning to engage with the content as late as week three, thus immediately requiring them to catch up on weeks of content.

The course design also revealed a disconnect between our aspirations for student engagement and a rich sharing of cultural perspectives, and the reality of diverse student expectations. For example, international students anticipated a more traditional online format with less frequent participation requirements. This misalignment became evident in several ways. The optional weekly ‘hangout’ sessions, while beneficial for New Zealand-based students, saw zero participation from students in Asia and Chile. One student from China messaged Perry and explained that they had not included scheduled real-time sessions in their academic planning. Similarly, the unmarked weekly discussion boards saw declining participation from international students, which ultimately affected the quality of their assessed work, particularly in the second (newspaper article) assignment.

The two in-person opportunities, the Special Collections visit at the UoA and Fesulua′i’s cultural sessions, showed minimal engagement with the recordings. This low level of participation raised questions about the intent of the course design: were our expectations for engagement too high? Was the reading load appropriate? How could we better balance collaborative activities with individual study preferences?

Perry’s reflection on these challenges led to broader insights about post-COVID student engagement. Students have become increasingly strategic in what courses and degrees they take, and employability is a major concern for them and their post-university lives. This is also evident in the classroom setting and their approach to learning. Students no longer appear to have an appetite for extra learning activities or readings and prioritise activities directly linked to grades (Horne et al., 2022). This was evident in how students overlooked the pedagogical importance of the weekly travel journal entries, despite clear communication through the LMS announcements explaining how these activities would benefit their final assessments.

These experiences highlighted several key lessons for future iterations. First, the importance of clear marketing materials that accurately convey course expectations and delivery methods. Second, there is a need to reconsider the balance between synchronous and asynchronous activities while maintaining equity across time zones. Finally, as Trowler et al. (2022) note, creating a sense of belonging requires reciprocal effort – while teachers can design engaging learning spaces, student participation remains crucial for fostering meaningful relationships.

Authentic, relevant, relational learning activities: Successes

As described above, the course’s learning activities were intentionally designed to foster collaboration and build student relationships across cultural and geographical boundaries while also scaffolding students into course assessments. Each module centred around a selection of core readings that served as springboards for discussion and reflection.

Using Padlet as a discussion platform, students could share their thoughts and engage with peers’ perspectives in a visually engaging format, supporting both social and cognitive presence in the virtual learning environment. The addition of weekly reflection questions served dual purposes: it fostered deep engagement with course content while encouraging students to gather and prepare their materials in advance of their final assessments. To support students’ academic skill development, interactive H5P activities were integrated into the course, providing practical guidance on essential skills such as essay writing. From Perry’s perspective, these practical elements were essential. She had found, in other courses taught the previous year, that students were struggling more with basics like oral presentations and strong writing skills. As such, each module targeted a different academic skill: essay writing, debate structures, presentation skills, and how to select objects for their online presentations/exhibitions.

At the end of each module, students were invited to reflect on their learning experience through a brief feedback check-in. Guided by Remington, the virtual feline travel companion, students could express their learning progress by selecting an emoji that best represented their feelings. Remington would appear in a different photo showing off his antics, such as his mouse ‘collection’ in the museum module, and display an encouraging message, prompting students to share their thoughts about the module and their individual learning experience. This playful yet purposeful approach to gathering feedback helped maintain student connection in the online environment while providing valuable insights into their learning experiences. The informal nature of the feedback, facilitated through Remington’s friendly presence, encouraged students to be more open about their challenges and achievements (Wells & Perrine, 2001).

In addition, the course content was thoughtfully curated to expose students to diverse perspectives on German-Pacific relationships, which guest speakers further enriched by sharing their specialised knowledge. One such speaker was Tony Brunt, a Sāmoan man from the wider Auckland community with an interest in German-Sāmoan colonial photography. Brunt delivered a recorded lecture in week five and was essential to strengthening empathy and showcasing how the theoretical concepts discussed in the course directly affected everyday individuals. Leleani Tamu (Burgoyne) was another guest speaker of Sāmoan descent. In her 10-minute video, she spoke about her previous research on Dr. Bernhard Funk, a physician in Sāmoa who was known for his eccentricities. This showcased again some of the ‘outlandishness’ of the German entanglement in the South Pacific, and inspired students to delve deeper into his influence in Sāmoa. A postgraduate student in history, Rui Kerr, was another who recorded his experience. He shared his research on a German-Sāmoan woman, Caroline Hofer. He spoke about her experiences of having members of her family be deported to Germany and others forced to remain in Sāmoa, highlighting the realities of World War I and post WWI life. Finally, Dagmar Dyck, a Tongan artist of partial German ancestry, recorded and spoke about her artistic practice and research, her travels to Germany to examine archives and museum collections, along with her personal experience and entanglements as someone from the Pacific with German heritage. The videos showed the students that the Germany-Sāmoa connection is still relevant today, from photography and biography, to the interconnectedness of autobiography, to the German legacy in the South Pacific. The nine modules, structured over 12 weeks, covered a comprehensive range of topics including German speakers in the South Pacific, concepts of (German) colonialism, German fiction, travel writing from a gendered perspective, and contemporary issues of postcolonialism, artistic engagement, and museum repatriation.

Authentic, relevant, relational learning activities: Challenges

As with the first two sections, our main challenge was maintaining engagement in the uptake of learning opportunities outside of graded assignments. For example, we used Perusall, a technology tool designed to encourage social learning and deepen the students’ understanding of relevant articles. The readings that students were required to read were uploaded to Perusall, and students were asked to respond to a specific prompt and reply to each other’s comments. We envisioned rich conversations where students would exchange ideas and learn from each other’s perspectives.

However, we observed a significant lack of engagement with these activities, which we attribute to the absence of any grading incentives. Despite providing instructions on the benefits of participation, many students chose not to engage. To enhance engagement in future iterations, we might consider integrating a small percentage of overall course grades into learning activities. Additionally, we may also consider modifying the assessments to include criteria that require students to incorporate feedback received from previous learning activities into their submissions.

Conclusion

This course, developed as a virtual student exchange opportunity, represented an innovative attempt to foster cross-cultural understanding and empathy through the lens of German-Pacific relationships. The transformation of a traditional face-to-face course into an online, asynchronous learning experience revealed both challenges and opportunities. Through the application of diverse pedagogies, including the Community of Inquiry and Universal Design for Learning frameworks, and a strong emphasis on relational learning, the authors created a learning environment that encouraged meaningful cross-cultural engagement despite geographical boundaries.

The course development process highlighted the importance of collaborative partnerships between academic and professional staff, particularly in navigating the transitions to online delivery. The assessments and learning activities successfully engaged students in perspective-taking and reflective writing. Perhaps most significantly, this course demonstrated that virtual student exchange courses can create meaningful opportunities for developing empathy and global citizenship. Despite the challenges of asynchronous delivery and cross-cultural communication, students engaged deeply with historical perspectives and contemporary implications of German-Pacific relationships.

As we look toward future iterations of the course, we carry forward valuable lessons about course design and student engagement, particularly around student expectations and maintaining engagement across different time zones and academic calendars. The experience has not only changed our approach to online teaching but has also reinforced the vital role that student virtual exchange courses can play in developing globally aware, empathetic learners in an increasingly interconnected world.

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