The journey of self exploration boosts international communication of higher education students

 TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC 
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM TP HỒ CHÍ MINH 
Tập 17, Số 5 (2020): 867-875 
HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 
Vol. 17, No. 5 (2020): 867-875 
ISSN: 
1859-3100 Website:  
867 
Research Article* 
THE JOURNEY OF SELF EXPLORATION BOOSTS INTERNATIONAL 
COMMUNICATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS 
Tran Nhut Nhut Tan 
Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Vietnam 
Corresponding author: Tran Nhut Nhut Tan – Email: tantnn2912@gmail.com 
Received: April 19, 2020; Revised: May 21, 2020; Accepted: May 28, 2020 
ABSTRACT 
Nowadays, lecturers tend to explore creative and qualitative methods in higher education 
(HE) research across international contexts to gain innovative ways of teaching. The purpose of 
this research is to examine a new approach to the learning journey of university students and 
justify how effective it is to HE students. The study was carried out with 50 first-year students at 
Nguyen Tat Thanh University (NTTU). The first phase involved an augmented reality task in which 
students created their own “lively” products and reflected on their experience through Flipgrid. 
Then, students were asked to carry out another task, more reflective and practical. For the task, 
students were asked to venture into real-life, recording good deeds of normal people or even their 
own actions that they considered “kind,” and reporting what they found out. Their findings were 
then introduced to the community around the world as part of “Everyday Kindness Project” via 
Flipgrid. Then, students were surveyed about their new experience. The number of interactions 
were analyzed to see if any international communication happened. The results show that 
triggering students’ self exploration gave them motivations to act and communicate internationally. 
The study suggests further research on integrating creative approaches into teaching HE students. 
Keywords: higher education; augmented reality; Flipgrid; self exploration; international 
communication 
1. Introduction 
Internationalizing the curriculum plays a vital role in the recognition of a higher 
education institution, so lecturers are empowered to explore creative teaching methods to 
develop themselves and apply them to their own teaching practice. At a local higher 
education institution, thanks to appropriate extracurricular activities, students can have 
opportunities to improve critical thinking skills and increase international communication. 
There has been a wide range of research on promoting students’ motivation and 
research, which gives lecturers opportunities to gain innovative ways of teaching to 
Cite this article as: Tran Nhut Nhut Tan (2020). The journey of self exploration boosts international 
communication of higher education students. Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Journal of Science, 
17(5), 867-875. 
HCMUE Journal of Science Vol. 17, No. 5 (2020): 867-875 
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increase students’ international communication so that they can be confident to enter this 
globalized world. 
The primary purpose of teaching is to make a positive “difference in the lives of 
students and to help produce citizens who can live and work productively in increasingly 
dynamically complex societies” (Fullan, 2001). 
In order to motivate students to be willing to participate in class activities, lecturers 
need to explore a wide range of classroom activities and guide students to go through the 
process of experiential learning. Kolb (1984) provides a framework for the experiential 
learning model, in which learning can be gained through “the process whereby knowledge 
is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the 
combinations of grasping and transforming the experience." By involvement in a specific 
experience, learners can reflect on the experience from many viewpoints, seeking to find 
its meaning and solutions to a problem. Reflection can help the learners draw logical 
conclusions, they could possibly add the theoretical constructs of others to their own 
conclusions. These conclusions and constructs guide decisions and actions, which makes 
their learning more meaningful and authentic. In other words, students with various 
learning styles are dominant in the areas of concrete experience and reflective observation. 
Experiential learning can help people explore their own strengths when learning 
new things. 
Dewey (1897) strongly believed that education should be a journey of experiences, 
building upon each other to create and understand new experiences, rather than making 
students learn mindless facts that they would soon forget. Dewey believed that school 
activities and the life experiences of the students should be connected, or else real learning 
would be impossible. Getting students experience real situations and socializing with each 
other would motivate them and make their learning journeys more meaningful and thereby 
make learning more memorable. 
According to Brophy (2004), the concept of student motivation is used to explain the 
level to which students concentrate in various activities that may be the same or different 
with the one desired by their teachers. He points out that the introduction of new 
technologies to teaching can be an important asset to create the conditions of change that 
involves a student into more intensive learning experiences. Thus, an educational system 
with updated technology can be used as a complement to diversify the learning activities in 
the classroom. 
Joseph (2012) also agrees that technology will continue to dominate many aspects of 
human existence and, if used to full potential, can guarantee an improvement in the 
teaching-learning process. The exploitation of new technologies in the classroom is always 
a challenge for all participants in the teaching and learning process. 
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One of these technologies, Augmented Reality (AR), has attracted students’ and 
teachers’ attention. According to Nincarean, Alia, Halim, and Rahman (2013), AR is one 
of the emerging technologies that can have enormous impacts on learning. Shelton and 
Hedley (2002) also indicated that teachers are aware of new technologies, such as AR 
systems, for pedagogical purposes. According to Kesim and Ozarslan (2012), AR devices 
have been used significantly in education, the learning process can be transformed. The 
students when using AR technology interact with objects and information in three 
dimensions in a natural way, which motivates them more to learn. Recently, Sampaio, 
Daniel, Almeida, and Pedro (2018) also realize that the use of new technologies in the 
teaching and learning process, especially AR, “captures student and teacher’s attention, 
creating the expectation that its use can provide the participants with new ways of 
interacting, new possibilities for collaboration and potentially an increase in motivation for 
learning.” 
It is clear that incorporating new technology to experiential learning in classroom 
activities can encourage students to construct their own notions of self-exploration instead 
of simply being fed with preformed information about certain topics. To bring their 
learning to a higher level, teachers face a challenge of what approach is appropriate to 
encourage students to actively skim a variety of media, follow curiosity, respond with awe, 
dwell with certain media depending on curiosity or perceived utility; seek out peers for 
ideas and resources. The teachers at this point should work as facilitators to model 
curiosity and think-aloud when interacting with disparate media, ask probing questions, 
withhold evaluative statements, provide exemplars, monitor, and encourage students to 
take actions and join the community. 
As stated in the Global Toolkit (2017)
1
 by British Council, “The Active Citizens 
Learning Journey” let students immerge in learning activities to “discover” about 
themselves, become better aware and reflective of themselves and the community they are 
part of, and realize how their decisions and actions affect others and vice versa. It is 
through the self-exploration process and the learning journey that students can be 
“players,” not spectators, taking positive social actions for the benefits of wider 
communities. Thanks to this approach, individuals can fully understand themselves, 
improve the ability to connect individuals together, build trust, and empower people to 
engage peacefully and effectively with each other in the sustainable development of their 
communities. 
1
 Active Citizens facilitator’s Toolkit by British Council (2017) 
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Me: 
Identity and 
culture 
-> 
Me and you: 
Intercultural 
dialogue 
-> 
We: 
local and global 
communications 
-> 
Planning and 
delivering 
social action 
Figure 1. Active Citizens Learning Journey 
This learning journey has been delivered in many different ways around the world. 
However, to make teaching better and better, it is necessary for teachers to do classroom 
research with a careful plan so that they can get reliable findings to make better and more 
efficient changes to their teaching in a way that it can benefit students the most. 
In this research, a creative method was applied to explore the process of how the 
journey to self-exploration helps boost HE students’ international communication. This 
will be explained in details later in this paper. 
The research has three main objectives: 
- to evaluate if the introduction of technologies (AR, Flipgrid) into classroom activities 
can significantly improve students’ motivation and engagement in classroom activities; 
- to survey students’ comments on the new experience; 
- to examine if there is a relationship between the students’ self-exploration and 
international communication. 
2. Methodology 
Fifty students from Critical Thinking Class – 18DTA1C of the Faculty of Foreign 
Languages at Nguyen Tat Thanh University joined the study. These students did not have 
any experience with AR systems. All of them even did not know this type of technology. 
This study is an action research study, in which the researcher would like her students to 
experience a new approach to teaching and learning. 
The research was carried out for two and a half months, which equals to the duration 
of the course. In the first phase, students were divided into groups to work on the project. 
Printed papers with different pictures were handed to students to color. Then, students 
were guided to use their own cellphone with an AR system to make these pictures “come 
alive.” In order to solve the tasks, students had to follow the guided steps to see through 
the screen of the mobile device the “lively pictures” that helped to complete the task. In 
other words, after scanning the pictures with an AR app – Quiver2 installed to their 
cellphone, students described what they had seen and recorded their description. They 
could simply tell what they saw or made up stories based on those augmented reality 
images. These helped them remind of their childhood memories when they first knew how 
to paint and draw, which gives them full emotion and engagement to their learning. Then, 
2
 Quiver 3D Augmented Reality coloring apps: print, color and see your drawing in beautifully hand-
animated 3D worlds. 
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with the facilitation of the lecturer, students used Flipgrid to record their “products” along 
with a specific explanation of what they saw and uploaded them to the link that the lecturer 
already created before. Students were encouraged to view and comment on each other’s 
clips. Interactions and comments from international students were welcomed. 
Figure 2. Students’ Augmented Reality Works 
For the second stage of the research, students were given a more reflective and 
practical task. It was to venture into real-life, record good deeds of normal people or even 
their own actions that they considered “kind,” and reported what they found out. Their 
findings were then introduced to the communities around the world as part of “Everyday 
Kindness Project” with the help of Flipgrid. 
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Figure 3. Students and the Everyday Kindness Project 
At the end of the research, the students were asked to complete an online 
questionnaire about the new experience anonymously. Thanks to group discussion, 
students’ motivation in engaging in activities could be considered. The interaction times 
for each stage’s clips were analyzed to give the researcher a deeper view about the 
relationship between the students’ self-exploration and international communication. 
3. Findings 
Following are the findings of the study: 
For the effectiveness of the new teaching approach, the mean is 4.8/5. Eighty per 
cent of the respondents said that learning by experiencing things was the most effective to 
them. Students also showed high levels of participation. They mentioned that the use of 
technologies in the classroom activities made them more curious and motivated them to 
solve the tasks by the lecturer. 
When being asked about their feeling of this new experience, 85% of students said 
that they loved to “be challenged and participate in practical activities.” They also admitted 
that after exploring the activities themselves, they could understand more about their 
strengths and weaknesses. Most importantly, they could confidently raise their voice and 
dared to interact with their classmates. They also confessed that they were willing to 
communicate with international students. 
The results of this project were beyond the researcher’s expectation. When the 
project was over, one female students admitted that, “I would like to work in projects like 
this because I not only have chances to explore things myself, understand myself and my 
friends better, cooperate with friends, and express my opinions, but also feel rewarding 
when doing something useful to society”, and one male student said, “I wish that we could 
study the same way again.” 
4. Discussion 
Once students are given tasks by exploring things themselves, they are motivated to 
discover more before taking actions on certain things. This can serve as a “bridge” 
exercise: students first explore the use of technology and get familiar to it. Later, they can 
transfer this understanding to new situations and apply what they have known to “raise 
their voice” and bring it to the world. 
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When being empowered to venture into real life and record what was considered to 
be kind actions, students tended to pay attention to those with good actions around them 
and recorded what they saw. Two groups of students were even creative when thinking of 
some good deeds like giving water to poor street vendors on scorching days or just simply 
collecting rubbish after class and recorded themselves along with reflections to complete 
their assignment. The fact that students recorded their voices, shared their voices, and 
respected the diverse voices of the others shows that self-exploration plays an essential role 
in giving students a careful preparation, which not only gives them confidence but also 
pushes them to “raise their voice” to the world. The researcher realizes that the use of 
Flipgrid to spread students’ voice, if well-planned by co-managing with teachers around 
the world, can help students to have more opportunities for international communication, 
which she will apply for future classes. 
Earlier studies have shown that Augmented Reality is a “tool” to capture student and 
teacher’s attention and encourage students to follow curiosity and respond with surprising 
excitement. However, a surprising finding is that none of the respondents chose the very 
first activity with an experience through Virtual Reality as their favorite one even though 
after the first stage all of them asked for more papers to color and expressed their 
“willingness to do more.” Further research in Augmented Reality can do so so that suitable 
AR contents could be selected and used effectively in certain educational contexts. 
In terms of international communication, the interaction times recorded on the 
“Everyday Kindness Project” were twice as many as the times of interaction students did 
on Augmented Reality Works, 1,441 views and 627 views respectively. The recording of 
70.5 hours of engagement for the voices about kindness, which was nearly 10 times higher 
than 7.7 hours of engagement for the sharing about the augmented reality work, suggests 
that the researcher should carefully choose topics for students’ tasks in order to maximize 
their chances of communicating internationally. 
There are some limitations to this research. The students, first-year students, were not 
good at English to perform the tasks well. Language was a barrier to the interaction 
between NTTU students and international students. The theme “kind people” might not 
attract international students. However, choosing students from the critical thinking class 
and getting them experience the tasks can reveal how difficult to get them involved in the 
tasks and how they responded to the tasks from different perspectives and most 
importantly, show their motivation in communicating internationally. 
5. Conclusion 
Getting students experience real situations and socialize with each other would create 
motivation for them, make their learning journeys more meaningful and therefore make 
learning more memorable. Once students have “explored” enough, they will be willing to 
share their voices with others. 
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It is through the self-exploration process and the learning journey that students can 
become “influencers” who are skilled and motivated to promote trust; and with the 
lecturer’s facilitation, they “dare” to take useful social actions, “raise their voices” and 
finally communicate with wider communities, which is a positive sign for increasing 
students’ international communication – an indispensable factor for the success of learning 
in this modern time, and inspires further creative and qualitative approaches to researching 
practice in higher education. 
 Conflict of Interest: Author have no conflict of interest to declare. 
 Acknowledgements: 
We are grateful to British Council, Birmingham City University, Ho Chi Minh City University 
of Education and Nguyen Tat Thanh University for their support in bringing together 
academics, practitioners and researchers to explore creative and qualitative approaches 
to researching practice in Higher Education. 
We are also grateful to Microsoft Innovative Expert – Nam Ngo Thanh for creating an 
opportunity to be a part of the global project “Everyday Kindness” on sustainable 
development goals. 
REFERENCES 
Brophy, J. E. (2004). Motivating students to learn - second edition. Routledge. 
Dewey, J. (1897). My Pedagogic Creed. School Journal, (54), 77-80. 
Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (third ed.). Teachers College Press 
Joseph, J. (2012). The barriers of using education technology for optimizing the educational 
experience of learners. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, (64), 427-436. 
Kesim, M., & Ozarslan, Y. (2012). Augmented reality in education: current technologies and the 
potential for education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, (47), 297-302. 
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and 
Development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 
Nincarean, D., Alia, M. B., Halim, N. D. A., & Rahman, M. H. A. (2013). Mobile augmented reality: 
The potential for education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, (103), 657-664. 
Sampaio, D., & Almeida, P. (2018). Students’ motivation, concentration and learning skills using 
Augmented Reality 4th International Conference on Higher Education Advances 
(HEAd’18). Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia. 
Shelton, B. E., & Hedley, N. R. (2002). Using augmented reality for teaching earth-sun 
relationships to undergraduate geography students. Augmented Reality Toolkit The First 
IEEE International Workshop, 8. 
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HÀNH TRÌNH TỰ KHÁM PHÁ THÚC ĐẨY 
 KHẢ NĂNG GIAO TIẾP QUỐC TẾ CHO SINH VIÊN ĐẠI HỌC 
Trần Nhứt Nhựt Tân 
Trường Đại học Nguyễn Tất Thành, Việt Nam 
Tác giả liên hệ: Trần Nhứt Nhựt Tân – Email: tantnn2912@gmail.com 
Ngày nhận bài: 19-4-2020; ngày nhận bài sửa: 21-5-2020, ngày chấp nhận đăng: 28-5-2020 
TÓM TẮT 
Ngày nay, giảng viên có xu hướng tìm hiểu các phương pháp sáng tạo và định tính đối với 
nghiên cứu giáo dục đại học (HE) trong bối cảnh quốc tế nhằm đạt được những cách thức giảng 
dạy đổi mới, sáng tạo cho sinh viên. Mục đích của nghiên cứu này là thử nghiệm một cách tiếp cận 
mới đối với hành trình học tập của sinh viên đại học và kiểm tra tính hiệu quả của nó đối với việc 
giảng dạy sinh viên đại học. Nghiên cứu này được thực hiện trên 50 sinh viên năm nhất tại Trường 
Đại học Nguyễn Tất Thành (NTTU). Giai đoạn đầu của nghiên cứu là một hoạt động trải nghiệm 
thực tế ảo, sinh viên tự tạo ra các tác phẩm "sống động" của mình và đưa ra mô tả cũng như cảm 
nhận về trải nghiệm ấy bằng tiếng Anh thông qua ứng dụng Flipgrid để chia sẻ đến bạn bè quốc tế. 
Sau đó, sinh viên được trải nghiệm thêm một hoạt động thực tế khác là “dấn thân” vào đời thật, 
ghi nhận lại những hành động tử tế của những con người bình thường xung quanh mình hoặc tự 
ghi nhận lại những hoạt động của bản thân mà mình cho là “tử tế” và chia sẻ như một thông điệp 
“mỗi ngày hãy làm một điều tốt” với bạn bè thế giới thông qua ứng dụng Flipgrid. Phản hồi của 
sinh viên về trải nghiệm này cũng như những tương tác ghi nhận được giúp nhà nghiên cứu kiểm 
chứng “năng lực giao tiếp quốc tế” của sinh viên đại học. Kết quả của nghiên cứu này cho thấy 
“kích hoạt” khả năng tự khám phá của sinh viên sẽ tạo được động lực cho sinh viên hành động và 
thúc đẩy năng lực giao tiếp quốc tế cho sinh viên. Điều này góp phần định hướng cho các nghiên 
cứu sâu hơn về việc tích hợp các phương pháp đổi mới sáng tạo trong giảng dạy nhằm nâng cao 
chất lượng đào tạo cho sinh viên đại học. 
Từ khóa: giáo dục đại học; thực tế ảo; Flipgrid; tự khám phá; giao tiếp quốc tế