Abstract

In this article, we share our reflections as a teacher, students, and community organization on establishing an international community partnership course that drew United States’ Virginia Tech University students into dialogue with the Nepal-based Code for Nepal (registered as a non-profit in the US), an organization that serves rural communities by enhancing digital literacy skills of women and young girls. By reflecting on our partnership, we argue that international engagements, premised on equity as a goal and conducted digitally, will help in creating opportunities for the students as well as the communities in tackling the digital divide via writing and designing conducted in the pursuit of enhancing the digital literacy of the rural communities in need.

Introduction

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the high-income economies were faced with an urgent but achievable challenge of digitizing their personal, educational, and working lives overnight, many countries in the global south were struggling with necessities. These countries faced a lack of digital infrastructure and literacy which would enable equitable access to needed information. As a result, many communities in rural parts of the world were left behind as they battled the dire circumstance of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rural populations in countries like Nepal struggled with access to electricity, the internet, and digital learning devices (Saud 2021). With sudden limitations on mobility, these communities struggled to access even basic services such as education, food, health care, and medicine. They continue to face this issue. Indeed, currently with the second and third waves of COVID-19 and the global disparity in vaccine distributions, many have lost their lives in countries. 

In the case of Nepal, where Ravi (community partner) and I (Sweta) are from, this has been particularly true. Nepal is a small land-locked country situated between India and China. In 2018, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) also reported that about 29% of Nepal’s population was multidimensionally poor (World Bank). The literacy rate of the Nepali population is 60%, as reported by the World Bank. While multiple factors are responsible, one of the most prominent causes is the 2015 Nepal Earthquake, which registered a magnitude of 7.8 and killed more than 8,856 people while injuring around 22,309. While the reconstruction and recovery efforts from the earthquake were still ongoing, the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the lack of vaccines has killed more than 10,000 people. When the need to move education online became apparent, various families in Nepal experienced the challenge of digital literacy. The World Bank reports that 28.6% of the population hasn’t completed primary education and 31.5% don’t have access to electricity. UNICEF’s Child and Family Tracker survey highlights that more than two-thirds of schoolchildren in Nepal are deprived of distance learning and that only 3 out of 10 children have access to television, radio, and internet-based learning platforms (How Many Children and Young People Have Internet Access at Home? – UNICEF DATA 2021). In tackling these challenges, Code for Nepal has been working to empower various marginalized populations in rural parts of Nepal with civic technology efforts that increase digital literacy.^[1]While unequal circumstances persist and worsen due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a culture of global community care and equity should be established. It is prime time for community-engaged scholars to … Continue reading

We recognize academic communities and scholars have limitations due to resources and time that limit their ability to address the inequities facing intentionally under-resourced global communities. However, during situations such as a global pandemic, we believe it is these very 2/3 communities that need all the resource sharing that the 1/3 communities can provide. Indeed, Cushman and Grabill (2009) argue that the role of rhetorician is no longer “confined to the good man speaking well, or disinterested critique, or training college students to write better essays” (3). Rhetoric scholars can use the skills and resources available to them, via their institutions, to involve their students in supporting and serving the communities suffering disproportionally during a global pandemic. Understanding our responsibility at this moment, this essay addresses how our work as scholars, teachers, students, and community workers responded to such inequities by showcasing a reflection on classroom community partnership. 

In this article, we share an example of an international community partnership course that drew United States’ Virginia Tech University students into dialogue with the Nepal-based Code for Nepal (registered as a non-profit in the US), an organization that serves rural communities by enhancing digital literacy skills of women and young girls. This service-learning course was co-created with members of Code for Nepal to enable my (Sweta’s) students to support the communities served by the organization. To demonstrate the possibilities of such partnerships, we share reflections by faculty (Sweta), community partner (Ravi), and students (Kylie and Ashley) about the challenges, successes, and impacts of such international engagement. As noted above, we explore this partnership from the position that during the pandemic the digital divide has created a lack of access and opportunities for the most vulnerable populations around the globe.^[2] It is widely acknowledged that the field of Rhetoric and Writing has largely incorporated community-based writing and engagement as one of the pedagogical interventions of the writing classroom … Continue reading Hence, in this article, we argue that international engagements, premised on equity as a goal and conducted digitally, will help in creating opportunities for the students as well as the communities in tackling the digital divide via writing and designing conducted in the pursuit of enhancing the digital literacy of the rural communities in need.

Of course, we acknowledge that this work doesn’t solve all the problems, but then what single course does? Instead, we present this work as an example of the type of seemingly small effort, undertaken by a professor, students, and community partner, to address issues of inequity. We want to suggest, however, that as a field, such small efforts distributed across classrooms can enact and model a type of change that speaks our field’s core values.^[3]In the current age where globalization has created more opportunities than ever to be connected, to be transformed, and to create partnerships towards addressing global issues, the under-resourced … Continue reading

Planning and Implementing the Partnership

Designing an International-Service Learning Course & Context of Partnership

Sweta Baniya

I met the founder of Code for Nepal, Ravi Kumar, in 2019, while searching for interview participants for my dissertation. The meeting allowed me to learn about the work of his organization. That Spring, while I was still a graduate student at Purdue University, I established a partnership with Code for Nepal where my students worked closely with the organization to establish their brand and digital identity. The students also received a grant of $1500 via the Office of Engagement at Purdue University which allowed the students to purchase Facebook advertisements and various print-based merchandise like t-shirts, buttons, brochures (Chaube 2020). After the pandemic outbreak in 2020, Code for Nepal invited me to join their team as an advisor. During that time, I had defended my dissertation and then secured a tenure-track job at Virginia Tech starting in Fall 2020. Through my monthly meetings with Code for Nepal and their volunteers, I found ways to support the Nepali community as well as continue a partnership that specifically attempts at addressing the issue of digital literacy during the pandemic. We collectively brainstormed that a partnership with my current university, one that echoed our previous collective work, would be beneficial. In comparison to the previous class, however, this time I was teaching advanced college students a slightly different technical communication course that was dedicated to creating user documentation. While brainstorming and planning the class together with Code for Nepal, we thought that this class could create digital literacy-oriented resources and prototypes of products that could help us create much-needed resources during this very difficult time.

My Fall 2020 class at Virginia Tech, English 3814: Creating User Documentation (which we discuss in this article), allowed students to learn about various ways to create user-based documentation while also developing skills of communicating information to diverse audiences. One of the major goals of the class was to be able to understand the diverse audiences, prepare varied instructional materials for them, and finish the course with some strong documents that the students can put into their portfolios. The goals of the class were similar to what Code for Nepal desired as they aimed to empower young women by providing instructions and training about specific digital products. Hence, I designed my course themed on digital literacy focused on learning to create user-based documentation that provides a step-by-step process of a digital tool targeted towards building the capacity of rural communities served by Code for Nepal. This focus allowed students to achieve the goals of the class and allowed me to meet class requirements while also involving students in transnational work.  

During a guest lecture in my class, Ravi Kumar stated that one of the major challenges was that while people may have computers, they don’t know how to operate them. This information was shocking to many students who have grown up with computers. In response to and together with Code for Nepal, I designed three different assignments that will help the audiences to be digitally literate. While designing the assignments, I heavily relied on partnership with Code for Nepal and scholars who have taught and written about teaching instructional writing, service-learning, and international partnerships (Morain and Swarts 2012; Mogull 2014; Sano-Franchini 2017; Parks and Hachelaf 2019). As I designed the assignment sequence, students in the class started by identifying a digital product that they would like to work with followed by research and audience analysis for their first project. In their second project, the students transformed their print-based user documentation into video-based instruction. At the end of the semester, the student did a collaborative project that created prototypes of digital literacy products as well as user-based documentation for the same. Some conceptual prototypes included a digital literacy mobile game application and three interactive websites for COVID-19 that Code for Nepal can further produce and implement. As the students worked through the course, they reflected and contributed to the community that they weren’t part of while gaining real-world expertise given the challenges and social injustices created by the pandemic. 

Personal Reflections on the Partnership

Community Partner’s Reflection on the Virginia Tech /Code for Nepal Partnership

Ravi Kumar

Code for Nepal is an organization run by volunteers and heavily reliant on the generosity of supporters globally who provide their skills and time. Initiated in 2014, our organization was launched to increase digital literacy and the use of open data in Nepal as it became evident that digital and data literacy are two critical skills in the 21st century. For instance, as noted above, in Nepal, only 6% of school-age children had access to the Internet at home (“How Many Children and Young People Have Internet Access at Home? – UNICEF DATA” 2021). Fewer than 70% of adults are literate in Nepal (“Literacy Rate” 2021). As such, there is also a lack of digital literacy. Realizing that those who are socially and economically underprivileged might have difficulty accessing digital technologies, we saw this as an opportunity to work with youth to build their capacity to leverage technology to improve their own lives. Thus, Code for Nepal is committed to creating services to build the capacity of the youths and people who don’t have access, or have difficulties in accessing, digital technologies. All our products and programs have been created by volunteers to increase digital literacy, the use of open data, and civic technology in Nepal. 

Over the last 6 years, we have worked to build the capacity of youth by creating open-source digital and data products. And we have witnessed a rapid increase in interest among youth to take advantage of the global digital and data revolution. However, rural youth, and the rural population in general, still lags in access to technology. Indeed, COVID-19 further exacerbated that disparity. When COVID-19 hit, people from under-resourced and marginalized communities were affected disproportionately (“Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020”). Under-resourced and marginalized communities people lived in congested areas that did not have access to healthcare facilities and financial resources to protect themselves from this unprecedented crisis. Given the digital and safety divide heightened by the global pandemic, the Code for Nepal team, with its limited resources, was brainstorming how to help people in rural areas, especially rural teachers who might have access to laptops but needed help to take further advantage of technology and provide lessons to their students. 

Even before COVID-19, our team saw first-hand how teachers in public schools in remote parts of Nepal had shown strong interest in being able to better use laptops and the internet to enhance the learning experience of their students. In February of 2020, just a few weeks before COVID-19 brought much of the world to a halt, my team and I traveled to a small village in Sindhupalchowk, a district just outside of Kathmandu, Nepal, to provide digital literacy training to more than two dozen public school teachers.  At the workshop, only a few teachers were very comfortable with using their laptops and expressed interest in learning about new resources, such as free online libraries to help their students. However, most of the teachers who had brought their laptops stated they were having difficulty even typing, creating folders, or saving files. After the workshop, as we inquired in other schools in rural areas through our contacts, we found similar cases of low digital literacy. While reliable data does not exist on the level of digital literacy among teachers and students in rural areas, anecdotal evidence like this one indicates the urgent need to increase digital literacy among the rural population. 

As soon as the agreement for the course partnership was reached, we worked through what student assignments would best serve our purposes and partnered with Sweta to launch the class starting Fall 2020. The students of the class quickly worked to brainstorm products to create and assess how potential users might benefit from the proposed products. Both Sweta and her students engaged with us from the very beginning which enabled everyone involved to stay on the same page. We also engaged with the students by speaking in the class, helping the students brainstorm projects, answering their queries, and providing feedback on their projects. The first time I engaged with students regarding this project, I felt optimistic about our ability to co-create products that would help the larger community. Students asked thoughtful questions. For example, a student asked questions about the approach they should take to determine the needs of the users. Very quickly, the challenge we all faced, including students at the university, was to figure out how to understand the needs and challenges of a potential user of the planned products during a pandemic. 

Due to COVID, students and Code for Nepal team members could not reach out to some of the prospective users of our products in remote parts of Nepal. However, we decided that our team will provide regular feedback as well as information to students. Thankfully, our volunteers had an extensive first-hand understanding of the needs of the communities we wanted to serve. These volunteers shared their ideas with the students in the form of videos and PowerPoint presentations as well as feedback on their projects. The students created a diverse set of useful documentation of products, such as to help one learn how to spot a phishing scam and a prototype of an online portal to curate information about health facilities and COVID-19. They also created an online game to prevent cybercrime. 

With the individuals with which our organization engages regularly, these types of documents are very helpful in building the capacity of youth, teachers, and students alike in rural settings, particularly the increased awareness about basic cybersecurity which is critically lacking.  Students have also created detailed documentation using various digital tools such as Zoom, Slack, Youtube, Google docs and then made this work public via a website and Github (See “Ut Prosim Beyond Boundaries”). Now, we are sharing these materials with the larger group of community members in Nepal via its social media platforms and website. We will also use these materials for its workshops and share these with its beneficiaries who can use them for their projects. The work done by students has expanded our ability to increase digital literacy and build the capacity of people to use technology to make their lives better as well as to solve problems in their community. Students also find partnering with us useful as this partnership allows them to tackle a small but practical and real challenge of a community that has yet to leverage the digital and data revolution. 

As a volunteer-based organization, we have limited resources and capacity, but our hope to create open-source and freely available products remains unchanged. Through the partnership with the class, we have been able to create prototypes of products that have the potential to help a lot of people. We find this partnership highly beneficial. While it is too early to measure the impact of the products created by students, we will ensure that the “civic tech” community in Nepal can use and reuse these in various settings to advance their particular needs in diverse contexts. Partnerships like this can give students valuable experience as they prepare themselves to use the concepts they have learned in classrooms to tackle problems outside of the classroom. Generally speaking, service-learning is an opportunity where community-based organizations, like us, and students can work together to advance the common good of society.  Service-learning is also an opportunity where students get to experiment and learn new things. There is ample evidence that experimentation can be a source of power.  

Faculty Reflection on Course Design and Implementation

Sweta Baniya 

With my work during the previous earthquake in Nepal (April 2015), I had different roles that allowed me to directly participate in the listening and gathering stories of people as well as supporting communities with direct engagement. During the current period, during the global pandemic, I found myself helpless and stuck at home in the United States, unable to contribute anything to my community in Nepal. As I was about to start my new tenure-track job at Virginia Tech, an invitation from Code for Nepal arrived to serve them in an advisory role. I knew from my former students at Purdue University how involvement with Code for Nepal allowed for the development of leadership and persuasive writing skills that helped in a mutually beneficial partnership (Chaube 2020). Consequently, when I got an invitation to participate in Code for Nepal’s monthly meetings, during summer 2020, we brainstormed a better way of serving people in the rural Nepali communities during the ongoing pandemic. Hence, I proposed that we could do a similar service-learning-based class given the importance of digital literacy presented by the global pandemic. This was a way for me to introduce international service-learning at my new institution as well as to my new students and a personal way to give back to my community back home in Nepal. 

One of the conceptual goals of the class and our partnership was to enhance global understanding by engaging in cross-boundary service that allowed students to learn how their virtual classwork can be transformed to be an impactful work to serve the communities and gain an experience of real-world writing and communicating experiences that produce greater equity and access. As such, the course was intended to allow them to learn, reflect, and contribute to the community that they weren’t part of while gaining real-world expertise given the challenges as well as social injustices created during the pandemic (Rivera and Gonzales, 2021; Parks and Hachelaf 2019; Walwema 2018). It was important for me, in this course, to establish a grounding for the students to understand social, cultural, and digital epistemologies about the community they were serving while being cautious about students meeting the goals for which they signed up. Additionally, another element that was crucial for the class was the integration of course goals, social action, and personal service (Flower 2002). 

The social action in the course’s context required students to read, research, and understand the social, cultural, and digital realities of Nepal while attempting to complete the assignments that were specifically geared towards digital literacy empowerment and disrupting what an ideal writing classroom looks like. In this way, I was initiating a partnership that allowed the students to rethink their own identities, social status, educational background, cultural privileges that come with their identities, and digital literacy capacities. Furthermore, this partnership allowed me, as Kynard (2020) says, to accurately locate the radicalization of the young people in creating a political, cultural, contemporary conversation of intellectual values and community knowledge. The students who had never thought about digital literacy were thinking and digging deeper on how that is an issue of social justice. They were researching the local and global impacts of digital literacy and brainstorming ways to contribute. The students were developing communal knowledge about how culture, geography, and politics all come together in creating unjust systems of oppression that affect marginalized communities across the globe. 

Moreover, the intersection of the class’s goals and the community partner’s needs allowed students to move beyond geographical boundaries, cultures, and language barriers to learn how to contribute to an international community through adapting to work online. Students learned how their virtual classwork can be transformed into impactful work with communities through an experience of real-world writing and communicating. Working together with Code for Nepal fulfilled the requirements of the class as the students developed an understanding of the audiences’ context beyond language and the cultural barriers to produce materials for the organization that will be used in enhancing the digital literacy of the rural Nepalis. Subsequently, the class helped in developing various user-based documentation including various digital literacy prototypes. These digital literacy prototypes are currently being used by Code for Nepal in their pursuit of enhancing the digital literacy of their audiences in rural Nepal.

As a teacher of this course, I found myself as a mediator between the community and the students in my classroom. One of the challenges that I faced while launching this partnership was the class being online and asynchronous. This created some obstacles regarding communication with the students. While I had the benefit of being a Nepali who could answer many questions of the students and be able to guide the students through their analysis, the students felt they needed more interactions with the community organization and feedback from them. The time difference and the class-time-restricted interaction among the Code for Nepal organizers who were in Nepal. In response, Code for Nepal produced videos that helped the students understand the context of Nepal. They also provided asynchronous feedback on student-produced materials, but only on the final product with my input as I didn’t want to overwhelm the organization with providing feedback to the first two assignments. This collaborative work on the final assignment was seen as useful. Still, since the final project was a group project, there were difficulties in students’ collaboration and communication. Here, if the class were face-to-face, they will have dedicated time during class to discuss and develop their work. However, since the class is online, with many students also taking other classes online, there was Zoom fatigue among the students themselves. As a result, some of the group collaborations needed my intervention in making sure that the collaborative work happened as planned. The students were also tired and exhausted of the global pandemic, and towards the end of the semester, it was overwhelming for some of them to commit to a group project. It presented a greater challenge for me, too, because I didn’t want to disappoint Code for Nepal. I wanted my students to complete the project they had started. 

When I reflect on my interactions as well as the reflections produced by the students in the class, I believe many recognized this class as something that motivated them to keep working as it would have an actual use by a community that needs it. Virginia Tech’s motto is “Ut Prosim” meaning “that I may serve.” Many students connected this class towards fulfilling that motto. Many of my students mentioned Ut Prosim in their reflections and how they think the class helped enact this motto. Some students shared how they learned ways to help local communities virtually, which was the biggest gain for me as a teacher. Yet the challenge while doing this kind of work is also the student’s dedication to the project which can be on all spectrums: very dedicated, moderately dedicated, and not dedicated. Some of the students from the very beginning were dedicated, wanted to do their best, and contribute to the community. Some just needed the writing class to fulfill their requirement for graduation. Since they take many other classes that demand more dedication, they are not able to meet the time challenges of my course. 

Respecting those multiple voices of the students, I want to highlight that designing an international community-based course is a daunting task requiring working out details, corresponding, planning, and coordinating meetings as well as making sure that the students are learning the required material. Such work requires dedication on part of the faculty, the community-based organization, and the students themselves for this kind of partnership to work successfully. There are always unexpected challenges that arise during such partnerships that happen due to reasons such as lack of communication, dedication, or the global pandemic itself. Those challenges should be taken care of with collaboration. Moreover, another challenge is sustainability and impact. Many students reflected that they wanted to see a visible impact in the community. However, since such impact was being challenged by the global pandemic and the semester was very short, students were unable to witness such impact. While the documents and prototypes prepared by the students are being planned to be distributed by Code for Nepal, the students didn’t see it happening right after they produced the document. This was disappointing to many students. Despite the difficulty, I believe that this was a fruitful way of engaging students, exposing them to other various realities of the global community, and helping them serve these communities via writing while they develop their skills and portfolios. Like we said above, this project in no way solves an entire issue of digital literacy during a global pandemic; however, this project allows thinking in multiple different ways where partnerships can be created across the borders. 

With the goal of sponsoring social action against the digital divide, throughout the semester students produced user documentation and prototypes that reflected an increased literacy about global inequity, politics surrounding, and injustices created by COVID-19. After Ravi’s visit to the class, many students noted that they were surprised about the digital divide, and many reflected that they were fortunate enough to have digital access and education as they critically reflected on their digital literacy abilities and privileges they had. Others continued to think about their local communities and how they can support their community and other global communities by contributing their time virtually (Bainya, Brein, Call, 2021). The students also learned about the importance of culturally and digitally responsible user documentation and how such documentation could empower someone in rural parts of Nepal. In that regard, the students researched multiple impacts of COVID-19 and designed a prototype of a website that catered to the community needs during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a mobile-based app that specifically focused on addressing cybercrime. This showcased the social action and transformation of students’ knowledge into a digital product aimed at empowering a community that they are not part of. The students’ work is publicly available for any needy community. However, as I have mentioned above, one semester is not long enough to deep dive into these rooted issues of inequalities and injustices, and this timeframe is certainly not enough to solve the issue of digital literacy. There were some conceptual challenges faced by students of how they can move beyond linguistic and cultural barriers, and many students were nervous about being able to produce documentation that was good enough for the community. Despite those challenges, many students gained an experience of serving the community which is Virginia Tech’s motto Ut Prosim and they also received ideas on how they as responsible citizens of the world can contribute towards ending injustices locally and globally.

Learning to Research, Write, and Contribute Globally

Kylie Call and Ashley Brien 

As Virginia Tech students, we had never been exposed to this scale of communication and writing in an international context, having mostly interfaced with peers or professionals of a similar demographic to us. Professor Baniya having an international background and dedication to social justice in a global context was a different experience for us. This focus encouraged us to be enthusiastic about the purpose behind our assignments and partnership with the Code for Nepal community. With social awareness and diversity in mind, many of us understood at the beginning of the course that there was an obvious gap of knowledge between our perceptions of Nepal and what we would soon come to learn from further research. As a result of all of the knowledge and resources about Nepal (socially and ethically) provided to us, we quickly became passionate about the project and were motivated to approach assignments with great care. Upon reflection of this process, we found that writing intentionally for an international audience fuels the need for attention to technical and stylistic details. As our projects developed, these aspects began to highlight many cultural differences to us as we continued our research, reading, and listening. The class demonstrated that forming a connection with the audience, even if you do not have direct contact with them, was key to creating quality user documentation. And we would both argue the most valuable aspect of this experience was serving an international community by completing the assigned projects.

Still, we found being an outsider proved to be the most significant obstacle, even though one of us (Ashley) had participated in a semester-long study abroad program in Switzerland and Rwanda. From the beginning of the course, our professor taught us that adapting to your audience’s needs, values, and attitudes was essential for creating effective documentation. However, geographical barriers, time differences, and online asynchronous classes that met only a few times a month made it impossible for us to communicate with our audience directly. Instead, we relied on Professor Baniya and representatives from Code for Nepal as well as conducted extensive research of secondary sources that helped us slowly develop an understanding of the local context. Students were encouraged to ask questions through email or by using video conferencing tools. Initially, we felt so out of our comfort zones that we did not know what questions to ask. It took considerable research to find data from local newspaper articles, journal articles, and various websites that could help us formulate our questions. This was challenging as well as rewarding for us. Although online resources about digital literacy in Nepal are limited, we eventually found information that gave us some direction. Through our audience analysis, we gained a greater intercultural understanding of the factors that play a role in Nepal’s low digital literacy rate, such as geographical differences and limited internet connectivity. 

For us, the first step, then, was bridging the space between preconceived notions and reality. For an instance, we wanted our prototype to raise awareness about credit card thefts, but then we didn’t know until we researched and found that credit and debit card uses are not as common and popular in Nepal as here in the US. Without talking with Code for Nepal and Professor Baniya openly, we wouldn’t know this context. Hence, we extended our research to other social issues in Nepal that made us aware of the high rates of cybercrime in Nepal as a result of the increasing amount of time spent online due to the COVID-19 outbreak (Aryal and Dhungana 2020). We were able to use this information towards our final project where we developed a prototype for an Android application on cyber safety, featuring an online quiz platform targeted towards adolescent girls in Nepal. While developing this project, we did multiple revisions to meet cultural standards and guidelines, which we did with feedback from our professor as well as Code for Nepal members. When choosing stock images and graphics for content, we learned that the community is traditional and we have to use culturally appropriate ways of communication. What Virginia Tech students might see as trendy is what the community in Nepal may see as revealing or suggestive. Hence, working collaboratively with Code for Nepal in revising our projects further developed our understanding.  

Furthermore, there are technical and stylistic differences when it comes to writing and consuming content between an American versus Nepali audience. As a whole, writing for an international audience on a global scale differs tremendously from creating documentation for familiar audiences in the United States. We understand our slang and lingo, and we rarely think about how this may be misinterpreted by a foreign audience. By the same token, we don’t understand their slang or lingo, let alone their language. Being able to translate these documents is helpful, but translations can only go so far. We had to be very particular in the way we worded step-by-step processes. Saying “click here” or “go there” is vague and uninformative. Using labels offers more clarity and less opportunity for items to get lost in translation, which is why design elements play a part in technical documentation, too. We think it is easy for us to jump to conclusions about what our audience has access to and their preferences, social behaviors, constructs, etc. A common mistake that was mentioned in “Designing for Imaginary Friends” was how “designers and developers design for themselves, mistakenly assuming that they’re part of the intended audience” (Massanari 2010). Hence, we were very careful about not assuming things about our audiences and trying our best as students to meet their needs. 

When it all comes down to it, you must know the audience, their needs, their culture, and the local context. Setting aside obvious stereotypes and delving into research is only the beginning. Being able to pay close attention to technical details creates a clear and concise approach to writing, which is necessary to communicate effective messages, while truly understanding a group of people and their needs. Knowing their local situation, cultural context, and what they require as a community is the only way to achieve the mutual benefit of modern service-learning coursework, and working through this was one of our biggest challenges. After multiple revisions of our projects, discussions, thought, and conversations, we felt slightly more comfortable about writing for an international audience. However, we never felt completely confident because in the class we were simply learning about this process. Almost every decision we made regarding the documentation felt like merely an educated guess, but we were able to do so with our partnership with Code for Nepal who helped us tremendously to not make any mistakes. However, to be honest, the lingering feeling of doubt was something that we had never experienced before while writing. This is because we had only ever written for native English speakers, and we didn’t have exposure to an international audience. Hence, this course introduced us to the globalized world and made it clear that writing exclusively for native English speakers is not realistic in today’s workforce. Although we would not consider ourselves experts on writing for diverse audiences by any means, we are grateful for the introduction to this process. 

It would be wrong, however, to assume all students shared our enthusiasm.  Given that, we want to discuss how varied outlooks on service learning among our peers created a challenge for us to complete the project on time. In one instance, for our final project, Professor Baniya organized us into groups to create user documentation and a prototype for a mobile application for Code for Nepal. This prototype would be used not only to promote digital literacy but also to address a specific issue brought about or heightened by the pandemic. Although conflict can arise in any collaborative setting, varying attitudes regarding service-learning amongst our peers specifically hindered this process. The benefits to the partner organization and the citizens of Nepal are obvious. However, some of our fellow students failed to realize that international service-learning is an opportunity for personal and professional growth. Instead, they viewed service-learning as separate from technical communication and therefore more work (Chong 2019). Additionally, they saw the experience as a charity, which the professor continually reminded us how it was not. This outlook is problematic because it resulted in the project not being prioritized. In several instances, members of the group did not complete their delegated tasks in favor of other coursework. The diverse perceptions of service learning amongst group members were shocking, considering our professor assigned weekly reading assignments on the theory behind service-learning. Furthermore, comprehension of these readings was measured through graded discussion posts. Nevertheless, some students failed to see what they gained from the course’s design, especially if technical communication was not their intended major, and they were taking this class to fulfill their degree requirements.

In addition, the asynchronous nature of the course also contributed to group conflict. There was no way to require meeting attendance, which resulted in some students failing to establish a connection with the course concept and partner organization. Additionally, it gave the members of our group too much independence. Even though every group member agreed upon the project’s timeline and meeting dates, there was a lack of obligation to honor that commitment. The ability to turn off computers and phones at any time, thus halting communication, made the experience come and go as you please. Over the semester, for some members of our group, the project came second to other coursework and life events, such as driving home for Thanksgiving break and social plans while we were still in a pandemic. 

This manifested itself in our work, particularly with the logistics. The students who saw value in the reciprocal nature of service-learning were more likely to make meaningful contributions to the project. They attended more group meetings and played a larger role in development. During our final group presentation, they demonstrated a greater grasp of the project. However, we struggled to keep the project alive, with only three of our five group members engaged. Our group missed every deadline up until the final turn-in date, which created more stress for those who were dedicated to the project. The active participants of the project took on leadership roles but ultimately failed at intergroup conflict resolution. Due to concern over our grades and seeing the opportunity to design professional technical documents for Code for Nepal start to dwindle, we turned to Professor Baniya. She granted us multiple deadline extensions and acted as a meditator for our group, reminding all members that students would be graded individually on their ability to demonstrate an understanding of the curriculum by making meaningful contributions. The involvement of Professor Baniya sparked more motivation amongst all group members but particularly those who had shown little to no interest prior. With our professor on our side, we were able to enforce deadlines with real consequences amongst our group. 

In conclusion, we as students believe that implementing international service learning in the classroom has many advantages; however, it is equally challenging. However, it is this challenge that makes the class a meaningful experience because as we prepare to enter the real world, we have real issues and problems to deal with. Not only does this type of engagement enhance local and global community relations and foster civic values, but it also improves student retention of the curriculum and builds critical career-related skills. However, a general expectation is that there is a slow learning curve among the students as some of them might not have exposure to an international context. The unfamiliarity with the audience and group dynamics proved to be significant challenges. However, over the semester, we were able to overcome these challenges to gain meaningful experience and develop the critical thinking skills necessary to address these obstacles. We finished the course as empowered engaged global citizens who are slightly more prepared for the professional world. Additionally, as Code for Nepal argued, we learned how digital literacy could empower and uplift those in Nepal economically and socially, which served as a motivating force for our projects. From there, the Code for Nepal members helped us to fill our knowledge gaps and provided additional context for our findings. They allowed us to reimagine digital rights as human rights that could be masked over by politics and intensified by the pandemic (Parks and Hachelaf 2019; Hesford 2011). Moreover, our experience depicted how digital literacy could continue to elevate the Nepali community and similar underserved communities like them, both economically and socially. From our research in understanding these groups and their access to technology, education, and other resources, our prior knowledge morphed into new beliefs on fairness and equity. We reevaluated our perspectives and our own experiences of digital literacy that made us critically think about discourse and work for digital rights and how they can be expanded or constricted, based on socioeconomic and post-pandemic factors.

Conclusion

The global pandemic fueled the need for, and devotion to, ongoing technological advancements, influencing the way communities must navigate an evolving digital landscape. The pandemic has opened our eyes to many problems and issues various communities face regarding digital literacy. With greater awareness of the newer form of injustices, we need to find newer ways to at least attempt to address it. A classroom where teaching and learning happen can be a space where solutions to the newer challenges could be brainstormed. This is why service-learning courses are vital to playing a part in the development of students in higher education as it provides an opportunity to engage with another community coupled with the ability to reflect upon one’s existing knowledge and beliefs. Thus, the complexity of service-learning courses offers a valuable opportunity to many young individuals, creating a unique educational experience–one that also enables a more sustainable approach to social change, allowing students like us to be a part of this process as change agents (Cushman 1996). As we collectively reflect on our experience, we realize how this process shaped our perspectives moving forward as varied professionals: professors, scholars, students, and activists. As the experience unfolded, we saw firsthand the importance of open communication in an online classroom and how that coincided with our purpose to write effectively and stylistically for a new international audience in Nepal.

There were various challenges of conducting service learning-based classes during a global pandemic as we noted above from our varied experience as a teacher, student, and community partner all engaged in this process. However, all of us worked together to rethink our positionality of being in the US, being digitally literate, and having an internet connection to solve issues of our daily life. We call this intervention disrupting boundaries of community writing and partnership as all the students in the class, the teacher, and the community partners worked together to move beyond the boundaries and serve transnationally. As all of us mention our challenges as well as our rewards in this reflection, we want to be mindful that this kind of community work requires a lot of planning, thinking, coordination, and communication as well as reflection from both students and teachers. We do not want to undermine the challenges we faced due to the classes being online and the time being a global pandemic. Being an online class challenged how we worked together; however, at the core of this engagement is how we can serve the global community by engaging via digital platforms. Through the class, the students got an opportunity to channel through their own experiences of being digitally literate from a very young age and understand the privileges that helped them to dedicate their time and energy to the course and this partnership. Additionally, the sustainability of this kind of partnership is also very demanding as various community-based scholars have continually thought about it. Transnational work in community writing requires a lot of time, energy, and dedication from faculty, students, and community partners. As we have reflected above, we have become rhetoricians as change agents by moving beyond time, geography, and navigating transnational contexts for making this partnership successful for both students and the community (Cushman 1996, 2016). However, this is just the beginning, and much more is left to be done. Hence, we urge rhetoricians to work collaboratively with students and communities to address some of the global issues even if it is a very small one within the classroom and beyond. 

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