‘It becomes increasingly complex to deal with multiple channels’: materialised communicative competence and digital inequality in English-medium higher education in the digital era

Figures & data

Table 1. Demographic information of the participants.

Participant	Country of origin	Gender	Year	Programme	Self-reported language abilities
P1	Sweden	M	1	Software Engineering	Swedish, English, Italian
P2	India	M	1	Software Engineering	Odia, Hindi, English
P3	India	M	1	Mobility Engineering	Hindi, English, Swedish
P4	India	M	1	Product Development	Tulu, Kannada, English, Hindi, Korean, Swedish
P5	USA	M	1	Interaction Design	English, Hindi, Telugu, Spanish, French, Swedish
P6	India	M	1	Innovative and Sustainable Chemical Engineering	Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, English
P7	Mexico	F	1	Innovative and Sustainable Chemical Engineering	Spanish, English, German, French, Swedish
P8	India	M	1	Communication Engineering	Tamil, Urdu, English, Hindi
P9	India	F	1	Systems, Control and Mechatronics	English, Hindi, Tulu
P10	India	F	1	Chemical Engineering	English, Hindi, French, Swedish
P11	Mexico	F	1	Management	Spanish, English, German
P12	China	M	2	Data Science	Chinese, English
P13	Sweden	F	2	Complex Adaptive Systems	Swedish, English, Chinese
P14	Sweden	F	2	Complex Adaptive Systems	Swedish, English, French
P15	Sweden	M	2	Complex Adaptive Systems	Arabic, Swedish, English
P16	China	F	2	Product Development	Chinese, English, Portuguese
P17	Sweden	M	2	Complex Adaptive Systems	Swedish, English, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish
P18	Sudan	F	2	Quality and Operations Management	Arabic, English, Swedish
P19	Romania	M	2	Quality and Operations Management	Hungarian, German, Romanian, English, Dutch, Swedish

Table 2. The most frequently reported digital communication channels.⁴

Online collaboration platforms	Number of responses (headcount)	Digital messaging and networking platforms	Number of responses
Google Document	8	Zoom	19
LaTeX	4	WhatsApp	14
Overleaf	2	Facebook Messenger	13
GitHub	2	Discord	7
MATLAB	2	Instagram	6
Miro	1	Slack	5
		Google Meet	3
		Microsoft Teams	2
		WeChat	2
		Canvas mail	1
		Snapchat	1

Figure 1. P11’s language portrait.

Figure 2. P17’s language portrait.

Figure 3. An extract from the meeting minutes.

Table

NO.	SPEAKER/ACTOR	VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL ACTION	VISUAL
1	G2	I think the good start could be the (.) automotive thing. The professor there with the [errr]
2	G3	[yea]
3	G2	{Lithium-ion course}
4	G3	{searches the university’s course webpage}
5	G2	[I think that is a great way to start.]
6	G3	[Torbjörn]
7	G2	{gazes at G3’s screen} {Is it Torbjörn?}
8	… ..
9	G1	((writes ‘Björn’ on the whiteboard, then looks at G2)) Right?
10	G2	{pointing to the word} {This is Björn}
11		{pointing to the gap before the word ‘Björn’} {But Tor, T-O-R- Björn}
12		That’s actually one name.
13	G1	((writes ‘Tor’ on the whiteboard))
14	G2	{pointing to the written name} {Yea, the funny thing is, this is a name, and this is a name}
15	G1	((looks at the whiteboard, smiling and nodding))
16	G2	{pointing to ‘Tor’} {You know, this is Thor, and t-o:-r in Swedish}
17		{pointing to ‘Björn’} {And this is bear}
18	G1	Yea. @@@
19	G2	{pointing to the written name} {This is Thor-Bear}
20	G1	{continues whiteboarding}
21	P4	{googles ‘bear in thor couture’}
22		{turns the screen to G2, also within the sights of G1 and G3}
23		{So this is basically}
24	G1 -3	@@@
25	G1	That’s Torbjörn
26		{turns to the whiteboard}
27		{Shall we (.) maybe (.) put the questions in the consent form? Anybody has experience with the consent form?}
28	…  …
29	G1	((sits and types on Google Document))

Table

NO.	SPEAKER/ACTOR	VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL ACTION	VISUAL
1	P4	But are there any other batteries other than lithium-ion?
2	G1	Yea, there can be [some]
3	P4	{[They have like lithium polymer batteries]}
4		{uses mouse cursor to highlight a sentence on a webpage}
5	G2	Yea, that is actually correct. Quite interesting. Do we need to go to lithium-ion? (.) Or, are there any other solutions?
6	P4	((nodding))
7	G2	Any other bat – types of batteries other than lithium-ion being developed at that moment?
8		Yea, so that could be a thing we want to (.) find as well.
9	G1	But we have to develop the battery or the client control of the battery?
10	G2	{the client control}
11	P4	{types the question on Google Document}

Figure 4. ‘Translate the page’.

Table

Program/tool	Functionality/use^2	Owned by	Estimated no of monthly active users (million)^3
Canvas	A learning management system; for students to submit work and for teachers to post work.	Instructure Inc.	N/A
Discord	For instant messaging and digital distribution; users can communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities.	Discord Inc.	≈ 150
GitHub	For software development and version control.	GitHub (Microsoft)	≈ 73
Google Document	An online word processor; allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users in real-time.	Google	≈ 2,000
Google Meet	For online video-communication.	Google	N/A (≈ 100/day)
Google Translate	For instant translation of text, documents and websites from one language into another.	Google	≈ 1,000
Grammarly	For reviewing spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes; allows users to identify and search for an appropriate replacement for the error it locates. It also allows users to customise their style, tone, and context-specific language.	Grammarly	N/A (≈ 30/day)
Instagram	For photo and video sharing; users can upload media that can be edited with filters and organised by hashtags and geographical tagging.	Meta Platforms	≈ 1,000
LaTeX	A software system for document preparation; widely used in for the communication and publication of scientific documents in many fields.	N/A	N/A
Matlab	A multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment.	Mathworks	4
Messenger	For instant messaging; allows users to send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files, and also react to other users’ messages and interact with bots; the service also supports voice and video calling.	Meta Platforms	≈ 2,000
Miro	An online collaborative whiteboard platform for synchronous and asynchronous communication.	Miro	N/A
Overleaf	A collaborative cloud-based LaTeX editor used for writing, editing and publishing scientific documents.	N/A	N/A
Snapchat	For creating multimedia messages referred to as ‘snaps’; snaps can consist of a photo or a short video and can be edited to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings.	Snapchat	≈ 350
Teams	For workspace chat and videoconferencing, file storage, and application integration.	Microsoft	≈ 200
Slack	For persistent chat rooms (channels) organised by topic, private groups, and direct messaging. Users can add emoji buttons to their messages, on which other users can then click to express their reactions to messages.	Salesforce	≈ 12
WhatsApp	For instant messaging; allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.	Meta Platforms	≈ 2,000
WeChat	For multi-purpose instant messaging, social media and mobile payments; enables text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.	Tencent	≈ 1,200
Zoom	For one-on-one meetings, group video conferences.	Zoom Video Communications	≈ 300