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Internationalisation of education is often regarded as preparing students to work in a globalised world. Our graduates are not only workers and consumers of the increasingly global labour market, but they are also people, friends, parents, colleagues, neighbours, partners, voters and (global) citizens. Attitudes towards oneself and other people, and the underlying values that these attitudes are based on, poses challenges to quality education. Education in the context of globalisation needs to be inclusive and equitable in order to be of quality (United Nations, 2015), but what does this look like in practice? What does it require of students, and for those responsible for designing education? Do students and teachers have the possibility to reflect on and conceptualise the realities they live in? Apart from knowledge and technical skills, what growth mindset do students and teachers need in order to navigate international and intercultural perspectives responsibly and ethically?

This chapter proposes to address these questions through the prism of four teachers in the field of global health education. The students they teach and interact with, as well as their needs as active citizens in a globalised world, will provide the backdrop for further reflection. The personal journeys of the authors between countries, disciplines, professions, learning and teaching will thus be conceptualised as experiences continuously being reconstructed and deconstructed in the classroom through processes of being, belonging and becoming. It is argued that these processes can be used as resources to create inclusive and equitable quality education.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an increase in online traffic, with many assuming that this technology would facilitate coping through active social connections. This study aims to interrogate the nature of this traffic-engagement relationship by distinguishing between passive (e.g. browsing) and active (e.g. reacting, commenting and sharing) engagement, and examining behavioral shifts across platforms.

Three field studies assessed changes in social media engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies included social media engagement with the most followed accounts (Twitter), discussion board commenting (Reddit) and news content sharing (Facebook).

Even though people spent more time online during the pandemic, the current research finds people were actively engaging less. Users were reacting less to popular social media accounts, commenting less on discussion boards and even sharing less news content.

While the current work provides a systematic observation of engagement during a global crisis, it does not claim causality based on its correlational nature. Future research should test potential mechanisms (e.g. anxiety, threat and privacy) to draw causal inference and identify possible interventions.

The pandemic shed light on a complex systemic issue: the misunderstanding and oversimplification of how online platforms facilitate social cohesion. It encourages thoughtful consideration of online social dynamics, emphasizing that not all engagement is equal and that the benefits of connection may not always be realized as expected.

This research provides a postmortem on the traffic-engagement relationship, highlighting that increased online presence does not necessarily translate to active social connection, which might help explain the rise in mental health issues that emerged from the pandemic.