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The recent expansion of virtual exchange (VE) in lieu of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing advance of technology has resulted in considerably larger numbers of VE participants for those in certain areas and contexts, yet not all would-be participants have been so fortunate. In some regions and in various contexts, challenges in VE implementation have resulted in disadvantaged populations in terms of underrepresentation and marginalization in global VE networks. To illuminate such challenges, a mixed-method approach was utilized in the current study, beginning with a global survey to elucidate reasons for underrepresentation in terms of political, governmental, institutional, administrative, technological, pedagogical, cultural and personal challenges. Thereafter, semi-structured interviews with instructors, administrators, and educational decision makers were conducted to gain further insights. Although VE is now well established as an impactful mode of studying abroad, various region-specific challenges remain. We conclude with recommendations for underrepresented regions and populations.

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Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are concerned with the use of artificial intelligence techniques for performing adaptive tutoring to learners' according to what they know about the domain. Researchers are increasingly interested in applying gamification in e-learning systems to engage students and to drive desired learning behaviors. However, little attention has been drawn to the effective application of gamification in ITS, and how to connect theories of both concepts in a standard and formal way. Moreover, gamified ITS should manipulate a huge amount of knowledge regarding several models, i.e., gamification, domain, student and pedagogical models. Formally connecting such theories as well as representing system's knowledge relies on the use of ontologies. In this paper, we present an ontological model that connects gamification and ITS concepts. Our model takes advantage of ontologies to allow automated reasoning (e.g., on the domain, student, pedagogical or gamification models), to enable interoperability, and create awareness about theories and good practices for the designers of gamified ITS. To evaluate our model, we use an ontology evaluation method based on five knowledge representation roles. We also illustrate how it could support the development of an intelligent authoring tool to design gamified ITS.

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) are effective to provide instruction for students in several situations. Many works have been using gamification by adding game elements to learning contexts aiming to engage students and to drive desired learning behaviours. However, the design of gamified ITS should deal with a huge variability. Software product lines (SPLs) promise to offer rapid product development and more affordable development costs to build software from the same family. A key factor to successfully implement a product-line approach is to structure commonalities and variabilities into a product line architecture (PLA). In this paper, we propose a PLA for developing gamified ITSs that uses an ontology-driven feature modelling strategy. We illustrate how our architecture could be applied to instantiate a product on the basic math domain. We also discuss a set of implications of using it as well as how it could support the evolution/changing of gamified ITSs.