Online International Learning

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Online International Learning

There has been growing interest in using online education to enhance a full-time student's educational experience. Colleges are experimenting with online and on-campus course mixes and there is an increasing amount of "blended programs" that are a formal mix of distance or independent learning and classroom experiences.

Center Online International Learning An area ripe for this type of blending is study abroad, especially given the push for more students in less popular destinations.

In searching for providers or programs that would blend online courses from U.S. universities into a study abroad setting, a colleague directed me to The SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning at Purchase College. As a collaboration of SUNY's Office of International Programs and the Office of Learning Environments, the mission of this center is to develop more online courses with an international dimension throughout SUNY, to work with faculty, and to develop courses that will be team-taught with an international partner, which will enroll students both from SUNY campuses and from institutions abroad.

The Center recently hosted a one-day conference to highlight opportunities in connecting online learning, distance education and international education. The conference highlighted the work being done within courses as opposed to the broader full-degree or term-oriented approaches currently being touted by universities. The center and presenters all stressed that by incorporating an international component to a course and making it live through technology, many of the educational objectives of study abroad can be addressed and seeds for future use in overseas study planted.

Jon Rubin, the director of COIL was the conference moderator, driven by a mission to "bring intercultural experiences into the classroom, across a sea of provincialism." As this graphic details, the objective of the initiative is ambitious. The theme of the conference centered upon building global learning networks, one course and one partnership at a time.

The fundamental outcome of study abroad is to build intercultural awareness. In many cases what is acquired during study abroad is intensive intercultural training. International education engages students in active participation in globalization, civic engagement, global civil society, and the globally networked workplace. American's are woefully unaware of the rest of the world and study abroad is a fantastic way to overcome this, but only a small percentage of American students actually study abroad. We know students want to go abroad, we know that students become more successful than those who don't, but institutional barriers and perhaps anxiety keep them from taking the final steps.

Maybe the approach of internationalizing courses will help universities in their goals to internationalize campus and that may be a grassroots, course level approach to internationalization will get us there faster than a top down approach. It also highlighted how unusual this approach currently is. The steps taken and partnerships formed to incorporate international dialog in a course often are outside university guidelines.

As an example of this concept Professor Rubin has connected his film and new media courses with courses in Belarus, Russia and Mexico. Students collaborate on video projects, working together on project planning and scripts, then through the editing process. The dialog between the students is both synchronous (telephones, iChat, Skype) as well as asynchronous (email, computer file exchange.

COIL is building a resource for best practice in this field. They are seeking to develop a global network of faculty who will want to exchange student engagement and to connect their courses for mutual intercultural training. One initiative proposed is a sort of "Craigslist" of courses and faculty seeking internationalization. If you have an interest in international education or have a desire to champion online education, keep an eye on the work of COIL.

The conference highlighted how programs like this take heroic, if not rogue efforts and how these counter the status quo. Doreen Starke-Meyerring of McGill University, one of the presenters, described two types of innovation: sustaining innovations and disruptive innovations. Much of today's international education innovation and much of the online education innovation is high education sustaining, extending the current models and structures of universities. Moving forward, it will be disruptive innovation that will create real breakthroughs in global education. Grass roots programming will drive true globalization ambition. Find these heroes on your campus celebrate their achievements and support their groundbreaking experimental work.

Margaret Mead said it best: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

- Mark Shay