Category: international education

323. Explore First Study Abroad Program

Posted in access, diversity, engagement, equity, first-generation students, higher education, inclusion, international education, learning, pedagogy, study abroad, support network, teaching
January 10, 2024

Compared to continuing-generation students, first-gen students experience a higher risk of not completing a college degree. In this episode, Sue Roberts, Marianne Young, and Beth Hanneman join us discuss a study-abroad program for first-gen students that is designed to build their confidence, sense of belonging, and help them understand the connection between their education and their career goals. Sue is the Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Kentucky. Marianne is the Assistant Vice President for Smart Campus Initiatives at the University of Kentucky. And Beth Hanneman is the Associate Director of Career Advising and Career Education, also at the University of Kentucky.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Compared to continuing-generation students, first-gen students experience a higher risk of not completing a college degree. In this episode, we discuss a study abroad program for first-gen students that is designed to build their confidence, sense of belonging, and help them understand the connection between their education and their career goals.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guests today are Sue Roberts, Marianne Young, and Beth Hanneman. Sue is the Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Kentucky. Marianne is the Assistant Vice President for Smart Campus Initiatives at the University of Kentucky. And Beth Hanneman is the Associate Director of Career Advising and Career Education, also at the University of Kentucky. Welcome, Sue, Marianne, and Beth.

Sue: Thank you, we’re glad to be here.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Sue, are you drinking any tea?

Sue: I am not drinking tea right now. But if I were in my normal space, I would be drinking tea. Yes.

Rebecca: Do you have a favorite kind?

Sue: I do. It’s a rooibos tea, a red bush tea.

Rebecca: Wonderful. Marianme, how about you?

Marianne: I’m not currently drinking too, but I have one on the ready. It is a lovely wild sweet orange.

Rebecca: Nice. What about you Beth?

Beth: So I went to Montana this past summer for a yoga retreat and fell in love with Huckleberry. So I now drink a wild Huckleberry tea at least once a week. And that’s what I’m having this morning.

Rebecca: I have never had that. I think it’s a first on the podcast.

John: It is. I am drinking an Irish Breakfast tea.

Rebecca: And I have a Jasmine Dragon Pearl this morning.

John: Dragon pearls?

Rebecca: Dragon pearls. [LAUGHTER]

John: Ok, so we have a mythical tea. [LAUGHTER] We read about the Explore First Study Abroad program in an article in the Chronicle recently. And so we invited you here to talk about that. Could you give us an overview of this program?

Sue: Sure. It’s a new program for the University of Kentucky, run for the first time in summer 2023. We took 60 students, 60 undergraduate students, all of them first-generation students to either London or Dublin for a three- week Education Abroad program focused on career readiness.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about this program came about?

Sue: It came about in many different ways, actually. There were conversations happening on our campus for probably two or three years before COVID, even, among different colleagues, some in the Career Center wondering how they could produce really good career readiness, education abroad programming. So I’m in the office of first-generation student success thinking about how we could do a better job in introducing first-generation students to education abroad. And then in the International Center, in the Education Abroad office itself, there were lots of conversations about how we could partner with colleagues across campus to develop programs that would reach this demographic.

John: One of the things we were really intrigued about was a program that was designed to benefit first-gen students as well as providing those career readiness skills. Could you describe a little bit how this program integrates that career focus?

Beth: Yeah, I’ll take that one. So over in the Career Center, we have the national association called NACE and they have NACE Competencies. And so when you start thinking about any major that a student has, you want them to make sure that they have those skill sets. So when they actually get into the workforce, they’re able to be analytical, they’re able to have communication skills. And what I love about the first-gen program and Explore fFrst within that, is the idea of how do you do that in a global setting. And so when you start thinking about designing this curriculum, and me and Marianne had the privilege of helping to work on that. It was this idea of, we had at least find out what the foundation is that the students had. And so sort of thinking about block scheduling, where a lot of times professors may say we’re going to do one topic and then go to another, I did more of what we call spiral curriculum, where you introduce a topic, and we brought it in here in the United States before we left, so maybe it was resumes where they had to create a resume and work on a resume ahead of time. And then when we’re overseas, we re-introduced resumes to say, “How would you put this Explore First experience on your actual resume? …kind of the same when it came to networking. What does it look like to navigate, to connect with people? Okay, great. We do that here in the United States. But then how do you do that in a global setting. So it was one of those things where you can actually see that reinforced. I also thought that was really cool when it came to interviewing as well, of having that prep for the students within that area.

Rebecca: We have a couple of other episodes of tea for teaching that also talk about the NACE competencies that we’ll link in our show notes for folks that are interested in that particular detail. So we just talked about NACE. Can you talk a little bit about the benefits that students get from it being a study abroad experience?

Beth: Yeah, at least for myself, the world is definitely interconnected. And so what I loved about how we interacted with employers is that we first looked at those that were connected here to Kentucky, and then we reached out with those that would be overseas. So for example, we have a company named Alltech that’s located here in Lexington. And so our students on the Dublin trip was able to actually go see their location. So it wasn’t one of those things that “Oh, hey, we’re just randomly seeing a company.” We’re very methodical about how that connection is. Another company, Compass, for example, does food services for our University of Kentucky health care system. So it wasn’t one of those things of just like, “Oh, we’re just gonna go see a company.” It was one of those elements of not only is making this connection abroad, but how does this actually impact me back home. And we would actually talk about that. Students would be like, “Alright, yes, you see this in another country, how does cultural awareness make a difference? How does being able to navigate and learn about yourself influence who you’re going to be back at UK?” And one of my favorite questions we asked in the interviews that they had to do for one of the assignments was: “If you’re back on the college campus, and you run into the university president, what are two things you tell them about the program?” And it was really cool to hear from the students that like, “I didn’t think I could learn so much about myself in three weeks, let alone three months about a career,” and others have never been on a plane before to navigate what that looks like. So even if you go into the job market, most likely somewhere along the line, you’re probably going to have to travel somewhere and do connections, but to have that support to have other people with them, when they did it for the first time was really impactful.

Rebecca: I love that reflection question. [LAUGHTER] So many benefits to that.

Marianne: I think the global stage also provides a really unique opportunity to just boost confidence with these students, as Beth was talking about, some of our students had never been on a plane. And not only did they navigate getting on a plane, they navigated getting into and past customs and immigration and all of that. And then the most surprising piece to me, in terms of what this looked like in terms of that confidence boost is at the beginning of our core sessions with the students, they put together kind of a: “these are what my goals are currently.” And by the end of the program, not only physically the confidence that you saw as they stood in front of the class, and they were presenting what their new goals were, for some of the students it expanded the opportunities that they were considering. They had never considered what it might be like to be in a leadership position in a global organization, or for the other students, it solidified what it was that they were wanting to do. And that confidence that they had of “Yes, I’m on the right path,” I think came from them navigating situations that they hadn’t been in before. And then being able to connect with different companies and different leadership individuals within the company, who they could see like, “Oh, my gosh, they were first generation as well, and now they’ve moved abroad, and they have this position in the company,” and the confidence that came from being able to navigate an international city as well as “I have confidence in how I’m going to navigate my career pathway,” that was so amazing to see in the sestudents.

Sue: I will agree with that. I visited, I think, three of the four programs. The program was split into four different groups, two went to Dublin two to London. So there were 15 students in each and I think I’ve visited three of them over the course of the summer, and to see that confidence grow, almost hourly, was incredible. And I will say that I think it translates, we’re hoping anyway, that it will translate, into greater understanding and kind of sense of purpose as a student. So you can see the point of your degree, you can see the point of why you’re struggling through this or that course to make it through to graduation. And of course, we want to see good results in terms of retention rates and graduation rates.

Rebecca: I’ve had the opportunity to teach a couple of travel courses where I’ve had students who had never traveled before, some within the US and some travel abroad. And I agree that seeing the confidence growth in students is such a rewarding experience for the instructors as well as for the students. It’s a really powerful experience. But one of the things that I really love that you’re describing is this connection to alumni, and those really specific intentional connections between the businesses locally as well as abroad. That’s a really beautiful component of your program.

John: And one of the challenges that all colleges face is the relatively high DFW rates generally experienced by first-gen students. And by making clear to the students the salience and the relevance of the material that they’re learning, and how this can open up these possibilities to them in a very obvious manner that they may not naturally see, I can imagine this could be really transformative.

Marianne: I think one of the great moments we had as we were visiting one of our employer partners, as Beth was talking about the spiral curriculum, he had talked about LinkedIn profiles and been helping them and then we get to this employer visit. And they start talking about LinkedIn profiles. And it is almost the exact lecture we had given that morning. And students are turning around and saying, “Oh, my gosh, you told us that this morning, and here’s this employer saying this exact same stuff. You were right.” And so we revisited again, and then the next employer, and so it was the aha moment of “Oh my gosh, this is actually something that I’m going to need and I’m going to use as I navigate my career.”

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about what a typical day for a student looks like in this program.

Marianne: There was no typical day, but this will kind of give you some activities they may have been shuffled around a bit. We’d start off with maybe some class time reviewing the visit. Maybe we’d have the day before talking about the experiences that the students had, answering any questions they may have had, how they navigated a challenge, just really taking time to connect and then help them build on the information that we were presenting. Once we kind of move through class time, we might have visited an employer in the afternoon and done a site visit where we not only learned about the company but also some of our employers took us through exercises like design thinking at some of our tech companies, or walking us through interviews and resume reviews in terms of a mock opportunity if you’re applying to their company. And then we may also have a cultural visit in the afternoon, visiting a significant landmark in the area or learning about the history and the culture of the particular space that the students were in. And then in the evenings, our students would maybe get together and cook in the residence hall, or they might go out to dinner together. And so generally we had class time and some cultural visits or an employer visit.

Beth: Yeah, exactly what Marianne said, and when you think about over the three weeks, because we were there for three weeks with these students, the beginning part of the classes were more kind of prep and foundation to get them to know what to expect. And so we broke teams of three, and so we would have one person would be the person who was in charge of introducing the group, we had one person that was the photographer, one person that was in charge of the “Thank you” at the end for each site visit. And that was really cool to see him learn collaboration, but also kind of change up and like, “Oh, well, this person is really interested in architecture, so we’re gonna have him be the speaker for this one, and then I’ll do the photography. And this one over here, we as a group, we actually wrote the thank you note together of what that means to follow up within it, kind of expectations within it.” So that was really cool in terms of curriculum, and kind of how we set that beginning. And then closer to the end like Marianne said, was more like review: “What did you learn from it and reflection?”

John: Do students travel with faculty or staff from the University of Kentucky?

Sue: We structured this program so that each group of students was accompanied and led by two professional staff members from the campus. Typically, it was a person from the Career Center, and a person from the Office of First-Generation Student Support. So it gave the students oftentimes very familiar people who understood where they’re coming from, and the skills they brought to the table, but also a person with the career advice ready for them kind of as needed. So it worked really well, I think, to have those program leaders on the ground with the students. And we weren’t hosted by a university, although we did visit universities in both locations. But we worked with a education abroad partner provider called AIFS. And they have provided the classrooms, they assisted us find student accommodation, and they worked on us with the cultural visits.

Rebecca: I think I remember also reading that you did some work prior to going abroad and some coursework there. Can you talk a little bit about what that looked like?

Marianne: We had an opportunity and clusters with the students, we broke them into smaller groups to help prepare them for what to expect as they were preparing for their education abroad experience. And so we covered a variety of topics of what about your luggage? What is a carry on? What is it checked bag? How do you move through security? What can you expect in an airport? What can you expect in terms of customs and immigration? We talked about how to prepare for the weather, how to think about budgeting, and being prepared for different costs of things, or how you might be able to consider all of the different pieces and parts of preparing for souvenirs that you want to get… all those different things, a variety of cluster topics to make sure that our students not only had a connection with the person that they were going to be traveling with, but also the other students. And then it gave us space for any of the questions that students may have had, as they were preparing for this experience.

Beth: It’s just a great way, because a lot of times when I’ve done education abroad, you might meet at the airport for the first time. But what I loved about this program is that we literally got to know each other prior, to at least kind of understand maybe some of the things that they were concerned about as a student. And so then as a staff member, we can be like, “Okay, let me give you some extra resources.” I remember one particular student, I ended up calling her mom and her was on the phone, because she’s like, “Okay, Beth, I know you went through the whole situation of what we need to do for the airport, but my mom has questions.” And I was like, “Sure, no problem. Let’s talk.” And so her mom was like, “Oh, nice to meet you Beth. Her mom dropped her off at the airport, gave me the biggest hug. When her mom picked us up. She was like giving everybody in the group a hug, because we were extended family for them for three weeks.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the timing of the program?

Sue: So last year, it was the first time through, so I think we had to do things very quickly. We had to assemble a team, we had to get these clusters stood up. We had to recruit students, we had to find the scholarships for them and all the rest of it in kind of a hurry. So this year, we’re spacing it out a bit more. So we’re recruiting for summer 24 right now. And we’re going to repeat the program, we’re going to take 30 students in two groups to London and 30 to Dublin in two groups. So we’re excited about that. And then their travel occurs during the summer vacation, early in the summer vacation, so May and June this year.

Marianne: The interesting piece of the timing as well was I was on the first group that went to Dublin, and we were actually able to connect with the group that was coming after us in the airport as they were preparing to go out, so my students were able to pass along some words of wisdom and some thoughts to the group that was coming after them. And so that was a really fun piece with the timing to be able to catch up with each other in the airport.

Beth: In terms of curriculum, the way it was set up, there was one class that everybody was part of. So we actually met as a group virtually, with all 60 students ahead time. So everyone had that basic foundation. And then when we’re actually over there, that was when we did the actual classes for the individual pieces. So I did Dublin two and London one. And so at the same time, we’re having curriculum in terms of giving feedback for the next group coming over.

John: Now, you mentioned that there was some time spent acquiring funding, could you talk a little bit about the funding that was used for this program?

Sue: Sure. And this is a little unusual, I think. It was a surprise to us when the Kentucky State legislature or general assembly awarded some funding to all Kentucky institutions of higher education to support displaced students, so refugee students primarily. As part of that program, they allocated a certain amount of funding also to support education abroad and exchanges. So when we realized that, which was only in the summer before, so summer 22, we thought, “Aha, we could finally make this happen. This thing we’ve all been talking about in different ways about connecting careers, connecting first-generation students with education abroad, and making a real difference for those students, and we could do it at a actually a quite a big scale for education abroad, 60 students is quite significant.” So we seized the opportunity. The trick, then, of course, was to find matching money, because it didn’t cover everything. So we found some money internally at the university, we used education abroad scholarships, our administration at the very highest levels awarded us some funding to kind of back us up if we needed it. So it was a team effort. And this upcoming year, we don’t have the state money. That was a one time deal, so we’re funding it all from our university funds.

Rebecca: So cost is always a concern, I think, for first-gen students, and may be one of the reasons why they don’t even think they might ever go abroad. I know that was the case for me, as a student. I didn’t think I was ever going to get a chance to go abroad, but I got to when I was in graduate school. So can you talk a little bit about what this meant to the first-gen students or if you had trouble initially even getting them to think that they could really actually participate in this program?

Beth: Yes, one of our students on Dublin two got the email about applying and that the program was going to be there when we started doing the recruitment. And he was like, “Is this a scam? Is this true?” We went over to the first-gen office to verify because he’s like, “it sounded too good to be true.” And so once we got the word out that it was, of course, students applied and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”

Sue: You’re absolutely right that it’s the number one barrier of first-generation students is finances. And I think it was the majority of our students on this program are Pell recipients. So first-gen is a very big category. But we did try and make a difference, particularly for students whose financial means were limited. So it was a tremendous opportunity for them. And as Beth said, some of them were very disbelieving at first of the opportunity, they couldn’t understand how this was happening, because they hadn’t thought that this was something that they could ever achieve. And that was another reason why we kept it to three weeks, because many of these students… well, in fact, I would say all of them… were working during the summer. So three weeks away from your summer job and earning is a big deal, and others had family obligations as caregivers, and so on. So that’s the reason why we ended up with a three-week timeframe was partly to be sensitive to those needs. And then in terms of the financing, London is an expensive city, and Dublin is an expensive city. And these are young people, these are primarily first- and second-year university undergraduates. So budgeting to shop, to eat, to go out is difficult, and especially when it’s a different currency and options are different, and the prices are different. So that was a big element that we’ve reflected on since this first time through, and I think we’ll be maybe just a little bit more supportive. We were supportive, but maybe just a little bit more supportive of how to budget when overseas because they were responsible for their own spending money on this program.

Rebecca: What about things like food or other personal costs for travel, was that included in the program?

Sue: So there were a few meals included. There were a few like welcome dinners and things like that included, but by and large students were responsible for their own catering as it were for their own food. And it turned out that was kind of an issue because it takes a bit of knowledge of the stores and what’s available and what’s affordable. It takes a bit of knowledge of how to cook in a budget conscious way and not just grab the processed thing. And of course these supermarkets are unfamiliar and I would say one thing we did think a lot about upon return and when we debriefed this was giving the students a bit more time to adjust to that situation and to learn their options and to cook because sometimes we were so busy with all these things we were doing every day that they didn’t have much time to plan their suppers, or to go shopping and cook so I’ll let Beth and Marianne chime in because they were on the ground, they know more, but that was the kind of impression I got.

Marianne: So, we had some bargain shoppers in my group that found meal deals at like close Tescos, things like that. And so it was always kind of a competition of “Did you know that the sandwich was included in the meal deal?” And so it was a pretty inexpensive breakfast and lunch and sometimes dinner opportunity for students that became somewhat of a game, to figure out, like, what are you going to put in your meal deal this time? And so a lot of our students were supportive in terms of sharing different deals that restaurants were doing. Did you know that on Tuesday, they have a student special where you can get this, this, and this. And so they were really great about sharing some of the tips and tricks and things that they picked up along the way. And then also sharing meals. So going to the grocery, and he brought me to purchase something, while I may not eat this whole thing, but if you split it with me, then I’ll get the next one. And so they were really great, that was really fun to see them kind of helping and sharing deals that they found along the way.

Beth: And one of the things that we did is we actually offered a time if someone wanted to come with me to the grocery store. We did a local one so they could see how close something was if they by chance needed something quick to eat. But then we actually went with them, which was one was a little bit farther away have more of the discount kind of larger what they would think of a supermarket type of thing here in the United States, just because, over there, you kind of buy more what you need, versus “I’m going to have lots in the refrigerator and freezer within it.” And we actually had a couple of times where we had meals together because it was someone’s birthday and we wanted to celebrate. And very similar to what Marianne said that they would be like, “here’s a deal,” or “hey, I’m going to make soup anybody else want?” And we had one student who loved to cook, and others are like, hey, awesome, I will help clean up, or pitch in for some money if you would be willing to be the person that actually wanted to make the meal, and they actually collaborated teamwork that way too. So it was really cool to see.

Beth: One thing I wanted to share is the fact I think people think that education abroad is three weeks, and then you’re done. For us, this is a lifetime connection for these students. So we actually had dinner with both groups separately, so they could get together and meet each other and see each other, I’ll get messages being like “Guess who I saw on campus?” and they have a competition of how many times they see a certain student, be like “I saw them three times this week, Beth, I saw this one four,” but even moreso is this confidence coming back to have to go after the dreams that they want. We had a student who, I’ll be very honest, had a really rough home life and had a lot of confidence issues and got over there had a chance to start talking, had a really good conversation with a couple employers. And we did a networking night where we invited all the employers back and they could come and network with the students. And she had a really good conversation with some of our staff that we actually had come over from UK to kind of see the program as well. And she followed up, wrote a note back to say thank you for this conversation, I appreciate it. This is what I’m looking for in terms of career or job, and that person connected her with to somebody back here in Lexington, she then goes and reached out to that person, met with them, interviewed, and now has an IT position that she never thought possible a year ago. So that’s really cool to actually see them do this steps, it’s one thing for us to say go do, it’s another for them to actually gain the confidence to go and actually obtain it.

Rebecca: What a great story.

John: One of the things that I think you’ve all mentioned is that this creates a really tight bond among the students as well as the connections to the staff members they traveled with. And that sense of belonging has been shown in a lot of studies to be a major factor in student retention. And I think programs like this can create really strong bonds that can help students be more likely to succeed.

Sue: I will agree with that. There were two young women on one of the programs who became fast friends. And I assumed they had been friends forever, and I just was chatting with them, and I said, “You know, you must have known each other a long time.” They said “no, we just met.” And one of them said that she was so excited to come back to UK in the fall… so this semester… and I said “well, weren’t you excited anyway?” And she said, No, she wasn’t, that her freshman year had been a little lonely, and she had not made a good connection with her roommate and was struggling a little bit to fit in. And she said “Now I have a best friend on campus, and we’re gonna have fun the next few years together. And I thought that was awesome.

Marianne: And I’ll brag on our students. They were phenomenal. I mean, when I told people that I was going to go to a foreign country with 15 college students, and we were going to travel the city and we were going to do all of the things they looked at me like, “Why would you take college students to an international city?” They were fantastic. They were supportive. They were curious. They were beyond what you could even imagine in terms of the questions that they were asking and the way that they engaged with the curriculum. We have phenomenal students here at the University of Kentucky and I was lucky to get to take 15 and I have them running across campus yelling my name saying “Oh my gosh, this is the first time that I’ve seen you since you’ve been back on campus” or seeing each other on campus is such an honor to be a part of just that family that we now have. And, like I said, they were the best students you could ever imagine traveling with. I do it again in a heartbeat.

Sue: So one thing that really impressed me about these students, actually taught me a lot about this category “first-generation” which is kind of thrown around is that these students are really amazing. I mean to get to the University of Kentucky, to be studying their majors, to be making good academic progress is an accomplishment for these students and they have the resilience, they have the resourcefulness, they have the curiosity, as Marianne said, to make the most out of education abroad. So these are not students who took this for granted. When they were in London or Dublin, their eyes and ears were open all the time. And they were busy taking it all in, reflecting on it, and they absolutely were some of the very best students I’ve ever seen on an education abroad program.

Rebecca: So do you have plans to evaluate the success of this program?

Sue: So yes, we built assessment into this program from the beginning. So we had a researcher from the College of Education who helped us and administered pre- and then during, and then post-surveys of each student. So she collected information about their responses and reflections to the assignments and to their learning, and also something about their intercultural learning as it were. So we’re going to also track these students and see how they do compared to the peers who didn’t get the opportunity to study abroad in terms of their academic progress and their graduation.

John: Excellent. We look forward to hearing more about how well this program works. We always end by asking, what’s next?

Sue: Well, we want to do this again. [LAUGHTER] So we think it’s working. We’ve got good results so far, assuming that the next summer is also successful. We hope to just keep tweaking it, making it better and better for the students and maybe building it in as kind of a signature program for first-generation students here at the University of Kentucky.

Rebecca: An incredible thing to invest in and offer first-gen students. Thanks so much for sharing the details of your program.

Sue: Thank you for having us. And thanks for your interest in this endeavor.

John: It sounds like a wonderful program.

Sue: Yeah, it’s been a blast to develop and to be part of I must say. It’s been fantastic. And I don’t think we mentioned but perhaps we should that over one quarter of our undergraduate students identify as first generation. So this is a significant population at our university which serves students of all sorts from the state of Kentucky and outside.

John: Excellent.

Sue: Thank you both.

Marianne: Thank you all

John: Thank you for taking the time to join us and to share this wonderful program.

Sue: Yeah, appreciate it.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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287. COIL Virtual Exchange

Posted in access, coil, collaboration, collaborative learning, higher education, intercultural, international collaboration, international education, learning, online learning, pedagogy
May 3, 2023

Studying abroad can help students develop intercultural competency skills to prepare them for a future in an increasingly globalized environment, but many students cannot afford international travel. In this episode, Jon Rubin joins us to discuss how collaborative online international learning programs can provide rich international experiences without the cost of travel. Jon is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Film at Purchase College. His media work has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York City. Jon is the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment of the Arts, Ford Foundation, and Fulbright Fellowships. He is also the founder of the SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning (or COIL) program at SUNY. He is one of the editors and contributors to The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange: Implementing, Growing, and Sustaining Collaborative Online International Learning, which was recently released by Stylus Publishing.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Studying abroad can help students develop intercultural competency skills to prepare them for a future in an increasingly globalized environment, but many students cannot afford international travel. In this episode, we discuss how collaborative online international learning programs can provide rich international experiences without the cost of travel.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist&hellip

John: &hellipand Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer&hellip

Rebecca: &hellipand features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Jon Rubin. Jon is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Film at Purchase College. His media work has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York City. Jon is the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment of the Arts, Ford Foundation, and Fulbright Fellowships. He is also the founder of the SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning (or COIL) program at SUNY. He is one of the editors and contributors to The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange: Implementing, Growing, and Sustaining Collaborative Online International Learning, which was recently released by Stylus Publishing. Welcome, Jon.

Jon: Thank you.

John: It’s good to see you again. Today’s teas are:&hellip Jon, are you drinking tea?

Jon: I’m actually drinking coffee, which I just brewed just in time for this interview.

John: That’s one of the favorite teas among our guests.

Rebecca: Definitely. I have an English breakfast today.

John: And I have an oolong tea.

Rebecca: Oh, nice, John. So we’ve invited you here today to discuss the development of COIL virtual exchange programs and your new book on the topic. Could you provide a definition of a COIL course for our listeners?

Jon: Well, I’ll define it really loosely. It’s a course where two professors engage each other, two professors, usually from different countries and cultures, but occasionally, just from two different perspectives and together they create a conjoined class where there are two groups of students who will later on meet spend 4, 5, 6, 7 weeks collaborating and sharing ideas.

John: How did the COIL program get started?

Jon: Well, that’s kind of a long story. I’ll tell the short part of it. But even that short part is fairly long. Well, my background, as you referenced at the beginning, was as a media artist and a filmmaker. And in a strange way, this led to my work with COIL. I was on a Fulbright in the country of Belarus over 20 years ago. And my supposed topic as a Fulbrighter was American Studies. But what I did is bring some digital video cameras, and I had my students make short videos, much like my freshman would have at Purchase college where I was teaching. And I noted that the videos that they made were remarkably different. And I don’t mean in terms of what was in front of the camera, because a landscape looked different. They simply made very, very different choices. And when I came back to the States after the Fulbright and tried to explain to my students what might have been interesting on my trip, they were generally not at all interested. So eventually, I showed them some of these short videos that my Belarusian students had made and they became very captivated. And all of a sudden wanted to know everything they could about Belarus, and I realized that my students in Belarus had communicated with my students in the US sort of unbeknownst to me, because I hadn’t planned this, and that it occurred to me that it would be interesting to then develop a dialogue, using video between my students at SUNY and students elsewhere, for example, back in Belarus. So I created over a period of time, a course called cross-cultural video production, and the structure of it was exactly that. The students would meet, although back in 2002, when we first did this meeting online was a stretch, there was no Zoom, there was very little way to actually meet synchronously back then. But they were able to communicate primarily through email and a little bit through Blackboard and agreed on a theme that they would explore together. And then what happened was one of the student teams on one side or the other would make the first scene of a video on that theme, and post it, 10 days later, the team on the other side was supposed to make the next scene of the video. And this continued for four to six scenes, depending on the different iterations I had developed. So the students were doing a strange kind of serial collaboration, a sequential collaboration, with a small amount of back channel communication, but primarily they were communicating through these videos. And it was a pretty wonderful process. It was not always happy because sometimes the students were actually competitive. In other words, it was kind of like, well, you think that’s strange, I’m going to show you something even stranger, or whatever. [LAUGHTER] They were very varied. They were all over the map, in fact. And since the US students, for the most part, had never heard of Bellarus, while the Belarusian students, of course, had heard of the US and had their own, sometimes mistaken impressions about it. These videos were really remarkable. And the course was exciting. The students were excited by it. And I sort of said, “Geez, this is a model of international collaboration. None of these students are getting on a plane. The Belarusian students probably could never afford to. This is maybe a new modality of exchange.” And I sort of then tried to find ways to propagate this model.

John: How did it grow out of your course to the larger scale SUNY program?

Jon: Well, this is again a long story to be kept short here. And it’s not even necessarily easy to answer that question, what I would do is first step back and say, to create a new program or to innovate at the university, and here I’m speaking generally, I’m not saying SUNY, is difficult. It’s something that I’ve learned, others have learned, that universities are inherently fairly conservative structures. They’re about setting standards, as are grades, etc., and degrees. And they’re a little bit hesitant to open their doors to something really new for fear that somehow, I don’t know, it won’t set the proper standard. And here I was with a model that involves a classroom in the US, in this case, it’s SUNY, actually collaborating for like half the semester with a class in another country, and their teachers and students had never been vetted, accepted, never paid tuition, nothing, they were just sort of partners in the interactivity. That, for a lot of people, was very strange. So to really get down to the nitty gritty, I sort of mounted a campaign, I guess, to do this, and my immediate peers and colleagues at Purchase college in the film program, were very supportive. But the direction this was going would have meant that they would have lost me partially or entirely, if I were to take over this new COIL Center that I had proposed. So they even were sort of against it, because they didn’t want to have to deal with their local repercussions of losing me. In the university context, you lose somebody, you might not get them even replaced. So there’s a lot of that kind of thinking. And so it was a campaign that lasted a couple of years. Ultimately, the man who was back then managing the international office at SUNY system was very, very sympathetic. And he helped turn this around by providing some direct funding at the system level. So it meant that my campus, in fact, could adjunct me. And that got rid of some of the fears of my colleagues, at least I wouldn’t just be missing in action, there would be somebody else who would be paid to take over my spot. And over a period of these couple of years, eventually, also, with the strong voice of a new provost, who arrived in the middle of this kind of conflagration, a decision was made that the SUNY COIL Center would be launched, I would be its first director. But at the outset, it was just me on three-quarter leave, and a tiny amount of money to hire a part-time student to help. So that was the format in which it launched back in 2006.

John: I think it was pretty close to the time when I first met you, when you visited our campus… you visited a number of campuses to talk about this… and you also sponsored a number of COIL conferences at your campus.

Jon: Yes, I think it was one of the good things, good ideas, although it was very difficult to pull off in the early days, because there was no staff or anything and doing a conference is a lot of work. But we began right away, in 2007, was the first COIL conference. And yeah, that was great. The first conference was almost entirely SUNY people, which is, of course appropriate, but many not from Purchase College like yourself, people coming from across the state. And this conference continued for about 11 years, and growing larger and larger and inviting people from a wider and wider range of people. The last COIL conference that I participated in was in 2017, and we had 450 attending. Whereas the first one that you attended, we had about 80 attending. So it grew. And I’d even say to this day, without getting too far afield, soon after I left SUNY, it was decided that maybe this SUNY conference was a bit too much for SUNY. And it should, in fact, become shared with other players at other campuses. And so an entity called International Virtual Exchange Conference was created. And IVEC, as it’s known, began holding comparable conferences, and SUNY kind of went out of the COIL conference business.

John: But more international partner organizations became active in it, so the whole thing has spread quite a bit since then, right?

Jon: Yeah, it’s a pretty remarkable story. Since at the outset, it was a few SUNY campuses reaching out to a few partner campuses around the world. I mean, it was successful in a way, but it was a bit of a battle all the time. For one thing, international offices on campuses… and this is not a SUNY thing, either, it’s somewhat of a US thing… they need to support themselves. And usually their institutions only offer limited funds and they actually generate funds by the international programs that they sponsor, whether it be their students studying abroad and paying them a fee, or in recruiting international students who pay a higher tuition, etc., there’s an economic piece in international education. Nothing wrong with that, but at the outset, nobody could find any economic piece to COIL. And therefore, getting international offices that were primarily dedicated to moving people out of the country or into the country to have this lived experience, it was difficult to convince people beyond a very limited engagement to support COIL at a deep level. So what was happening in those earlier years, say from 2006, to two-thousand, let’s say, 15-ish, was the COIL grew a little bit, little bit each year, rarely was any one school offering any large number of COIL courses, maybe three, maybe four, maybe five. So the number of students who was involved with this new practice was small. The good thing was that there were gradually becoming practitioners in different countries who understood the dynamics of these classrooms, which are quite unusual, although they overlap with online learning, in terms of both the software used and their, let’s say, dynamics, they were quite different because they were co-taught classrooms, and the process of the teachers engaging each other, and developing a module that they could comfortably share with both groups of students, that was quite radical. And so this was a kind of gestation period, I guess, where during this time, although the growth was slow, it was steady, and the knowledge was spreading. And more researchers began to get involved. Because people always said things such as: “Really, do students get anything out of that? or more typically, and more problematically, “Is this as good as study abroad?” which was a false question, in a sense, because nobody ever said it was as good as or better than as or anything as. It was really its own experience, it was really a separate matter. But of course, those people managing study abroad programs, felt a tad threatened by it. And in some cases, I guess I would say, looked down their nose at it, because in those days, anything online was looked down upon by many people, not all, but many. It was seen as an inferior kind of education. And so it did have these growing pains and had to prove itself, and it gradually did.

John: So people in international offices were worried about this being a substitute for their programs, but from what I’ve seen, it’s expanded the number of students who participate in international activities, particularly those students who might not be able to afford international travel, either in terms of the time or the financial costs.

Jon: Yeah, I mean, for sure it does. I don’t see any negative at all of that kind. But the problem is to do COIL requires not just the two teachers, but it requires some level of management or facilitation. Particularly, if you get past the first couple of early adopter faculty who just jump in and do it ‘cause they love it. If you want to grow it, you need somebody, usually now call a COIL coordinator, as a minimum, who actually has a job, it might not be full time, but part of their commitment is actually bringing together teachers from different schools, finding new partners, helping train teachers, so they’re comfortable working in this new modality. And that piece, which was central, had a price tag. And so as soon as you’re saying, “Well, we need a new hire,” all of a sudden, then all of the concerns of the institution come up and people say “How the heck are we going to do that? We’re going to let go of somebody else?” And you get the zero-sum game being played. And that was often really a hard piece at the outset. And in fact, I think one of the things that my position created was actually the reality on the ground that here was one person, at least, this guy Jon Rubin, who was kind of getting paid to do this. And as there were so few who are being paid to do this, that was important, then it was something that I began to focus on. In other words, the center of COIL, of course, are the teachers developing the collaboration and the students engaging each other. That’s what it’s about. But if the management piece isn’t there, then it won’t grow, and then it really will not be successful. So as the Director of the SUNY COIL center, I think I was one of the first people to focus on that piece and say, “Okay, what does an institution need to do to create a COIL program?” Not just how do you successfully do a COIL course but how do you develop a program? And I would say that this was successfully growing, but slowly. I would also say, without getting into the details, that after doing this at SUNY for 10, 11 years, I was beginning to see that things are happening in other schools, other countries. And maybe it would be interesting to help promote COIL at other institutions to find another way to help carry this work forward. So, in 2017, I retired from SUNY and began, what I wasn’t very confident, would be a consulting career. That is, I wasn’t really confident that anybody would call me up and ask for my services. Fortunately, I had one client very early on, Florida International University, who was already very enthusiastic about this, and hadn’t quite taken the big leap. And so I was fortunate, because they’re such an interesting University. So they hired me on as a consultant, right at this juncture where I really wasn’t sure it was going to happen. And then various things happened over the next years. I’m not sure which sub story to jump into next.

Rebecca: I’m sure there’s plenty of options, but we’re hoping you can talk a little bit about how the Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange got started, how did your book come to be?

Jon: This is interesting, and it was indirectly also connected to Florida International University. My colleague there, Stephanie Doscher, had developed a global learning program at FIU. And around this time, she published a book on global learning, which was an academic book, but quite successful. And she was in a conversation with her publisher, Stylus Publishing, who had recently heard about COIL and said to her, “Well, Stephanie, I think maybe it’s time for there to be a COIL book, who might be the right person to write it?” And she suggested me. And the irony was that, at this moment, and I don’t want to get into a dour story, but I was actually in a hospital bed. I had gone through a period where I had become quite sick, and it was somewhat mysterious. In fact, the illness I had, it wasn’t really clear what was going on. And I literally read this email from Stylus in my hospital bed. And I thought, “Damn, do I want to commit to writing a book while I’m lying on my back, and I don’t know whether I’m gonna get out of here?” So long story short, I wrote back and I said, “Give me three or four months, see if I’ve got my strength back, and if I feel good about it, then sure I’ll take it on.” And so indeed, I had a wonderful recovery, I was in fine shape. And by encouraging my friend Sarah Guth, who I had written a couple of chapters with, I convinced her to work on the book with me, which made me feel okay, because I’d never written a book. I’d written a few chapters, I can write, but a whole book was like, “Oh my God.” It was not something that my career had prepared me for. So we agreed. And what’s really interesting about that story is that we started to do this in late 2018. And as soon as we started to think about the book, we realized that some of the subjects that we’d like to write about, which indeed were: “How are institutions adopting this, integrating it, supporting their faculty?” …the infrastructure piece that had always been my interest, we realized there was not much research on that. There had begun to be research on student learning in COIL classes and related areas, but in terms of its integration and development, no. So we said, well, we’ve got to do research. So we spent really the first year of the project doing as large a survey as we could manage. And it wasn’t that easy, because it wasn’t commonly known who were the practitioners. That is, we knew a lot of people, but beyond that, there was absolutely no organization that listed who does COIL or virtual exchange. So, it took research to even find the people to talk to. So we did this, I’d say, rather extensive survey, it was a bit new to me, I’m not a trained researcher. So that was even a learning process for me. And we started to develop some really interesting data. We found there were only six institutions around the world, as best as we could find, that were offering 30 or more COIL courses in a year. And so our initial jumping off point was, how did it happen? Why did these six institutions, why are they more successful than others in terms of at least scope and scale? And we then started to flush out the book, and guess what, then the pandemic occurred. And so all of a sudden, we’re about, I don’t know, a quarter of the way, an eighth of the way, into writing this book, and everything changes. So we got kind of set back on our heels at first, as the whole world did. We didn’t really know what to make of it. No one did. We were all at a loss, but two things occurred. One is that a lot of people who frowned on online learning were all of a sudden forced to do online learning, because that’s all that was available. So there was a huge transition, and a great number of people, some against their will almost, others happily turning this corner finally, that became at least aware of the tools and processes for teaching online. And that had been a blocking point to COIL development, because it was a small minority of teachers who had those skills and that experience. And over the period of a couple of years, it became most teachers had that experience. The second piece being that mobility was frozen. So all the students who were able to be mobile, mind you, that’s only 5 or 6% of American university students, but nevertheless, they were either locked in place somewhere they didn’t want to be for two years, they had trouble getting back, and mobility kind of stopped. So a lot of the same international offices, who before were sort of pretending they weren’t there when I knocked on their door, were all of a sudden calling me up and calling others up and saying, “You know what, we really better learn this thing, because it’s something we can do during the pandemic. And it’s a way to keep international exchange going,” …which was actually strange for me, because did I really want to be responsive to people who are doing this only because they were forced to, in a sense, or in some cases, were actually describing it as a temporary pivot, when in fact, to me, I knew that to really do COIL well, would take a couple year commitment to really develop a program and develop training and professional development and find your partners and all the pieces of the puzzle. But nevertheless, I mostly went along with it. And so what happened was, I became a full-time consultant, I was sometimes working with six or seven schools at once, and I stopped writing the book, because I couldn’t do everything at once. Everybody’s hiding, everybody’s masked, nobody dares go out and see each other. And here I am working more than full time after I retired. It was just completely unexpected. And so just to sort of finish telling this part of the story, because it is a story, I put the book aside, mostly for a year during this time, because I couldn’t do it all. And then I said, I better get back to this book, because everybody’s asking for it. Now I have all these potential buyers of this book, all these people who need a guide, and there’s not a single guidebook out there. No one had ever written it. So I got back to work on the guide, I started telling people “No,” when they asked me to do a consulting job, and then I realized, “Oh, my God, the field has changed.” The people I was writing about two years earlier, well, they’re mostly still doing it, thank God. But there are a whole lot of newbies who are coming in the door doing this, and with a different attitude and mind than the people who had started this kind of movement. And that was mostly a good thing. But it meant that some of the research we had done, maybe wasn’t completely accurate anymore. And so still another challenge was how to really complete the writing of this book, once the pandemic experience had sort of transformed the landscape.

Rebecca: It’s interesting how the pandemic has forced many virtual or digital initiatives to mature at a very quick pace. [LAUGHTER]

Jon: Yes, definitely, not just COIL, but I think COIL was particularly well placed in a sense because it had been developed as a format far enough. So it didn’t have to be like created then, it was really a matter of being developed and extended then. But it was an issue for me through that period, and I would say up to this day, if people are doing this because it’s a pivot and because it’s a way to do something they couldn’t do anymore. What will they do when mobility returns and the pandemic recedes? Is this something that they will continue? Is this something that will change? How will this evolve over time? So at any rate, we managed to finish the book with that question totally, of course unanswered. The writing of the book was finished about a year ago, in 2022. It then took three or four months to go through the editorial process of turning it into an actual book, which came out in September of last year. And really that was, you could say the beginning of the first academic year that one might consider, although I don’t know if this is accurate, post pandemic, since that’s very arguable. Are we even post pandemic today? I don’t think so. But anyway, where people are at least trying to get their footing back on the ground, people were willing to get on an airplane, etc. And we’re beginning to move on. And so there’s some hypothesizing in the book [LAUGHTER] about the future. But I think the future that I was just talking about is only just arriving right now. And we’re just starting to see that future, which is soon to become our present. And it’s quite interesting.

Rebecca: I think it will be interesting to see how many people adopted the practice, maybe because they saw it as a pivot or a necessity, who may have been converted, [LAUGHTER] and want to continue that work moving forward. I think it’s an interesting space to be in. And we’ve seen it in some other digital spaces as well, that the adoption that was done out of necessity, has just really changed people’s perspectives on what it means to teach you what it means to collaborate and what it means to have certain kinds of experiences for students.

Jon: It’s actually been incredibly interesting, because what was also trying to happen at the same time, I don’t think it had quite the momentum earlier, was the idea of curricular internationalization, or internationalization at home. There are a number of terms, which are all speaking to a related problem, which is: very few students can study abroad. And should we only have that experience be what we call internationalization? And many people, and it wasn’t just people doing COIL or virtual exchange, were questioning that and saying, “No, no, we have to develop other practices and policies at our universities that will support that.” So what happened was a broader context than understanding, far from universal, but nevertheless, was growing. And so it provides context for COIL. COIL was often, when people started to think this way, it was sometimes a little difficult to say, “Okay, we want to internationalize our campus and the curriculum. But how do we do that? What does that mean? What’s a practice that will allow us to do it,” and COIL was so specific, that people could say, “Well, we can do COIL.” And so it kind of became the tip of the spear, a slightly aggressive [LAUGHTER] expression. But nevertheless, it was something people could grasp, they could see, they could act upon. And it could be part of, in some cases, a larger global learning program, let’s say. And that’s certainly the path that my colleague Stephanie Doscher took, she was doing global learning and then was doing COIL. And now she’s director of a COIL Center at FIU, very much like the COIL Center at SUNY, because these things are so linked. And what was really interesting is how it also expanded, and transmogrified, culturally. So let me give one example that’s really amazing to me. So in the earlier days of the SUNYi COIL center, for a number of reasons, we did a number of projects in Mexico and Latin America. And the projects we did partly came because we were able to get funding. At one point, the US Embassy in Mexico City had some funds to do something International and wasn’t sure what to do. So we kind of talked them into doing COIL, and some other opportunities came our way at a time when there was no actual funding for this, there was nobody providing funds under this name. So we did a number of projects, particularly in Mexico and Brazil, and to some extent in Colombia. But in those early days, even though we said this doesn’t all have to be in English, in fact, to do it with a US university in general, did need to at least be largely in English. So we had this, I would say asymmetrical relationship with partners in Latin America, where the students and, in many cases, the teachers were primarily Spanish speakers, working with us, some of whom spoke Spanish, but the majority didn’t. And so it was a really an unequal relationship. And it was something we talked about, we struggled with, we spoke of that it doesn’t have to be in English. And guess what happened during the pandemic, a lot of Latin American universities found each other and began doing Spanish and Portuguese language COIL, and it’s exploded in Latin America. In Latin America, I would say, best estimate, there is more COIL than anywhere else in the world. And it’s because they’ve owned it. And they do it in their own terms. The number of students in Latin America who are physically mobile, able to study abroad, is even less than in the US. And they have very much adopted ideas like internationalization at home. And by working between Chile and Mexico, or Bolivia and Uruguay or Spain, they’re doing really interesting work. And it’s become a real center for this work. Indeed, the IVEC conference that I mentioned a while ago, this year, is going to take place in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And one of the reasons is because there’s so much activity in Latin America. So I don’t know that anybody predicted this one, thinking about the future, but definitely, the movement has shifted, it has its own life. And so Latin America has become one of the centers of this work.

John: We do live in a global economy. I sat in on a class quite a few years ago with Susan Coultrap-McQuin, our former provost here, when she was teaching a COIL course. And the students were discussing their response to it and what they took away from it. And one of the things they mentioned is that they expected that, in the future, they’d be working with international partners in whatever sort of job or career they were going to have. And they saw it just as a natural part of their future lives. And one of the things that’s happened is the technology has changed to make these types of exchanges and collaborative projects so much easier than it was when you first started.

Jon: Yes, this is interesting… technology. Because I think it’s mostly, of course, to the present time, been all for the best. And you’re right. I mean, when we were first doing that video exchange with Belarus, the Belarusian students, the only way they could send their videos to us was when their university shut down in the evening at 8pm. The students would traipse into their IT office, give them, on some kind of disk, probably a CD at that point, their video. They would put it on send, and leave for the night. And by the morning, their videos would reach the US because it would take hours for each video to get sent bit by bit. So that’s an extreme case. Now we’re used to YouTube and streaming video. So it’s mostly for the best on almost every level. But I think there are a couple things that are issues. So one is, and I’m not the first to bring this one up, Zoom fatigue. That there is the issue of people having spent a lot of time in this modality and to some extent wishing to be where they could hug the person they’re talking to, having their physical closeness be available to them. So I think this is an issue. I don’t think it’s in any way in the way of virtual exchange and COIL. By the way, you asked me at the very beginning, what is COIL, let me just do a slight definition here, rather late in this podcast, because these are the two terms that people are primarily using now: virtual exchange and COIL. And so I’ll just say for myself, and I think many are taking this up, virtual exchange is the broader term, it means kind of any educational sharing primarily between youth, that takes place using this kind of online format. Whereas COIL is a more specific model that has particularly to do usually with universities, and with these conjoined classrooms where the students’ work is actually been done for credit, and where this central collaborative project is part of the deal. That’s why in the book, I call it COIL virtual exchange, because it’s to me, like basketball is a sport, so virtual exchange is like the word sport, COIL is like the word basketball. That’s the relationship they kind of have. And you can train and study for basketball, you can become better fit, maybe, for sports, but you can’t quite train for sports. So I think that’s a difference that holds. So at any rate, one of the issues going forward, one of the many questions, is this issue of spending too much time online going to negatively affect the future of this work? I don’t think it will, by itself. I think there’s enough dynamics to working in these collaborative groups, it’s exciting. That’s not going to go away, it’s different than talking to your sister on Zoom, because you haven’t seen her for a year, because of the COVID thing. It’s a different project than a lot of our use of it. But, in fact, real mobility is returning. And so I think there is a bit of tension, the tension that I described, that existed prior to the pandemic. And there’s some of that back. But many are also seeing, as you mentioned, John, earlier, that COIL also can be very motivating. So people do COIL, and then they say, “Damn, I’d like to study abroad.” Whereas before, it never even occurred to them that this was an option, either for one reason or another. So I think for a lot of people, they’re now connecting the dots. And they’re seeing these as two things that support each other. But in terms of technology, I just want to bring up a point, this has really been on my mind lately. So this is sort of getting to my current thoughts.These are kind of concerns, I would sa,y about the future, which otherwise I think is bright for this work. One of the issues with doing COIL or any intensive online engagement is the risk of what I call disembodiment, that is that we’re functioning intellectually and visually, but our physical bodies are sort of left out. And that’s okay. I mean, a lot of things we do are like that. But I think there is a risk, a general risk, that we don’t sense each other’s presence the same way online. And that’s why it’s so important in COIL courses for students to explore where they live, how they live, to look at things in their lived environment, food, etc. They really need to bring the lived life into the course even if the course is not about cooking. It’s very important to get this physical presence and sense of each other. It’s something to work for, but what’s happening now, and this is an audio only exchange. So there’s no way we can verify this on this podcast, but that very many people use digital backgrounds. And the reason is that where they’re sitting in their Zoom is a mess. And they’d rather not display their mess. So they create a digital background. Well, that’s fairly innocuous, but it does mean that that person is talking to you from something that isn’t a room any longer. It’s a creation, which could be anywhere. There’s nothing terrible about this, but I feel this begins to add to the disembodiment. You’re then seeing a kind of head or head and shoulders that isn’t in a real room, but is in a virtual space that doesn’t really have much character. And now I want to make the leap into the future, the paranoid future, maybe. And it’s a topic that we’re all talking about too much, but I just going to try to connect it to COIL. So it’s AI, this is the topic of the month, whatever, everybody’s talking about AI and they’re talking about from many different angles. But what is beginning to happen through AI, and it’s not, I think, the main venue of our conversation, generally, is that AI added to other tools, graphic tools, visual tools, can actually change the way we look. And I have a concern, I was in a Tik Tok exchange with somebody and they demonstrated to me something called teenage look, which is not available on Zoom, it’s still being played within Tik Tok land, and it’s very scary. Teenage look literally scans you and makes you look approximately 20 years old. And it does it so well that it’s stuck to you. So you talk, you stand up, you turn around, you’re 20 years old at all moments. It’s not like an avatar, where there’s some kind of goofy little figure that represents you in some bad 3D world. This looks like you, except young. And I don’t know what it does if you’re already very young, I haven’t explored it that far. So my concern is, and I realized this is going down a very small rabbit hole, but I think it’s not irrelevant. What if we’re in a world in a couple years, where the people we talk to in Zoom are in a completely illusionary background, and the face we’re looking at is not them either. And yet, we cannot tell. We cannot tell that this is a facsimile. If we reach that kind of point, I do have concerns that this model of COIL virtual exchange could be undermined, just as a lot of our reality and truth is being undermined by lies and fictions that are being proposed as reality. And I think it’s an interesting moment at any rate.

John: But instructors could still address some of those concerns by bringing in aspects of culture that would not be faked into the assignments or the interactions that students are doing. So in a world in which we do have that fake reality for any synchronous interactions, I think there still could be a lot of benefits from the cultural exchange, as long as that remains a substantial focus of the courses.

Jon: Yes, there are a lot of creative ways that this could be utilized. So I’m not trying to blanket speak from the negative. There have been tools before, what was that tool? Second Life? …where people were existing, in a much cruder, three dimensional space. And some people took great advantage of it and did some really interesting things. So I think if you have enough of a grasp, and you’re doing it very consciously, it could be very interesting. Sometimes I’m beginning to feel that unless I can go up and touch somebody, I don’t know if they’re real. And I’m just saying, in the future, that I think some of the great advances we’re making with technology may be setting traps for us at the same time. And so we’ll have to be that much more ingenious, to keep the real and the unreal. And I think there are other issues around virtual exchange, some of which are more promising. One I’ll just throw out, which is beginning to be taken up in a small way. When I first started doing COIL, I actually had a conversation with the same man up at SUNY, who helped get this thing going. And I said, it’s interesting, because I think what we’re doing is partially about diversity, and being with and meeting with people who are different than us. Shouldn’t we talk to people who are beginning to start diversity programs, back then this was a, let’s say, much less advanced element of the university than it has become. And my colleague said, “Oh, no, we can’t do that, because then we’ll be competing with them and maybe horning in on their territory.” And so it was like international and diversity were, because of funding, partially, seen as competitors for cash to run their offices, which is, again, the problematics of university life. But that always stayed with me. And I think I’ve seen a few examples, and I’ve tried to promote when I do a consultation, that you don’t have to do a COIL with somebody in another country. You can do a COIL with somebody in another state. You can do a COIL with somebody in another town. You can do COIL with somebody three miles away, that’s living a really different life than you are because rural and urban are so different in our country. The idea of bringing difference together through this channel, I think, has a lot of potential beyond the international. And I hope that gets developed, it’s a little bit of a question of international has defined itself as an element of higher education. And to some extent, I don’t know if it will want to back up and say, “Well, what we’re doing applies locally too.” I think some see that and some don’t. So, I don’t know, this is to me the sort of new world of COIL, which is edging into some plus some minus, but it’s generally growing. And just one other thing I have to put a plug in for, because it’s important, I think, to the field, and certainly where my energy has been lately. As I was doing this consulting work I was speaking about earlier, the first thing that would come up if I was, let’s say, engaged by an institution that was very new to this was “Well, with whom can we do this?” Now, of course, there we are just talking international again, so I’m backpedaling a little bit. And I realized that there was no place really where you could find who else was doing this. Now, certainly, the SUNY COIL Center had a global, and has still, a global partner network. And so there was a way through, if you’re at SUNY, where you could reach out to partners. There was a structure in place, but there wasn’t anything like this for a small community college in British Columbia to know where to go. They had no place. So I got this idea and worked with some colleagues and a programmer. And we started to build this website, which at the initial stages, it’s called COIL Connect for virtual exchange, it’s just coilconnect.org, if you want to find it. The purpose was to just create a directory of COILing institutions, so that you could go to this website and look around and say, “Oh, here’s somebody in Turkey that’s doing this. Here’s somebody in New York that’s doing this.” It was just to be a directory, but the website has grown, and we’ve added partnering tools to the website, and a number of other features. So it’s become a pretty interesting hub. There are now 260 universities that are members from something like 40 countries. There are something like 1500 individual members, I think it’s grown so fast, partly because it’s free. So it makes it easy, which also might make the longevity of the site a little questionable. We’re trying to figure that one out right now. We grew so quickly, with so little funding that we need to find some way to bring in some funding to keep it growing. But anyway, at the moment, I think it’s an interesting place to visit. If you happen to be hearing this podcast, and curious who the heck is doing this stuff this guy’s talking about, you can go there, and you’ll see a lot of data. The site is primarily user created. That is, the site opens the doors to individuals to indicate what they’re doing and to share it with the world. And so there’s a lot of data, a lot of courses, a lot of institutions, a lot of individuals sharing what they’re doing in this field. So I invite you all to come visit the site when you have a chance.

John: And we’ll include a link to that in the show notes for this episode, so that people can just click on the link and go there. Would you recommend that institutions that are thinking of building a COIL program or creating a COIL program should perhaps pick up a copy of your book? And maybe take a look at the site?

Jon: Yes, of course. Yeah, it is still the only real guide. There are now some other books coming out, I think. But I think both of those would be helpful to doing this, and engage with other people who are doing this, especially who are doing it successfully. There’s a lot to learn about how to develop and manage a COIL initiative or project. And it takes a little learning, a little training, and there are now a lot of people out there doing that. Indeed, on the COIL Connect site, there’s a small area that we’re growing called organizations that support COIL. And if you go to that particular menu item, you can find about a dozen organizations that will provide professional development and other support for new initiatives, which is, I think, a key piece when you’re trying to get something rolling. And yeah, buy the book, for sure.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking what’s next?

Jon: Well, I think I kind of jumped ahead of you here, because I was sort of doing a bit of “what next” already. I think. So I am not sure beyond the things that I’ve said. For me, what’s next is actually trying to be a little more retired. I mean, I supposedly retired almost six years ago now. And yet, I’ve been probably just about as busy as I was when I was at SUNY, and trying to find that balance is not easy. I’m a slightly compulsive person. I’m still involved, obviously, with this COIL thing. I’m trying to step back very, very slowly, but it’s hard. And I love kayaking and bicycling, and so I’m trying to do more kayaking and bicycling, but right now in March in Brooklyn, neither of those [LAUGHTER] are ideal endeavors. So sometimes I try to escape to places that are warmer, so where I can do that. So I don’t know. That’s not really what you’re asking, but that’s gonna have to be my answer for now.

Rebecca: I think it’s a good answer. I hope that you’re able to really embrace the authentic retired experience soon. [LAUGHTER]

Jon: Whatever that is… it’s definitely trying to find a balance and people talk about this. I’m finally enmeshed in this point in life where I don’t want to give up the work I’m doing entirely. I’m not going to. But yeah, once I put my toe in pretty soon I’m swimming and that’s the problem.

John: You’re benefiting a lot of people and as long as you enjoy doing it, we’re awfully grateful that you are.

Rebecca: Yeah, we’re glad that that’s part of your retirement plan.

Jon: And thank you for inviting me to this podcast.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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227. A COIL Course

Posted in coil, higher education, international collaboration, international education, learning, pedagogy, teaching
February 16, 2022

The ability to understand and work with people from other cultures is an important skill for students to develop in our globally interconnected and interdependent world. In this episode, Josh McKeown, Jessica Harris, and Minjung Seo join us to discuss how online collaborative learning projects can help students develop intercultural competencies. Josh is the Associate Provost for International Education and Programs at SUNY Oswego. Jessica is an Assistant Professor and Minjung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Wellness, also at SUNY Oswego.

Transcript

John: The ability to understand and work with people from other cultures is an important skill for students to develop in our globally interconnected and interdependent world. In this episode, we discuss how online collaborative learning projects can help students develop intercultural competencies.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners..

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Rebecca: Our guests today are Josh McKeown, Jessica Harris, and Minjung Seo. Josh is the Associate Provost for International Education and Programs at SUNY Oswego. Jessica is an Assistant Professor and Minjung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Wellness, also at SUNY Oswego. Welcome!

Josh: Thank you.

Jessica: Welcome. Thank you for having us.

John: Today’s teas are… Josh, are you drinking tea this time?

Josh: I did promise you guys my second time on the show, so this time I actually have tea. It’s late afternoon. So I’m having decaf green tea this afternoon.

Rebecca: That sounds good, Josh. I just got a huge shipment of my Scottish afternoon tea. So I’ve got to bring you some.

Josh: Oh, thank you.

Jessica: I’m not as fun as Josh but I do have my watermelon-flavored water today. [LAUGHTER]

Minjung: I have coffee. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: We’ve got the spectrum.

Jessica: Yeah.

John: And coffee is a fairly common tea on the podcast. Watermelon-flavored water is a little bit less common. I think that’s the first.

Jessica: [LAUGHTER] It’s different.

John: And I have Prince of Wales tea today.

Rebecca: And I have Scottish afternoon, I think. I think I’m still drinking that. [LAUGHTER]

Josh: There must be some great health benefits to drinking watermelon juice. Right, Jessica?

Jessica: Yeah, my water intake, just trying to keep up with getting my daily ounces in. So that’s why I’m having that right now.

Rebecca: All of my ounces come in pots of tea.

Jessica: Pots of tea. It works. Yeah, definitely.

Rebecca: So we invited you here today to discuss a Collaborative Online International Learning Course, or a COIL course, that you ran at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, involving students and faculty in the U.S. and in the Netherlands. First, can you guys describe what a COIL course is?

Josh: Sure. I’ll take that one first. So COIL is an acronym. It stands for Collaborative Online International Learning, COIL. And COIL is, I’m going to estimate, about 10 or 12 years old as a academic concept. And COIL actually is a term that originated in SUNY. It was started by a Professor of Theater at SUNY Purchase College who was working on a… I guess a distance education, co-taught experience with a colleague, I believe in Belarus, and it has grown from there. Now COIL is used almost everywhere, you see the term COIL, C-O-I-L, almost everywhere, but it has a SUNY start. But what it has done is created, I think, a way for faculty members and students in different countries to collaborate in meaningful, rigorously constructed ways without traveling to visit each other. And that’s really the core of it. International education has been synonymous with mobility, both student mobility and faculty mobility, meaning crossing borders. But when COIL emerged, looking back on it, I think it was a time when technology was making it possible, not necessarily easy, and I think they’ll talk about that, but possible to collaborate. And so this course is an example, and they’ll talk about this specific course, I know a little bit about its origins. But it’s got to have faculty commitment. And that’s something which, as the Senior International Officer at SUNY Oswego, I can comment on, this is… I won’t denigrate any other and say, “This is the best example of a COIL course that I’ve seen at SUNY Oswego,” but it is at least among the best, and it’s because of the commitment made when Minjung first formed a relationship, brought Jessica along later to co-teach it, and they’ll tell you about the details. But without those two I don’t think it would have been successful.

John: And we do have a bit of a history. We’ve been offering them here for about 9 or 10 years, almost from the very beginning of the COIL program.

Josh: But it’s hard to get traction for a COIL course, relatively speaking, and our experience at Oswego has been, it is sometimes difficult for faculty members to conceive of it and implementing it’s even harder.

Rebecca: Can you tell us a little bit about the course that you were teaching that incorporated COIL?

Jessica: Yeah, so particularly Minjung and I have been teaching this COIL course in our HSC 448: Health Promotion Program Planning course. It’s one of the core courses within our wellness management major. And this course was chosen, really, because thinking about health education and health educators, there is part of our competencies where students actually have to have cultural competency, they have to have those global interactions. So this felt like the perfect course to kind of house this COIL experience in. And we collaborated with another institution known as The Hague University of Applied Sciences from the Nutrition and Dietetics program in the Netherlands. The underlying motivation was to get students from both of these countries, our students as well as the Netherlands, gain the cultural competence, but also offer this global perspective in the field of health promotion and wellness, while utilizing the skills that we teach in program planning. Another thing to note is that this particular institution in the Netherlands, this course that they do, they also have those skills that they’re teaching. So it really helped the whole collaboration, because we were all on the same page in regards to the skill sets needed. But it also gave our students here at SUNY Oswego the opportunity to see… What does another country do when it comes to needs assessments? How do they implement programs? How do they deal with clients and patients? And I think that’s particularly important in today’s society, how we’re seeing a lot more things start to go global, a lot more telehealth and virtual conversations. So I think that was very important, but specifically with health educators, we have that duty and responsibility within our code in our background to make sure that we’re creating opportunities for collaborative experiences and having that global awareness. So this course particularly was program planning.

John: Could you tell us a little bit more about the actual collaborative assignments that were used in the class?

Jessica: Yeah, so one of the first activities that we have is introducing the students to each other as well as the two instructors. In the classroom, we had our institution from the Netherlands as well as our students via… it was Skype actually, at the time before Zoom became the place to go before COVID. We had both instructors there, as well as all the students, and we kind of did an icebreaker section. They went around and introduced themselves and gave a unique fact about them. We then talked about what the pairs would be, because they were paired with another student from that institution for this six week COIL project that we had. And we kind of laid the land. We talked a little bit about… what are the activities they’re going to be participating in, the final project, which really was looking at nutrition and physical activity in the two cultures. And in that first session, that’s where they then met their partner, and they started to talk about how they were going to, with technology, work with each other outside of the classroom for the rest of the six weeks. Partly then after that, they started to work together on their own, independently, after that first meeting. They would use different technologies such as WhatsApp, Zoom, Snapchat, just all kinds of different software and applications. And they were discussing different things such as predisposing and reinforcing and enabling factors of behavior, because they were looking at analyzing the differences regarding diet patterns and physical activities between the two cultures. And ultimately, they were trying to think of how they would look at planning a program in those different areas. And part of that exchange, they would come with government health guidelines from both countries, environmental factors. They would start to show photos and videos of where they lived and the differences. Which for our students was really eye opening, because this is the first experience that they’ve had, some of them, where they were able to meet someone from a different country and see even just what the school system was like, what their day-to-day was like. So those meetings were really influential for them. But over the course of those six weeks, they were ultimately trying to plan that program, and aid in behavior change for their targets, and their audiences that they were working with within the classroom.

John: What was the final product that they created in these groups?

Jessica: So it was a 10 slide PowerPoint, and within that PowerPoint, they had different activities and videos embedded in there about what their collaborations were one-on-one with their partners. So we had some students that were sharing video within their target audience of how they were doing behavior change. So it was a way for them to submit to our Blackboard shell, because we housed it within the SUNY Oswego shell, and it was an easier way for a lot of the students to collaborate. More recently, in this past spring semester, we had video, where they collaborated on a video together, they did it via Zoom, where they actually did the presentation via video. So we’ve changed it up over a few of the semesters based on feedback and what’s feasible for both of the students and technology-wise. Some of the feedback we’ve gotten in the past regarding the COIL course is there’s time difference. So that can play a major role in how the students plan their interactions, what type of technologies they use, and how they go about the assignments. So there’s been different flexibility, there’s been different times where maybe students weren’t able to collaborate as much. Some were based on what their schedules were with the class and outside of the class as well. So that’s been interesting to see how our students have navigated and problem solved in that way.

Rebecca: For these projects to be successful obviously requires a strong collaboration across cultures and across continents in this case. Can you talk a little bit about how you developed a relationship with your faculty partner in the Netherlands?

Minjung: So to facilitate relationship building and collaboration, we met regularly through Zoom meetings and stay in contact, to plan ahead for the following year and updating the materials and content to keep current with global health issues. In the beginning, we started with physical activity and nutrition behavior focus, and then it started in 2018, and our first implementation of COIL product was 2019. So it’s been like four years, and in the beginning, we focus on physical activity and nutrition behavior, comparing guidelines, and based on their videos, and the photos and compare/contrast different lifestyles. And then, last year, we were focusing on mental health. We added mental health as well as physical activity and nutrition behavior during COVID. It was interesting, and we added also, the videos as Jessica mentioned, we asked them to create a video presentation. So it was interesting as well. Their technology skills are getting better and better, and so their presentation was excellent. That was very impressive, and also to keep working together with a partner. Doing research together is a really important component as well. So after teaching with the outcome, we work together, analyze data, and do research together. So we’ve been publishing abstracts last semester, and we are going to present international conferences. Well, we got accepted. Jessica, I, and Tonnie, the Netherlands partner, worked together, and that’s another component we work on. And also I think it’s important to gain support from the department as well as the school so that our collaboration flows smoothly. So luckily we have international instructional designers on campus. So we’ve been supported, very supported in creating shells and adding instructors to the Blackboard so that we can post announcements on all the course materials and create Dropbox for assignments. It’s been very smooth. So gaining support is important as well, and also I think providing feedback to students and monitoring their progress with their partners were important components as well so that they gain positive experience from working with international partners and gaining global competence and self efficacy, gaining positive feedback so that we can sustain the program. If it’s not that we can’t continue the program, and my point is not only international partners, but also gaining positive experience from students is important for continuing the program.

Rebecca: Yeah, you bring up some really important components like making sure that all the departmental and college-wide resources are in place, partnership is in place, student success is in place. All those things are so important. So thanks for bringing those up. I know Josh mentioned that you, Minjung, were the one that kind of initiated the relationship with your partner in the Netherlands. Can you tell us a little bit about how that happened?

Minjung: Yes, I met my partner Tonnie at the COIL conference back in 2018. It was held in New York City. John was there too, I remember that. So this COIL conference hosted by SUNY provided the opportunity to network with professors from different countries and share their ideas and current and past experiences of collaborations. It was fantastic. So among potential partners I met and I found Tonnie was a best match with me because her expertise and what she’s been teaching. So she’s been teaching nutrition promotion program utilizing similar framework, theoretical framework, we share different theories and models. I was surprised that she’s been using that tool, and I teach health promotion program planning and implementation courses as well. So we were like, “Oh!” we hit it off. After having good conversation with her and I went back home and created a team drive to put things together, information and idea, and came up with a five week intervention COIL product. And now it’s a six week but we started the five week and the title is still the same title, Health Promotion Across Borders. And we implemented in 2019, and it was successful student feedback and experience the full action was very good. So we are excited and… Why don’t we do it again the next year? And I applied for a faculty travel fund I got from the national program on campus. I flew to Hague University and met Tonnie and her colleagues and talk about the possibility to expand the program. And they were positive and we were able to add more student and more classes. So at that point, my colleague Jessica was invited to our group and Tonnie’s colleague Memon was invited in our group. So four of us start teaching and we collaborated and updated the content and implemented in 2020, 2021, and now 2022.

Rebecca: Those are really exciting developments. I wanted to follow up with Josh a little bit in thinking about how COIL courses help develop and build global competencies and cultural exchanges and how that compares to a traditional international experience.

Josh: Yeah, that’s a great question. From my point of view, the potential is there, and I think the results that Jessica and Minjung produced, reveal that. So in their particular study of this, I think they showed, similar to how Jessica was explaining about the course, that if the goal, obviously it should be tied to the course outcomes, right, but if the goal of course is for students to better understand how this subject matter, health promotion wellness, is delivered in a different country, the potential is there with a COIL course. I keep saying potential because, the variables, and we’ve alluded to a couple of those already, technology, when the technology fails, and they probably have some stories that they can share with you. I’ll say though, that when Jessica explained the different technologies they used, I really loved hearing that because in the early days of COIL, one of the biggest complaints or obstacles that we were hearing was that technology wasn’t compatible between the classrooms in the two countries. And so when I hear her describing, they use Skype, they use WhatsApp, they use Zoom, they use Blackboard, they use video and photo sharing, that says to me, they’re doing whatever will work. And so I think one of the possibilities with a COIL course is that students will have the kind of rich interaction guided by expert faculty that can happen on the best run type of faculty-led study abroad experience. The problem comes sometimes in the execution. So if the technology is not working, if the time zones aren’t working to the extent that students are actually able to interact with each other. If faculty are not committed to this project, meaning the assignments perhaps come out, maybe they’re more superficial than they should be, the interaction is not really robust, it’s more just checking a box. Then I think you’re going to get not as good of an outcome. But the way that Minjung and Jessica designed this, it was rigorous. And they were also thrown a pretty big curveball, if I recall, during the COVID semester when it was going to be a COIL class to begin with, but then COVID hit in the middle of semester, and then it became crucial that these interactions continue. I think for the institution as a whole and for others at other institutions that are trying to think about implementing a COIL course, we need to think of it, and I say this as a committed international educator for decades, we need to think of it as a different type of program than a study abroad. And I don’t think we should be thinking about it as better than or worse than, it’s different, it is a different experience. If we go into it with that framework, I think we will have a greater likelihood of success. What’s, I think, crucial to grasp right now in early 2022, and these guys, like I said, they went through it during COVID, is the need for it now is arguably greater than it ever was. We have successfully restarted study abroad at SUNY Oswego, but everyone in the field expects traditional student mobility to be smaller, and, for a time, probably less accessible, given travel restrictions, given additional layers of cost that have been put on top of the experience, from flight prices to insurance mandates to you name it. And so therefore, to provide a global learning experience for all, hopefully that’s what we’re about, that all students have access to a global education, the potential for COIL now I think, is greater than ever. But the design of it and the execution of it have got to be there.

John: But even leaving aside COVID, doesn’t the COIL framework provide an opportunity for students who might not be able to afford international travel to get some level of international competency?

Josh: Exactly.

Jessica: Yeah, and that’s one thing too. I actually had one student pulled me aside after we had first went through the experience and had mentioned how important this was for them and how it provided them with an experience they otherwise would have not had, because study abroad is not financially feasible for for them, and they felt like they always wanted to participate in that, but they weren’t going to be able to. So this still gave them that experience, and also a way to kind of foster those relationships with different individuals. And I think one thing that really came out of this the first year I participated in it, spring 2020, was, after spring break, we had went virtual in a sense, and we had students who were telling me, like, “This is a sense of normalcy for me. I like that I’m coming to class, whether it’s still virtual or doing assignments online, but I have my partner.” So the moment that started happening, the public health crisis with COVID-19, they start sharing other things other than physical activity and nutrition. They were talking about, “Well what’s going on over there in Holland?” So there was a lot of bonding going on during that time period, and we saw that come out in their final project. And one thing to note about this whole COIL project is it’s done in small chunks. So at the end, they kind of combine their work, but there’s several assignments throughout the process, where they are doing the photos and video sharing, with the ultimate goal is for them to use skills as health educators and create a program that would be feasible for a target population in their hometown, or wherever they are locally. And those experiences of different techniques of planning, different models that they could use, or theories within health promotion started to come out and our students realized, “Wow, there’s different ways of doing things,” and that was really beneficial for a lot of them. Some of them that we’ve had in final courses, even in internship and things like that, I start to see those skills come out again, and a lot of them are starting to choose experiences or internships that have more of a global aspect to it. So we’re starting to see that it’s getting woven into a lot more than just, “Hey, they took this one course, and it was a COIL course,” but, “These skills are within their life, they’re using them as well.” I think, career wise, employers are looking for that. And we’re preparing our students to have co-workers that they may never meet, because they would be virtual. So I think these experiences are very, very beneficial, and we’ve seen that just in our students who have taken the courses.

Josh: I’ve got to jump in here, Jessica was describing something so elegantly and so concisely that is such a tough nut to crack for so many educators still, and that is a meaningful intercultural development experience. That’s what they’ve created. So the ability for a SUNY Oswego student to understand more about the Dutch education system or the Dutch health delivery system, and vice versa, when they take that to the rest of their classes or to their life and career, that’s what international education is all about. And so the way they’ve presented this, it can come across as being really cut and dry and quite simple to do. It wasn’t. So when Minjung was talking about the partnership building, what I kept thinking about when getting to know this project even better… Since COVID, how many opportunities would there have been for the faculty of the students to just cut bait and drop the whole thing? So many. We all have been Zoom fatigued, we all have been overloaded on technology. And the course was being offered here at SUNY Oswego. They still could have finished the course, taught it, delivered it, and graded students, likewise, in the Netherlands. But they didn’t. And that says to me that the partnership that they developed, sustained, it did involve a personal visit, and that’s even better, the partners were not going to drop it. That’s what it takes to deliver a good COIL course, no matter what the obstacles they see it through. Which you’d have to do if you are leading a study abroad program too, I suppose, you can’t just abandon your students. But with technology and this format, they probably could have and still gotten through the course, but they didn’t. That’s the kind of commitment it takes

Jessica: Yeah, and I think one thing I was surprised about a little bit going into it. I know, building relationships and friendships, but there was some real authentic, genuine friendships that came out of these courses. To this day, students that are connected phone calls, social media wise, and I think also during that time period, thinking about mental health and having somebody that you can talk with and you’re virtually having these experiences with really, really helps some of our students. But those close bonds and conversations, we’ve had one student that actually had or was going to, it didn’t end up happening, but they were going to be visiting their partner. So I think those are authentic experiences outside of just learning the content and cultural competencies, that sometimes those are also the things that the students need out of these types of courses and things like that.

John: Were there any activities you built into the course to help nurture those relationships and to help them develop that sort of connection?

Jessica: Padlet was something that we used. It was a little bit different, and the students used that kind of almost like a discussion. It was more of a fun aspect. That is where we would have questions or certain things to get students to see what others were doing, whether it was on the weekends, or what they were eating for lunch that day, or just simple simple things, because that was one thing that continues to come out of the final evaluation was, they always want more time just to get to know their partner. They’re just so interested in the differences. And we actually just talked about this the other day with our institutional partner in the Netherlands about implementing more of those activities, more of those assignments that really just focus on getting to know your partner. But they also did a little “About Me,” sharing in their first virtual experience, where they came with photos and things like that about where they’re from, family, things like that, which helped foster that. But it really was organic, the students would really find something that they both were interested in, and they kind of go on with that and share on their own in a sense. But we did have areas for discussion portals and things like that, where they started to talk. I think another thing with that is the technology, I think they liked seeing each other face to face more with that. So a lot of them were doing that in their social media or sharing things that way. So that was cool to see them take it outside of just the class learning management system of Blackboard or Padlet, or whatever we were using, that it went into their own personal lives, in a sense.

Rebecca: You’ve talked a lot about the program itself, the six week contained period and the ways that students interacted during that time. What did you do to help set students up for that experience prior to the six week project? And to not only prepare them for the project, but to prepare them to interact with other humans that might have different perspectives?

Jessica: Yeah, so we had a few things that we did. We didn’t start doing, and we normally do this, we start, I think, in February or March, we were starting a little bit later, and so we would already have our students in the class, and so from day one, it was kind of infused. And we would start talking about that we would start looking at different types of things in regards to cultural competency and ways to build cultural competency and awareness and how this experience would be beneficial. But we also talked about… What are some barriers that could happen? How do you navigate around those barriers? So the biggest question is always, like… Well, is English the preferred language? What about the six hour time difference? So we brainstormed, at least in my course, “Okay, so if this happens, what are the resources you have? How are we going to navigate it? And how is this going to work?” So each of my students had set up conversations that they would have with our partner, “If time doesn’t work, this is a portal that we’ll use.” So they all laid out what their communication style was going to be or what type of technology they were going to use. If they hit a barrier, what was the backup plan? So we talked a little bit about that. But we also talked about being anxious, being nervous because they were. And that was a normal feeling, because this was a new experience. And we talked about that as a group. It came out in our very first virtual meeting as two classes as a whole, and we kind of all said it in the beginning, and it broke the ice a little bit, and people started sharing a little bit more about themselves. So those were some of the ways we talked before the course actually started in regards to the COIL part of it, and outlined a game plan. And then the students did that with our partner as well to say, “Okay, if you have a class at this time, what’s the best time we’re going to meet? What’s our preferred mode of communication?” and things like that.

Minjung: So monitoring students and giving feedback, especially in the beginning before we start COIL project, we as a group in the classroom, we talk about COIL, what’s the expectation. We have their preparation session, and they are paired before we do that, so they always have contact information. I recommend them to contact them before we start the project so that they know each other first. And then we have kickoff group session. Last year, we had 80 students together, it was a lot of students and we had almost two hour kickoff session. But in the future, to make it differently, Jessica suggests to have breakout sessions so that student can pair up in a breakout session and get to know one-on-one. So not only talking about the introduction part about, you know, What’s the COIL project is going to be? After talking about that, and breakout room so that they have their own time to chat. So that’s what we’re going to try in this spring semester.

John: Team teaching with other faculty or working on collaborative class activities across classes can be challenging when you’re right next door to the other people you’re working with. How did you arrange a collaboration to make sure everything was successful, both before the class and during the running of the class?

Jessica: I’ll let you take this one Minjung because you really fostered this collaboration with The Hague.

Minjung: Yeah, in that case, what I do is, I make Thursday as like a 30 minute COIL discussion session so that I ask students, “How’s it going, the process?” I ask them, “What process you are in? What kind of barriers you are having?” And through that, I know what barriers they have, what obstacles they need to go through. Then I intervene. I talk to Tonnie right away, emailing her and saying, “This specific student have problem with that. So what’s going on with your students?” Something directly communicating so that students can keep updated with their assignments. Otherwise, they lose track, at the end they can’t finish their project. So that monitoring each week, that’s, I felt, very important. That’s what I’m doing.

Jessica: Also, John, I think, something that throughout these past few years, we’re constantly jumping on Google Meets with Tonnie. We’ve been doing research and collaborating in that way. So it’s been pretty good. I think it is sometimes a challenge to get a time that works for everyone, right? Because there’s quite a few of us doing it. I think something that worked well for me, my first time doing COIL was using WhatsApp. I actually had never used it, but Memon, who was my co-instructor, we would text, we would text through that. He would say “So-and-so’s partner, they haven’t met yet. Can you reach out to them?” Because that was something occasionally that would happen. We had to also monitor, like Minjung said, the students and making sure they were on that. But I think when we first outlined the course with the syllabus, the assignments, it was pretty organized in that sense that we knew that we needed to check in with each other. And it became a relationship between us as instructors, right? We weren’t afraid to reach out or anything like that, because you start to get comfortable, you created it together, you’re working together. But I think yeah, time difference, we actually recently found out that Tonnie will no longer be the individual working with us, we have someone new. So this may be a challenge to navigate how this will work with a new instructor from their institution, but we’re excited about it. But I think different ways of communication has been what I’ve used and working together throughout the summers and things like that on research has really fostered our relationship as instructors together.

Minjung: And the transition meeting we did a few days ago, it was very good. So Tonnie introduced a new colleague to us and we scheduled a spring semester. So yeah, I’m looking forward to working with her.

Jessica: And I think that’s something Josh had mentioned too, and I’ve heard from some of my colleagues is, it’s hard. I think for a lot of people, sometimes they want to do a COIL course, but how do they find that person from another institution? So I think Minjung was able to really make that connection at that conference, and that’s how I’ve suggested to other colleagues that I have at different institutions to do that. Because it can be difficult to find that first person to work with, and then how do you navigate it from there can be difficult.

Rebecca: Seems like one of the key successes is actually how aligned the courses are across the institutions.

Jessica: Yes, yeah.

Rebecca: In this particular case, I know there’s also examples of cases where courses have worked really well when the subject matter is entirely different, but it seems like in this particular case, because it’s the same subject and you are looking at it in a similar way, it works really well. I can imagine that if it’s the same subject, and you had really opposing views or something or incompatible ways of working, it might not work as well.

Jessica: Right.

John: And also, there’s a pretty wide spectrum of COIL classes. In your case, it sounds like most of the class was done collaboratively, but in other classes, it’s a small component of the class where again, as Rebecca said, they could be in different disciplines, but only a portion of the class revolves around the collaborative activity, while there’s separate things going on in the classes in each of the countries. So it doesn’t have to be just something as tightly related as this. There have been many, many examples of classes in different disciplines. One of the appeals for people outside the U.S. is it gives students the opportunity to practice English, and that works particularly well for our students, because so few of our students are multilingual. But by working with students in the U.S. who are reasonably fluent in English, it gives students from other countries that chance to practice. They may not be quite as interested in the discipline, but they are very interested in engaging in the language skills.

Jessica: Yeah. It’s interesting too, so at their institution, they have to have a certain amount of COIL credits as students. So the course that Tonnie was teaching was particularly dedicated to that COIL type of engagement. So I think when Minjung and I first, she had started it, and we had talked about it, getting our students to have self efficacy to be able to have these collaborations because the clients or patients that they may be working with, they’re not all going to be from upstate New York. So I think we knew right away that this was an opportunity just for our students that was going to help them be more successful, career-wise. And I was pleasantly surprised with the additional aspects of this COIL course right away from their partnership, as well as my partnership and relationship with the instructors there. So not only was it student-wise that there was a gain there, but for me as a educator as well, in my collaboration with these other instructors,

Rebecca: if you were each to give one piece of advice to a faculty member interested in creating a COIL course, or a COIL experience, what would your one piece of advice be?

Josh: I can think of something. I see this with faculty who want to get involved with international education at any level in any way. I would start by thinking, What’s possible? What can I get out of this? What can our students get out of this interculturally, in the discipline, and so forth, even as Jessica was explaining, the friendships that students can make or the English language practice that students can have. But think what’s possible, but then realize quickly how much work is involved. And this is something that I think Jessica and Minjung expressed very well, but what I think about from an institutional standpoint is that partnership building can happen anywhere. In this case, it started at a conference in New York, it didn’t happen overseas, it was not with an existing university that SUNY Oswego had had any relationship with before. It was two professionals who met at a conference, and they began from there. So most faculty who go to conferences, I’m sure have international collaborators there. It can start there. But then I guess my last comment on that would be to think, How could this be institutionalized? So the strong personal becoming professional relationship has to be there, but Minjung mentioned having a faculty international travel grant from the International Office. That surely helped, they could actually meet each other and see each other there. We now have an MOU with a university, a signed agreement with that university and that makes a permanence to the project that an overseas partner or collaborator. They might need that. They might need a document that says we’re actually working together. So I think faculty should be open to… How can I make this institutional, both to get it done but also to sustain it? And then get to work.

Jessica: And I would say, have fun with it. [LAUGHTER] That’s because it really is fun. You have some great experiences, it’s unlike anything I’ve done before. So jumping into it, I was like, “Wow, this is gonna be really fun, it’s going to be learning different things and how to collaborate.” And the students, they go into it at first being a little nervous, and then they really have fun with it. They look forward to those assignments, they look forward to their virtual collaborations. So I think having fun and being motivated to really foster your relationship with the other instructor from another institution, and really working with your students, laying the land in regards to the assignments, and being explicit with what the expectations are, I think those are all great things to remember. But I think having fun, that’s the goal of it is to really have an experience that is meaningful and that you enjoyed. So I think that’s my advice. Of course, there’s a lot of work with it, but understanding that it is fun and the process is really rewarding.

Minjung: So as an instructor, maintaining solid relationship with international partner that’s very important, and keep motivated and persistent to sustain the collaboration. Very important.

Rebecca: Those one things are many things I’ve noticed.

Jessica: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Yes.

John: It is a lot of work. So we always end with the question, What’s next?

Jessica: Well, we just recently, this week, we met with the instructors, there is a handoff. So we have a new instructor we’re going to be working with who recently came to The Hague University with some great background educationally, and we’re excited. She seems really motivated and excited as well, so that’s awesome. We are going to be changing because we do do research with us as well, and we look at the pre/posttest, Did they gain cultural awareness? Is there more self efficacy with them now? So we’ve had great success in seeing that with our students both in the Netherlands and here in the U.S.. So we do plan on changing our measurement tool, digging a little deeper there, and we are adding different types of assignments that can be even more engaging for students with the final project, things like that. And those are things that we tweak, I think, every year, but last year, the content was related to COVID-19, the year before that was physical activity and nutrition. So this year, we’re probably going to go in a different lens, depending on the collaboration we have with the new instructor. But really, one of the biggest things with “what’s next” is providing those students even more time to get to know their partners, because every year we hear that they want just a little bit more time to get to know them because that’s the fun part of it. So we’re establishing some ways to pad that collaboration. And Minjung, what else would you say is next for us? We do have a presentation coming up. In Spain, it’s virtually but…

Minjung: Yes, yes. That’s exciting. We want to visit Spain instead but it’s remote. [LAUGHTER] So… And also thinking, talking to Josh and bringing students to the Netherlands not only virtual experience, but also in person experience that’d be beneficial for students as well. You know, when the pandemic goes down, and when we can travel, then bring students to the Netherlands and have experience. And also I talked to Tonnie about internship opportunity as well. So those areas, not only teaching COIL project but also expanding students’ hands on experience in different areas as well.

Josh: I agree with all that Jessica and Minjung said. I mean, to me, when I think about the next step, this is 20 plus years at SUNY Oswego and more on this field, I really think COIL is having its moment right now. And you’re seeing in international education literature, a recognition from career people who have been dedicated to primarily issues of student mobility across borders. That COIL is going to be a part of any valuable international education portfolio going forward. So that’s got to be acknowledged. I think, in my sense, in talking with other senior international officers around SUNY and elsewhere, that this has not gotten enough emphasis. So what’s next? I think we have to acknowledge that. Acknowledge that as an institution, we need to grow this. Part of that is going to be, if not faculty training, I think maybe explaining to faculty how this works, and this podcast is a great way to restart doing that, so I appreciate the invitation for that. But as my two colleagues explained, it’s work, it’s effort, but it’s also fun, gratifying. And it’s not a mystery if you give it the time that it requires, you can actually break it down and achieve it. Institutionally, I think we should probably start to think about something like a COIL coordinator. And this is something that in a resource constrained environment that every institution seems to be, it can be a big ask. But given that the language we’re using in SUNY is Global Learning For All, GLFA, Global Learning For All. Even before the pandemic, we were doing great with study abroad, we had over 20% of our students participating. Well that’s still 80% who are not participating, right? What are we doing with the other 80% in the best of times, and even more now. I think we have to get serious about the role of technology in international education and global learning and COIL has got a good track record. And so that plus, once we can cross borders more easily, I would love to work with these two to at least create an option for students who can get on a plane, in both directions by the way, we can host students from the Netherlands and our students can go there to accentuate the learning. But as you can see, we’re not waiting for that to have a great international education experience, at least with this course. I’m optimistic about the future.

John: Okay, thank you. It’s good to hear that the COIL program is rebuilding again on campus and that we’ve had these very successful iterations of it.

Rebecca: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your story.

Jessica: Yes, thank you guys for having us.

Minjung: Thank you.

Josh: This was a real pleasure.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle, Annalyn Smith, and Joshua Vega.

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128. Cultural Acclimation

Posted in classroom community, critical thinking, diversity, graduate education, higher education, inclusion, instructional communication, international education, learning, pedagogy, teaching
April 1, 2020

International students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities often face a multitude of challenges related to cultural differences and language barriers. These challenges can have an adverse impact on their academic performance during their adjustment process. In this episode, Don Donelsen joins us to discuss how the graduate business program at the University of Miami is working to ease this transition.

Don is a lecturer in the Miami Herbert Business School at the University of Miami. He is a recipient of a Spring 2016 University of Miami Excellence in Teaching Award.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: International students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities often face a multitude of challenges related to cultural differences and language barriers. These challenges can have an adverse impact on their academic performance during their adjustment process. In this episode, we discuss how one graduate program is working to ease this transition.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

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Fiona: My name is Fiona Coll. I teach in the Department of English and Creative Writing here at SUNY Oswego and this is my turn to sit in as a guest host.

John: We should note that this podcast was recorded in the third week of February 2020. Many of the plans that are discussed here have been altered as a result of the nationwide shutdown of institutions of higher education since the onset of the global pandemic.

Our guest today is Don Donelson. Don is a lecturer in the Miami Herbert Business School at the University of Miami. He is a recipient of a Spring 2016 University of Miami Excellence in Teaching Award. Welcome, Don.

Don: Hi. Glad to be on.

Fiona: Today’s teas are… sweet cinnamon spice.

John: Are you drinking tea?

Don: I’m not drinking tea, but I do actually have a gift from a former student.

Fiona: Oh.

Don: I was told it was Chinese tea, but then other Chinese students said this is not Chinese.

Fiona: [LAUGHTER] Well, you can say we’re drinking tea and you’re looking at tea. I guess that counts.

Don: I am looking at Green tea.

John: And I am drinking a ginger tea. We’ve invited you here to discuss a program that you have proposed and are working on at your institution to help students from China adjust to cultural differences in how classes in the U.S. are taught. What prompted your interest in this issue?

Don: We’ve had a large influx of Chinese students at the University. That’s probably the main impetus on what prompted this. I asked our institutional people for some data, and just in the graduate business program, we had our Chinese population double just in the last year. So we’re up to about 400 and something in the graduate business program, and undergrads, we have about 1500. And we’re not a large school, that’s about 15% or so of the entire population. So I’ve seen noticeable increases in Chinese students in classrooms, especially in the STEM specialized master’s programs, which they’re very attracted to, for some visa reasons, and perhaps other reasons. And so I actually had a section, there were 16 students, 15 of whom were from China, not by design, just this is how many Chinese students we have and sometimes that’s how it worked out. And I started noticing some differences in how the Chinese students were interacting in that class when they were mostly surrounded by their peers from China than the Chinese students who in the past there was one or two Chinese students in a section of 19 or 20, but now there’s four or five. This semester, actually, I have more than half in every single section from China. And so I started noticing that in that one section, it was all Chinese students except for one from South America, the interactions were a bit different. And then discussions with colleagues, how to improve teaching… The courses that I teach are classes on critical thinking, and problem solving and communication. And so the class participation is an enormous component of the class, we teach critical thinking by forcing people to do critical thinking. And so the trope, I guess you might say, not just the Chinese students, but a lot of international students in general, is that their language barriers are most pronounced in a class like that, and they participate less in class discussion, and they have difficulties with communication. Most of them, in my experience, have been difficulties that only they perceive, difficulties that aren’t actually barriers. But all of those issues I found true with the Chinese students but amplified to a much greater degree, and that’s the general consensus among colleagues. And so, as the numbers started to grow, we actually created a course, a different numbered course from the core course that I teach in the graduate program, exclusively for non-native English speakers, because putting them on the same curve is really problematic to their grades when there’s a heavy written component. But at the same time, we have academic standards that matter, I can’t just give them a separate session, so we created a separate course. And so it’s different numbered, and it’s essentially the same course title except for non-native English speakers. And so as I had the accidental almost all Chinese student class last semester, I said, “Hey, I should probably take advantage of this opportunity to test run in the spring semester,” which is now, when I’m going to have by design a class of all Chinese students. So I started really trying to identify “Why would they participate when they did participate? Why didn’t they participate?” Trying to break down what it was that caused these issues that most faculty here observe with their reticence to participate and lack of comfort with speaking up.

Fiona: Can you talk a little more about the general differences between classroom interactions that you’ve observed in students from China as opposed to perhaps students who are mostly American?

Don: So it’s actually changing now, because of some of the stuff we’re doing. Where we were at to begin all this was they pretty much do not participate in class discussions. It’s very rare that they do. If you go full Socratic method and just start calling on people, some of them will participate when called on, but it’s clear that they’re uncomfortable with it, they don’t quite know what to do, and some will just refuse, even when called on. There will just be a minute or two of silence while they try to think of something or they kind of punt. And so with class participation in most of our courses in the graduate program is 20 to 30% of the grade, it’s a significant problem that inhibits their success.

Fiona: And I think you’re suggesting that there are multiple factors involved in this reticence. So, it’s not simply a language-based issue, but also a cultural issue that expectations around classroom culture differ so much that students really do feel unable to participate in a culture that feels so different from the one they’ve just come from.

Don: Exactly. So I started talking to students, one of the things I noted that was interesting was they’re very comfortable speaking after class, one-on-one, very frequent after class. And as I started having more Chinese students in my classes, it began to be a problem, actually, because I didn’t have enough time in between classes to field all of their questions. And so I thought that was interesting. And then in the few instances in which they had to give presentations, so an assigned presentation, like a stock pitch or something, they did remarkably well, mostly. And in fact, if I went and correlated my grades based on nationality, I strongly suspect it would be zero on the presentations, whereas on class participation it was a very strong correlation, so that got me curious. And I started asking them, “Why are you comfortable speaking to me outside of class?” which I’m very appreciative of. The Chinese students in particular here, some of them… I could put a cot in my office because of how frequently they would come to my office hours. And so it was clear to me that it wasn’t an unwillingness or a lack of care, which made me even more curious because some faculty misinterpret their classroom behavior as an unwillingness or lack of care. And so I started engaging and asking questions about participation, and the conversation just kind of grew, and I learned that the way that they do education in China, and there was some various experiences described, but pretty much all of them described an educational environment that they were brought up in, in which there is no mandatory participation as part of the grade. When participation is expected in class it is almost always in the form of a show of hands, and in no instance did any student describe a situation in which they had an open class environment where they would, without being prompted, speak up and make a point or something. In fact, the word that was consistently used by students, when I asked them what they think about speaking up in class, is “rude.” They think it’s rude. They look down, because looking up at someone is considered to be a sign of disrespect in many aspects of their culture. And so some faculty misinterpret it as they’re disengaged or they’re on their cell phone, but they’re actually fully engaged. They just think that that’s what the expectations are. So they think it’s rude to interrupt the class, they think it’s disrespectful to make eye contact. And so there’s a signaling problem, essentially, the normal ways that we would evaluate students to assess understanding, to assess engagement, don’t really work well without some explicit addressessing of these issues with the Chinese students. In addition, one major cause that we found was that their education is, perhaps not surprising to some people, but their education is designed around the idea that there are black and white answers to everything, there is very little gray area, their evaluation metrics appear to be almost exclusively objective, multiple choice, or true and false. Even in their English language classes it’s objective metrics… which of course, we all know the English language, for good or for bad, there are no objectively correct things, but they believe that there is a single correct way to make a statement in English, and so that causes a lot of hesitation in class because some students, they want to participate, but they spend time trying to figure out the right way for me to say this. Some other issues related to these issues with they’ve been taught that everything’s black and white… and even the English language is… they fear embarrassment if they mispronounce a word. They tend to be self conscious of their accent in ways that I don’t find as common with Latin American students or Indian students, who also are prone to having some self conscious issues with accents and like but not to the same degree as to Chinese students. I think it’s because they think there is one way to say it. And so there is a fear of embarrassment wherein it’s hard for them to grasp that they can’t be embarrassed because there’s really no bad answer when we’re having a Socratic discussion. And so fear of embarrassment was a contributor to these issues as well and a lack of specific directions. And so one thing that I found most startling, as I was going through these informal focus groups with Chinese students, is the number of them who could not articulate what class participation means in any way that aligns with what we know class participation to mean. Many of them thought that class participation simply meant showing up and that they would get their points from that. About half of them actually had no idea that their grade would be impacted by class participation, and the frequency and quality of that participation. I spoke with one second-year MBA student who I’d had in class last year for some insights from him, and he expressed that he was in that path, and he had no idea that class participation points mattered. And it pretty much put him in the bottom quarter of the class for his first semester, and then he eventually figured it out, and now he’s in the top quarter of the class, but that was just very upsetting to me. That was the point at which I said, “Okay, we are failing these students. It is not incumbent on them. We are not putting them in a position to succeed.” And that was the real fuel to the fire… to actually do some programming and create some initiatives to try and prepare these students for success better.

Fiona: There is so much about academic culture that feels straightforward and self explanatory until an experience just like this, when you realize how much of what we expect goes unexpressed, or unexplained, or is invisible in one way or another. So how did you begin tackling this enormous and multifaceted issue?

Don: I just made a checklist of all the things that we identified as causing these problems, and it was clear to me that we needed to be active. This was a significant enough problem with deep roots that it wasn’t as simple as just changing the way that we introduce our syllabus, and adding a five-minute spiel or something, it was much deeper than this. And so I proposed that we need to teach them how to be a student in an American classroom, especially in a program that requires Socratic discussion in most classes and is going to be 20 to 30% of their grade. So I proposed that we add a course to the orientation program that we have on how to be a student.

Fiona: And how detailed do you get in terms of approaching this from a metacognitive perspective? You explain to students the larger purpose of this kind of Socratic discussion, or do you simply dive in and have them start practicing? What approach are you imagining taking?

Don: My thoughts were kind of a two-half approach, wherein we first start off by teaching them what the expectations are. And so, exactly as you said, explaining to them things like “we value wrong answers.” John and I taught for many years at the Duke TIP program, and those students… very, very academically gifted… are younger, and so they can be very intimidated by Socratic discussion. And so I would always tell them that our jobs would actually be very boring if, every time we asked a question, the first student who answered gave a perfect and correct answer, and I don’t think that students would learn very much if that was the case. And so the idea is that we’re going to have discussions like that, kind of half teaching and half selling the importance and value to them in participating, accepting that there isn’t really wrong and right answers, we are moving a discussion forward. And when they successfully complete our program in a year or two, they’re going to be holders of a master’s degree in business and going to work in the business world, in which it will be expected that they put forward ideas that they don’t even think are necessarily going to work. Jeff Bezos at Amazon demands people put forward any idea they have, whether they think it’s going to work or not, and so we’re going to use case studies like that, a company they know, Amazon, a person they know, Jeff Bezos, and say, “This is who makes it to Vice President at Amazon, the person who’s willing to speak up in class and give a wrong answer.” So we’re going to educate and sell, really, participation and show them how to do it with some modeling. And so ideally, we will get some second-year grad students in their cohort who, through faculty recommendations, can be good role models and we’ll do some roleplay interacting with those students and demonstrate “Here’s what it looks like after extolling the virtues of it and demonstrating how we want to do it,” and then have them actually just do it, a mock class, and after that we would slowly morph from lecture into Socratic discussion.

John: And you’re planning to start this off with some type of bootcamp at the start of their year when they arrive, correct?

Don: So that’s actually complicated because we have lots of different programs. In business academia there’s been a seismic shift… really, like two years. It’s kind of startling, but there’s a major shift away from MBA degrees and a major shift towards specialized master’s programs. And so we went from having the MBA as our bread and butter, that was our main graduate degree program with I think we have like eight or nine specialized master’s programs now. And so there’s some logistics that have to be worked out because, you know, some of them have their own schedules, and there’s some departmental autonomy. Some of them are coming in July, some are coming in August. So they have a boot camp and then orientation, so those are separate. The idea is that as part of that boot camp, there will be a mandatory required course that is communicated to them, and it’s probably going to be two sessions. So I mentioned you haveb two halves, we’re thinking the best version of this would be overnight with a break in between those two halves with a case to go home with and prepare for this Socratic discussion.

Fiona: I’m wondering how you might incentivize an openness to failure or to wrong answers. Let’s say you’re not Jeff Bezos, don’t have someone’s employment in your hands. Have you experimented with, or thought about, or planned for ways to not just encourage students to take these sorts of risks in the classroom, but to actively acknowledge and perhaps even reward that sort of wrongful, rightful risk taking?

Don: Right, so, yes, and a couple of things I already tried out this semester with that all-Chinese section that I mentioned, I started off that class by saying “Nǐ hǎo, huānyíng lái dào wǒ bān,” which is a surely butchered way of saying “Hello, welcome to my class.” And then I asked them how many of them think I’m stupid because I butchered this phrase in Chinese, and, of course, none of them said that, and I said, “Well, that’s because you have context, and so the same thing is true for you all.” If there’s a student who’s born in Washington, DC, and has lived their entire life in the United States, and now they’re in a master’s program and they’re making grammar mistakes, I should rightfully judge them as having a lack of effort or some kind of problem. But for someone who is not a native English speaker, inductive reasoning does not allow the same kind of leap, and it would be illogical to assess someone on a personal level because they mispronounce a word or something. And so I said, “Just as you did not think lowly of me, or assess me to be incompetent or something because I butchered this Chinese greeting, you will receive the same benefits in your interactions with people.” And so they all laughed, there was a lot of laughter, and I think that kind of worked a decent amount, and then, and this might be unpalatable to some faculty members, but I have found with the Chinese students, they are extremely conscious of the opinions that their professors and peers have of them. And so it is very important to pat them on the back, especially early on. And so I started off with a low-stakes presentation, you know, one minute, because again, I found that when they’re provided with directions, and it’s required, and there’s a grade, they knock it out of the park, and then intentionally pointing out to good things that making them feel kind of safe, and that they’re not going to be embarrassed. Someone will mess something up, they’ll mispronounce a word or something and we’ll point out that it didn’t matter, and no one laughed at them, and that sort of thing. And so I found that doing that early on has helped in this section. And then in addition to that, the other main incentive that we’re playing with is changing class participation grades to more periodic updates, rather than what we typically do, which is just one of the last things that’s entered into our Excel spreadsheet probably after we’ve already gone on spring break, and because the updating of it in the feedback. And, John, I’m sure some of the other episodes I listened to that coincides with the importance of feedback on making better choices, and so not making it a surprise.

John: Letting students know that their lack of adjustment to American culture is actually harming their grades early on makes it much easier to adjust than when they find that out after the fact. So this will require some adjustments, not just from the students to adjust to American institutions, but also from faculty.

Don: Absolutely. If you’re a faculty member at an institution that wants to be a global institution, you have to think globally, and you can’t just expect every student to show up in your classroom Americanized. I think it’s kind of silly thinking really to just demand that the students Americanize themselves or westernize themselves and sink or swim because we’re not setting them up to have good outcomes, and that’s what we’re here to do.

John: We face some similar issues here. We’ve tried to focus on working on faculty to change the way they teach classes, but that only reaches the faculty who actually attend those workshops and students need to adjust to a wide range. And so I think there’s a lot of merit to this approach of working with students to help them get acclimated, especially perhaps in a business school where many of the students may want to go and work in firms where that type of participation and that type of activity is expected. So it’s also partly an introduction to American culture, as well as just American educational systems, which in a master’s program in business, would seem to be really appropriate.

Don: Absolutely. One of the drivers of the growth in specialized master’s programs for international students is STEM degrees get an automatic two-year work visa, which is very attractive. And so it’s pretty clear that, especially in those STEM credentialed degree programs, that their goal is to take advantage of that automatic to get employment, and it will impact them very quickly if they don’t acclimate to the classroom environment, which as you said, we do model business environments. And so I tell my students that we’re going to behave as though we’re in a consultancy meeting in class. You’re absolutely right. It’s beyond just a procedure for how to get grades, it is training for bigger things beyond the classroom.

Fiona: You mentioned that this program is focusing on masters level students, but the university also has a large number of undergraduate students. Do you think that this is a model that could be expanded to address that slightly different student population?

Don: I think so. Logistics would be an issue, of course, we’d probably have to recruit more help. But scaling aside, I don’t see much difference at all. I do teach a handful of undergrad sections every once in a while and the issues thinking back are identical.

Fiona: I have a slightly random question. Do students from China come to America with a pre-existing idea of what college is going to be like, what graduate study might be like? Is there any access they have to set up any horizon of expectations for them?

Don: This is not information that I got from our focus groups, but my observations, I strongly suspect that it’s something they don’t even think about. It’s kind of like you don’t know what you don’t know, and they’re startled to find that it’s not just what they have been doing for the last 12-15 years of education.

John: When they’ve been adjusting to a school system for over a decade, it’s pretty easy to base your expectations on what you’ve observed in the past.

Don: Right.

Fiona: I, too, interact with international students in a slightly different context, in an English literature department.

Don: Oh, that’s got to be tough.

Fiona: And many of the issues, especially that black and white thinking you’re describing, are amplified in my discipline, but I always do ask them partially by way of getting them to think about their own expectations, you know, “What were you imagining this class might look like?” And often they do have some sort of pop cultural version of what school might be like that emerges in a fascinating way. They have particular reasons for wanting to come to America in the first place to study, so I was just curious as to whether or not you had any insight into that version of things for Masters of Business students?

Don: No, I think they just value an American degree in business. Some of them do come from American undergrad institutions, and those students generally have already acclimated, but most of them are coming straight from China. Many of them, the day before orientation was their first day ever in the United States. That’s really scary, and so they show up at the airport and realize that they’re not nearly as good at speaking English as they were led to believe. And so I think there’s a lot of just very understandable ignorance of what they don’t know. We’re using a lot of social media, and we’re encouraging a lot of social media use, our Chinese students to communicate with their peers back in China, both as we find it’s a very good recruitment tool, and also to help with that kind of expectation.

Fiona: One of the other things I hear from the students I interact with who have come from China is their shock at how quickly Americans speak English, how fast professors speak in the classroom, and that’s a tougher one to handle in a boot camp class, I suppose. And I find myself simply trying to reassure them that they will be surprised at how quickly they adjust and they just need to give it some time and some practice, but it’s a very real source of anxiety for them in those first weeks of the semester.

Don: Yes, absolutely. And I’m glad you mentioned that because that is such a common… I mentioned before that students frequently will come up to me after class to engage and the mode interaction is asking for clarification on something that was said an hour prior in the middle of class that they didn’t understand. And in some cases, that’s fine. I can clarify, and it works, but in some cases, it’s like, “Okay, well, everything after that for the last hour, you didn’t get either if you didn’t understand that, and that’s really disappointing as well.” And so I make it a point, whether it’s an all Chinese class or not, I tell them that I want them to stop me if I’m speaking too fast, or I say something they don’t understand, that I want them to stop me and let me know that, and that I don’t think it’s rude. And in fact, I would be very upset to later learn that I wasn’t communicating effectively enough for them to gain understanding, and so that has helped a lot. It usually takes more than once of saying that for it to set in, but by the second or third class this semester, I’ve had pretty much every class someone stopped me and said, “I didn’t understand that” or, “my translator is not registering that word. What is that?” But yes, that’s an enormous issue.

John: Is lecture capture used there at all?

Don: I don’t use it.

John: Many of us use it. And I know in my econometrics class, before I flipped the class, I used to do some interactive lectures, and one of the things that mostly Korean students and occasionally Japanese or Chinese students noted was that if there were parts they didn’t understand that well, they could go back and play it back at half speed to make it easier to understand things, and that’s a nice accessibility feature for anyone who’s not a native English speaker. Another option might be to let students record things too, and then they could go back and play it back at a reduced speed until their understanding was able to keep up with the actual rate at which we speak.

Don: Interesting that you mention that because one thing that came from the Chinese students themselves in these focus groups was a pretty surprising number of them who said that we should ban electronic devices completely, because they said that they’re… so much more than American culture… they’re wed to their electronic devices. And they pretty much admitted that you are going to have some engagement issues unless you just forbid the electronic devices.

Fiona: It’s interesting that they can recognize [LAUGHTER] a certain sort of problem and are asking for help, I suppose.

Don: Well, they asked for help after the semester was done, and they made me promise to not name them if I implemented a ban. So there was some strategy involved, so that’s critical thinking.

John: But there is also the capability of a recorder which would not be that much fun to interact with. So…

Don: Right.

John: …there are devices that could work that would not be distracting.

Fiona: I’m really struck by the way in which you’re paying attention to a very specific cultural group here and you’re adjusting to very specific problems that that group has. You mentioned your checklist of things you know are happening and your desire to find the source of those things, but I can’t help but think that the adjustments you’re making are, in fact, adjustments that might benefit all sorts of students, all sorts of students for whom academic norms are a little bit hard to penetrate, or to understand, students who might have cognitive differences and struggle in discussion situations in particular. And so your particular intervention here seems to open out into a larger issue of what inclusive teaching might look like.

Don: Absolutely, and I’ve actually had that same thought. We’re singling out Chinese students, but boot camp, is there a problem with that? And is there some perception bias on our end that we don’t recognize these same issues with some other groups? But I think it’s very institutional, it’s not just culture by culture, it’s institution by institution. What we ended up finding is, because of our very, very heavy South American roots, our Latin American students are non-native English speakers who are native Spanish speakers, I think they feel more comfortable here than they might in many other institutions, and so you could have these same exact kinds of problems rearing their head, even maybe 100 miles north of here at another institution where there’s not a critical mass and those kinds of deep connections. We even offer some of our core courses in Spanish, and so I think they feel very comfortable. But it struck us that it wouldn’t take many changes in our circumstances for them to be in the same boat, perhaps, as we found the Chinese students. So you’re absolutely right.

Fiona: We do usually finish up by asking “What’s next?”

Don: What’s next is interesting, because the virus issues and so we are probably facing deferment of admissions to Spring 2020. And so what’s immediately next is adjusting on the fly as those things develop. But as far as the specific issue with helping students acclimate, where I would like to go next is just keep learning, keep having these discussions with students. So I had 20 something odd students participate in a pretty lengthy focus group session with me, that’s not enough, and so keep learning, start implementing some evaluation methods on ourselves. As John mentioned, sometimes it’s difficult to get faculty to cooperate with things but ideally, we would mandate standard language on class participation in all graduate syllabi, we would mandate periodic updating of their score on that. And we would even add in our reporting metrics, how the scores are changing in those classes that are doing that. Are they improving after we give them the first update, and so learning more about the students and the issues that they face so that we can better serve them I think is what’s next and really probably what always should be next.

Fiona: That’s great.

John: Sounds really good.

Fiona: Good luck with all of it.

Don: Thank you.

Fiona: Sounds like a very worthy intervention.

John: Thank you, Don. It’s always good talking to you.

Don: Thanks for having me, so much.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer. Editing assistance provided by Brittany Jones and Savannah Norton.

[MUSIC]

105. Globalizing Classes

Posted in collaboration, community based learning, community organizing, diversity, engaged scholarships, globalization, higher education, international education, learning, motivation, pedagogy, service-learning, social capital, teaching, teaching centers
October 30, 2019

Improvements in communication and information technology have resulted in an increasingly interconnected global economy. In this episode, Dr. Blase Scarnati joins us to discuss ways in which our classes can be modified to help prepare our students to productively participate in this global environment. Blase is a Professor of Musicology and the Director of Global Learning in the Center for International Education at Northern Arizona University.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Improvements in communication and information technology have resulted in an increasingly interconnected global economy. In this episode, we discuss ways in which our classes can be modified to help prepare our students to productively participate in this global environment.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Today our guest is Dr. Blase Scarnati. Blase is a Professor of Musicology and the Director of Global Learning in the Center for International Education at Northern Arizona University. Welcome back, Blase.

Blase: Thank you. Really glad to be back with you both.

John: We’re glad to have you here again.

Our teas today are:

Blase: I’m drinking my everyday green tea. Chinesegreen tea Dragonwell Long Jing.

John: Very nice.

Rebecca: I have English Breakfast tea.

John: I have a pure peppermint tea. So, something plain.

We’ve invited you back to talk about your work with global learning. Could you tell us first a little bit about your role as a Director of Global Learning at the Center for International Education at NAU.

Blase: Primarily I work with faculty and departments, especially through our Global Learning Initiative, and the Global Learning Initiative (or GLI) is an across-the-curriculum global education initiative sited in all undergraduate programs and our liberal education program…also explicitly uses co-curricular experiences such as residence hall programming, department activities, community engagement, and so forth. And GLI established three interconnected and interdependent ideas that were all based and drawn upon long-standing campus values that were articulated as university-level thematic student learning outcomes around diversity education, global engagement, and sustainability. And so we kind of approached what global education can be in a very innovative way rather than just, like many institutions, privileging study-abroad-based experiences. We really broadened it out, and really defined it as diversity education, global engagement, and sustainability. And through that, when we were working to implement them at the department level, we really were asking departments not just to kind of hook up, to reach up, to those University outcomes, but rather recast them through the discourse in the discipline, so that departments truly would own those outcomes rather than just attend to them. We went about this after a lot of campus conversation for several years and it was adopted in 2010 by our faculty senate. Then we began to work with departments to implement and develop ways for them to think through…to create department- and program-level outcomes around those three thematic university level ones. And we used a backward design process: developing the outcomes, developing assessment strategies, and then determining sort of scaffolded learning experiences across the major curriculum. And especially with emphasis on reimagining courses; not just tossing courses out or adding courses, specifically. So how can you really get to the nub of modifying and internationalizing your particular courses. In 2012, GLI contributed significantly towards NAU earning the prestigious Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization awarded by NAFSA. And more recently, we’ve been shifting away from working with departments and program curricula and focusing on individual faculty and their courses. And we do everything from individual consultations and dialogues about individual courses. But, most excitingly, we’ve organized a lot of large-scale frameworks that we’re calling collaboratives that bring together faculty, undergraduate, graduate students, particular programs, community members, all to kind of begin to think through how different courses different programs can really more deeply internationalize their efforts. Jean Paul Lederach, the great peace organizer and theorist has talked about large, flat, flexible, democratic platforms. And that’s what we’re really trying to pursue because, if you have a chance to listen to my other podcast with you all, we’re really focused on a lot of strategies that are based in community organizing theory and practice and that’s been my driving approach.

Rebecca: I have a question, Blase, based on some of the things that you’ve already mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about the kinds of learning outcomes that you were using for backwards design related to individual faculty. I think sometimes we have an image of what that might mean, but might have difficulty applying it to different kinds of disciplines.

Blase: Sure, the university level outcomes are really quite broad based. And they were rather intersectional in the sense that sustainability was also leaning into diverse spaces. We’re talking about sustainable communities and so forth and cultures with an idea that it can accommodate…if we built these really large boxes that lean almost into one another like Venn diagrams, then that would offer kind of the maximal amount of space for programs and departments to dialogue and think through them. And really, the individual departments…It was quite quite diverse. Some were very, very specific and targeted about really hard skills that they might need that would help them establish careers…be hired out in post baccalaureate efforts…and others were a lot broader. In the humanities, for example, they were much more expansive, and it was really quite diverse. So all ultimately address skills and competencies, but they were framed very, very differently. And the key point for us was that they were really rooted in disciplinary discourse. So, they were truly real and meaningful for faculty in the department so they could use them as tools to help their program move and prepare their students to succeed in the world that their discipline works with students to place them successfully in.

Rebecca: You do Musicology, right? So are you in the music department at your school?

Blase: Yeah, I’m a professor of musicology…music history. I do work with critical improvisation studies, popular traditions. I teach courses in reggae and country music, and jazz…and yeah, and in music. we’ve approached them in sort of interesting ways: sustainability comes about through…for example, my wife is an oboist and between global learning and lots of pressures with urban expansion in Africa, the wood that they source for that particular instrument has become quite scarce and rare. And there’s also lots of issues about appropriating other cultures’ resources and so forth. So, that’s really driven a lot of internal dialogue about what are we doing, how can we do it and what other alternatives might be available? Initially, of course, they went to oil-based solutions, you know, looking at polymers, but then they’ve been exploring other kind of sustainable woods and just ways to go about and reimagining and still achieving really high levels of performance and expressiveness, using an instrument that will allow them to do that. But again, with alternatives and there’s been real efflorescence in the oboe world around having lots of different woods being used and explored. And our theater colleagues were looking also at green ways to save energy: reusing, using non-toxic paints in their flats and their staging. So there’s been a lot of different ways. And some of its quite strategic and often overlaps with other ways in terms of economic efficiency, given tight budgets and so forth. But at the end of the day, that’s the reality. For example, we make and create and help to enable students to be effective performers and music educators, they’re dealing with audiences and the world and they have to come to terms with that. Within that is what I can contribute about uncovering lots of issues about how does music function in and as culture? And what are the resonance around whose music is being played? How’s that identified? How is it commodified? Who owns that music? Who can speak for it? And it’s a quite fraught history in the US and and European traditions vis a vis world music. But this can help unpack a lot of social justice focused issues within disciplines. Many pursue them overtly. Some that’s kind of bubbling a bit more in the background. So in music it’s been, in spite of popular culture’s music, quite forward art traditions and so forth. It’s more akin to museum systems in the visual plastic arts. So it’s a little bit quite contested in some ways, a bit behind some other areas. So it’s been useful to help disciplines turn over the field a bit and help to move themselves in productive directions.

John: What other types of experiences have been used on other departments to try to reach this goal?

Blase: Well, when the department itself has embraced the institutional imperatives of the wind filling the sail as one where one has to complete it, it’s baked into the program reviews that occur every six years internally, and so forth. And, at the same time, what’s also driven a lot of it is student demand. Just one example… our Department of Philosophy went through this process…and all dear friends, but it was a bit pro forma. And, you know, it wasn’t necessarily the deepest engagement compared to some other departments. But a couple years later, they came back in and wanted to re-examine and reestablish new outcomes for their program to really deepen their practice and their thinking. The discipline had changed, and there was a huge student demand. Once they started opening opportunities in courses and uncovering these issues, like linking it more close to the bone of what’s gone on in philosophy courses, then students were really driving that change. So, really, to kind of get to the nub of the matter when you start talking with a colleague, and they’re saying, “Well, how can I do this in my class?” And that’s always a very, very interesting conversation because in some ways, it can be challenging because they may be frustrated, they see where things are…the state of the world. They’re driven by their own passions and values, their disciplines also, and sometimes bringing that to bear within a curriculum that they may have inherited from someone else in the department over the years, or a particular course, then how do they go about working their way through that? And that can be a very, very rich conversation.

Rebecca: It sounds like that’s the conversation we should have. So, Blase, how can I globalize my classes? [LAUGHTER]

Blase: From my perspective, there are two ways to go about globalizing your course. First off, there’s no need to scrap it, throw it away and start over. No one’s talking about doing that. There are two approaches. One is to work within the existing outcomes for the course. And the second is designing additional outcomes for your course that specifically address why your students should be globalizing their work. That might be a formal outcome that you place if you have the latitude to add that to your course or an informal one that can help you frame your thinking. So in the first one…working within the existing outcomes. We would have a conversation and frequently would just…first off, get off campus…go someplace and have coffee. You kind of break down the routine of this is me in my role, you as a faculty member in your role…I mean, I’m a faculty member too, but I come to them within this other frame…and get someplace where you can begin to think and imagine and begin to talk about what have they always really wanted to do in the course around some of these issues. So, how can you take those outcomes and find ways of moving the learning and moving and modifying learning experiences…projects…what you do…what you read…what you think about…what you discuss in the class… so that it has a more global dimension. And some of that can be shifting readings, shifting the locus of activity or thinking through a problem and where it’s sited, and then helping your students that may not have a lot of experience in that discipline, thinking about those things. So, helping them understand how you really think and work within that discipline with these issues. So the first one is the easy one: where can you substitute? Where can you supplement? Where can you modify? What can you change? The second one, it kind of gets at things at a deeper level and probably something that’s more impactful. So, if you design your own courses’ outcomes, you’re really going to have to think through: Why are you doing this? What will it enable your students to do? To what purpose? …and, given the restrictions you might have, that might be just lurking in the background, helping you make decisions about what you want to alter. What new sorts of ways of doing and knowing that you want to explore with your students, up to you just add it as another outcome and discuss it with your students as you walk through the learning outcomes in the first day when you go through the syllabus quickly and begin to consider what are we going to be doing in this class and why?

John: When faculty have bought into this, how have they responded?

Blase: Most are really, really enthusiastic and people tend to seek this out if they are aligned to the overall goals of the project. In the early days, sometimes we had reluctant departments or departments that there wasn’t a working consensus to move forward in any particular direction. And those were more difficult conversations. These days generally working with individuals or departments that they’re highly aligned with this. So it’s a matter of what more can we do? How can we do that? And the restrictions aren’t about globalizing the course or trying to internationalize different activities or projects. But, often it’s how can we do this with little to no additional economic support? So we can’t buy resources…we can’t send our students necessarily independently out. And then how can we expand where our curriculum is, and I can introduce them to colleagues in the Center for International Education and we operate not by using a service where our students pay and go abroad using a services infrastructure. Like many places anymore, we have individual departments…have reciprocal agreements with other universities that our students would go and take a range of courses in the study abroad experience and they would come back. They would transfer right in. Students are not going to be missing any time in their progression towards a degree. They pay our own internal tuition. So their scholarships and financial aid cover those expenses. We also have a very generous level of support for travel for those students in need, especially in economically challenged groups. So, there’s a lot of infrastructure that the department or the individual faculty member may not have. But we can begin to put people together in a broader network to help them as an individual faculty member achieve aspirations or collectively as a program, or our whole department. Oftentimes, it’s frequently very, very exciting because, if you kind of are talking at that level of what have you all wanted to do, then let’s figure out a way to make that happen. That’s a very catalytic encounter and a catalytic discussion because it’s full of possibilities. I always try to shift the conversation to what else is possible? What have you never had a chance to do? Don’t worry about the 1001 reasons not to do it, they’re always there. But let’s figure out what that is, then we’ll go and figure out ways to remove the barriers or to provide the resources if we can. So, it’s usually a very satisfying work. And it’s usually a very uplifting conversation, because people take that energy inside and really begin to spin it. So, they’re lit up, and how excited they are infects others in their networks and groups and it can kind of feed off of one another. And much like we were talking about earlier conversation, if you get enough activity going, and you begin to saturate the airspace as much as you have the latitude to do, you can create a locus of gravity that starts to pull others in. And that’s just based upon your active network of folks that are collaborating together.

Rebecca: Can you talk about some specific examples that you think are really powerful implementations of globalization of a class or a curriculum?

Blase: Sure. One early example that I use to open up conversation with departments because I usually would go in into a department meeting and here’s what this project GLI is all about. And then “How do you do it?” That’s the next question. One really great example was out of our civil engineering department, we have a big school of engineering of civil, electrical, and so forth. And they often have core courses that all of the different threads within civil engineering would take together and one of those courses had a bridge building project. So, it had two major components. One was you need to design the bridge. So, you need to do the mathematics…the engineering of a bridge that will span a particular distance…that will carry a particular load…and then the materials and construction management side of that. So, then how do you actually actually create that bridge. So, it was actually a semester-long project, and it was quite complex. On the surface, that sounds fairly easy, but it is very real world, because that’s what these students would do when they leave. And they would join a construction corporation and they would be building bridges and other types of projects. So, engineering wanted to globalize that project. They thought this was one place where they could really make an impact. The faculty sited the bridge building project in Kenya. And that’s a country where we have a lot of reciprocal programs and our engineering students are working and taking courses and working in programs there. So, it still addressed the very technical side of what was needed in the course. So they still design and engineer a bridge that carries load…that spans a particular distance. But now that it moved the construction and the materials management into an international frame, and in a particular country, where there are infrastructure issues. How do you ship and transport or source locally materials. And again, that actually aligns absolutely with what their students need because their graduates are getting hired by major international corporations that build projects all over the world. So, that actually gave them a richer set of tools that came out of that learning experience. So, they accomplished everything they needed. Plus, they were able to internationalize it in a way that helps students develop tools that were even more necessary, and actually more salient to their success in the future. I think that’s a very, very quick, powerful little story that gets a “How can you take something and make some changes to it, that actually brings more to it?” So it doesn’t just globalize, but it actually opens up a set of possibilities and experiences that are multiplied. So, it’s not just here’s one way that we can do this to globalize this learning experience. But then, how can we, at the level of outcomes truly, how can we develop a richer set of tools that our students can use to succeed as they go out and seek to build a richer life?

Oftentimes inertia and perhaps a department, for example, or group of faculty, they may think it’s a good idea, but they don’t see a ready quick access point. Civil Engineering, they saw it almost immediately. And they said, “Well, we can do this.” And then it led to “Well, what if we do more of this? How about if we went here, as opposed to there…just so they move down the road pretty rapidly. For example, with Physics and Astronomy, we had a chair that was actually part of our planning group that helped design the whole Global Learning Initiative. And she was very, very interested in wanting to help move the department in this direction. And they were quite split. And it wasn’t just the astronomers versus the physicists, but it was actually a more generational split and that was just peculiar to their department at the time. So, there were a lot of very senior gray lions that really didn’t want to go in this direction. They thought it was counterproductive. They thought it was beside the point. And so that opened a lot in a very long conversation. And over five years or so, there was some change, retirements and so forth. And younger faculty and then the rising senior faculty began to have conversations about what it can be within their context between physics and astronomy. And we’re lucky we’re adjacent to a number of indigenous nations, the Navajo Nation, which is as large as all of New England for goodness sake. Within that’s the Hopi reservation downstate, various Apache groups, and it’s a very rich international space that way. So colleagues in Physics and Astronomy started working with colleagues in the community college system on the Navajo reservation. And so they started bringing in traditional knowledge holders. So, within astronomy, they started offering courses around indigenous cosmologies. So, they were actually helping their students to think in very different international ways using different frames for how do you conceive the founding of the cosmos, and the workings of all that is out there. Even the most rigorous, focused astronomer that is working in radio astronomy, or some other variation of across their wide range of disciplinary practices, then they’re beginning to open up what’s possible, how and what does it mean to be talking about these things? And when I know that I’m talking about it through my contemporary U.S. international sort of frame, that’s one frame. And there are other ways that might be useful to think about the facts, the activities that we do, and what the information we receive. And then what does it mean to put it together in an argument and an explanation. And by thinking through other cultural dimensions that expands their abilities to do that imaginatively, creatively. I come out of the arts, so I’m kind of hard wired to want to do things very improvisatory creative ways. And from my perspective, the more we can all think about, how can we be catalytic and creative in our own disciplinary work? I think that’s the exciting place because it shifts you, not from the core to the periphery, but oftentimes to willfully and intentionally walk to that edge, where your discipline is interacting with all these other disciplines. And that’s a very fruitful and very exciting place to be, because that’s where new knowledge can come about really quickly, as you begin to fuse and think differently and expanding what’s assumed. For me, that’s personally and intellectually this very, very exciting work. And believe me, I can’t follow the details of my colleagues in physics and astronomy when they start unpacking things, but I can get and be really lit up by the direction that they’re going, and their excitement and what they’re seeing as possibilities. Because once colleagues find that this is a fruitful path, then that leads much like we found with physics and astronomy, and certainly the example from engineering, that leads to “what else is possible?” So, you just keep opening and opening and opening. And that’s where we all want to be, especially in a time when most or institutions are getting squeezed in terms of economics. That’s a very empowering place to be.

Rebecca: You’ve mentioned this is a fruitful place for new knowledge. That seems like a good transition to thinking through the lens of students and seeing the world in a different way.

Blase: Yeah.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about some of the student impact that you’ve seen, or maybe even a specific student or a specific story that might help us envision how this plays out?

Blase: I work with faculty who work with the students, but I just get that energy and how they’re able to create new things. And then especially as I see colleagues being able to morph and continually transform what their course is, so that it’s not just, we take something static, we’re going to do some window dressing, and job done, and that’s good for another 20 years. But, once you start moving the pieces, that energy, that motion, that kinetic sense just keeps going and flowing, and students are really excited about it. And what I hear are those more collective pressures to do more. And we have some assessment too: that we had over 80% of our undergraduate programs in just three years out of 91 of the programs at the time, complete the program level GLI process that comes with outcomes assessments and a curricular map of learning experiences. Study abroad, because what we did was we talked to study abroad and asked the departments to position a semester in the program in their sequence of courses where students could go abroad, take courses at institutions that they have confidence in courses that they’re taking, and come back so they’re not losing any time towards the degree. And we saw 136% increase in the number of students going abroad over eight years between 2011 and 2018. And also those students that went abroad, I owe this all from my colleague, Angelina Palumbo, the Director of Education Abroad here in the center. But students that go abroad also have a 87% graduation rate, which is about more than 10% higher than our average graduation rate, which is not bad, but still, that’s quite impactful. Everything from the example when I was talking about colleagues in philosophy, where once they started opening up some of these issues and giving voice to them, their students were asking for more. That’s sort of the level that I encounter.

John: Was the expansion in study abroad programs due to the global initiative.

Blase: Well, I mean, you know, it’s kind of a chicken and the egg thing. We had a new senior international officer (using the jargon, SIOs), Harvey Charles, who was a really, really innovative colleague. He was our SIO. I was working with him. We brought a whole bunch of people together. Basically, he established a presidential task force to help to internationalize the campus. The President was behind that. And working with Harvey, we brought from two or three of us that were focused on curriculum. Out of that task force, we invited 40 colleagues to come together to draft this Global Learning Initiative. And part of that was a concerted effort to expand study abroad. But what had been holding it back was the very things that we were able to address through the curricular side of GLI, that there was many programs didn’t have a targeted semester where their students could study abroad without falling behind. They didn’t have any particular countries or institutions that they had reciprocal relationships and confidence in their curricula. So, it was all at the same time, everything coming together. But the details of how many positions were added it actually tripled the number of positions working in education abroad. But again, that was in response to the huge increase of number of students that were going from our campus. And then also they were busy recruiting international students. We have a couple of thousand international students on campus. And that’s other parts of the infrastructure within the center that GLI wasn’t directly related to or focused upon.

Rebecca: You talked a little bit about economic barriers being a barrier for faculty and making change. Did you come across any other barriers other than maybe you talked about generational differences too?

Blase: Yeah.

Rebecca: Were those main barriers or did you see faculty coming up against some other barriers that they had overcome?

Blase: Some disciplines are just really deep…their disciplinary ways of thinking and knowing they’re highly aligned, right? They’re there…sociology, politics, and international affairs. There really wasn’t much of a discussion in terms of, they’re already doing a great deal of it, then let’s maybe see what else is possible. For a lot of other individual faculty, when we talk to them, or programs that are thinking about picking it back up…it’s kind of a reluctance either, like we’ve talked about before, I’m not sure how to go about moving and making further change, and/or this is a time when everybody is really stressed. On our campus, we’ve lost 60% of state funding in a decade, which is a radical truncation of our support. We’ve shifted to pretty much tuition-based funding, and that’s created enormous pressures…that level of tenure density has plummeted. So, there are a lot of lecturers and a plurality that’s a one-year non-tenured position here on our campus. It’s created a lot of internal pressures and schisms and issues and many faculty don’t have the additional emotional capacity to want to willfully step forward and say I want to create more change and uncertainty and chaos in what I do. When I was referring a little bit earlier to inertia, it’s not just intellectual laziness, it’s often just exhaustion. What’s happening nationally, I think has been exhausting many in the academy, and our politics, the level of incivility that’s increasing and rising on campus. Arizona… you just have to have one person agree in a public forum so that you can videotape and that could be the person behind the iPhone, if they’re agreeing to do it. And that’s all this needed. And of course, these courses and classrooms are public spaces. So, we’ve had lots of faculties classes being put up and being pilloried by different websites, various political perspectives, and some of its been in the Chronicle over the last couple of years. So, it’s been a challenging environment. There are many things going on that are tapping people out. But, for me, what has been the thing that always allows us to continue to succeed? If you’re talking about very mechanical things, or this is an obligation…we need to achieve these program outcomes, that doesn’t stir many people’s souls. But, if you actually have, in advance, thought about how can you position your initiative so that it’s focused and grounded in the values of your community, your literal community or your institution, then people can connect in ways that aren’t just focused on disciplinary interest or compliance. You know, you’re tapping into their heart and what they care about as a person and what motivates them. Again, sustainability in my own discipline of music, there’s a discourse there, and there are ways that one can think through it. But those colleagues (and I count myself) that are very passionate about the future of the planet, we’re motivated to do much, much more, and we’ll seek that out. So amid all the turmoil and depletion of energy and the exhaustion, if you can find ways to shift that conversation into this catalytic space that talks about possibilities, that taps into what people believe and what they value and what they care about deeply, then you’re feeding that conversation from a place that will enrich and nourish rather than just take away, exhaust, and grind you down into submission.

John: We always end with the question, what are you doing next?

Blase: Well, what I’m doing next is continuing on and more and more explicitly going back to the well of community organizing methods, strategies, and theory to help us come together collaboratively. For me, faculty on our campus, and I know a lot of places, feel increasingly radically disempowered either by state legislatures, distant boards, priorities that may be economically driven or politically motivated that are not aligned with where many faculty are themselves. And we tend to wait until we grow quite gray for change to come from the top. So, I’m a firm believer of coming together with colleagues to focus on what’s possible, what can we do together, and actively doing that. And good administrators will be happy to jump in front of that train and take all the credit they want. God bless them. But, just what can we do together to make this a better place, a richer educational space for our communities and for our students? That’s largely pretty much everything I’m doing. Of course…presenting, publishing, writing and more writing, but like everybody else, that’s the thing that really kind of keeps me lit up.

Rebecca: Thanks for joining us.

John: Yes, thank you for joining us. That was a very good discussion.

Blase: Very much appreciate it. Thanks so much.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Brittany Jones and Kiara Montero.

91. International Education

Posted in authentic learning, faculty-led travel, higher education, international education, learning, pedagogy, study abroad, teaching, travel
July 24, 2019

Global education and education abroad has evolved from more traditional semesters abroad to a suite of opportunities including research, internships, and courses with faculty-led travel components. In this episode, Josh McKeown joins us to discuss the variety of international study opportunities and the impact that international travel can have on students.

Josh is the Associate Provost for International Education and Programs at SUNY Oswego and author of a highly regarded book on international education titled, The First Time Effect: The Impact of Study Abroad on College Student Intellectual Development. He is also the author of forthcoming chapter on education abroad, bridging scholarship and practice and other articles, chapters, and presentations.

Transcript

John: Global education and education abroad has evolved from more traditional semesters abroad to a suite of opportunities including research, internships, and courses with faculty-led travel components. In this episode, we discuss the variety of international study opportunities and the impact that international travel can have on students.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Josh McKeown. Josh is the Associate Provost for International Education and Programs at SUNY Oswego and author of a highly regarded book on international education titled, The First Time Effect: The Impact of Study Abroad on College Student Intellectual Development. He is also the author of forthcoming chapter on education abroad, bridging scholarship and practice and other articles, chapters, and presentations. Welcome, Josh.

Josh: Thank you, Rebecca.

John: Welcome.

Josh: Thank you.

John: Today our teas are.

Josh: I’m having black coffee…

John: …again [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I have English Breakfast tea today.

John: I have Bing Cherry Black Tea from Harry and David’s today.

Josh: I did have English Breakfast tea at breakfast this morning at home. So I had some tea today.

Rebecca: Alright.

Josh: I hope I’m in the right place. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: As long as you’re pumping tea through your system, we’re good, yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Josh: It’s still there.[LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: SUNY Oswego has been a leader in international education for quite a while and supports a wide range of programs. Can you give our listeners an overview of the range of programs your department supports?

Josh: Sure. And thanks for noticing that as well. I think in the last three years this institution has gotten some long deserved national recognition for that, too. We’ve always been a leader own to ourselves, and I think within the SUNY system, but from several really important international education organizations like the Institute of International Education, out of New York, Diversity Abroad, and the AASCU—the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, all have recognized SUNY Oswego and our departments work in the last three years.

…where to start? I think it was good for me to sort of articulate those recognitions because I like to think that we’re being recognized for all that we do internationally. I think that sometimes it’s one program or one location that may get the headline or the spotlight of the moment, because it’s interesting, or maybe it’s relevant, or the curriculum is something noteworthy or important to the day. But really, I believe we are as comprehensive an international office in international offering as you’ll find. So we have many existing programs abroad that have been running for decades. So we’re talking about semester-length programs to London and Paris and Barcelona. Kind of the more traditional format and traditionally most popular destinations in Western Europe and those still enroll. So, in one case, the Paris Sorbonne program was founded the year before I was even born. And we’re still running it and we’re still running it with pretty much the same model, although the offerings have changed within it. But the structure is really comparable for almost, well, 50 years now. So we have a whole portfolio of standing programs that are traditionally designed and delivered. But the real action in education abroad has been in areas that I would call embedded programs. The word embedded means within the curriculum, and that’s where the growth has been. That’s where the real excitement has been. And it’s not new anymore, but it continues to sort of surprise and astound in some cases, given what we do. So in those cases, individual faculty members lead programs abroad based on the courses they teach on campus. So to give some perspective, we probably now have at least 80 programs that regularly run through my department. And in any given year 400, or this year over 500, students studying abroad or spending some time abroad as part of their academic program this year. That’s just this year.

Rebecca: That’s great.

Josh: Yeah, it’s astounding. One of the recognitions that we’ve gotten was from the Institute of International Education’s Generation Study Abroad project where we achieved our goal of 20% participation rate from SUNY Oswego undergraduates in education abroad, which is just huge for a college…

John: That’s remarkable.

Rebecca: That’s incredible

Josh: … of our size and traditions. When I came here in 2001, I think we were sending abroad 3% of our students and that was considered pretty good at the time. So those faculty-led programs, those embedded programs entail a course delivered on campus in most cases, they can be standalone, like in the summer or January. But typically it’s a course delivered on campus during the semester. And then students take a portion of their time, almost all do it at the end of the course in January after fall semester, in March after quarter three on our campus, and then May/June time-frame after quarter four spring semester. And this year, off the top of my head I can’t even remember the exact number we have, it’s probably around 30 of those, and they’re going to all continents. Our human computer interaction program is going back to Australia. We have numerous programs in Asia this year, faculty-led, including places that you’d be hard pressed to find study abroad, such as Myanmar, Vietnam, we rather go to China, Japan, India. And then we have programs in the Caribbean and Central America, South America, and all over Europe, and two programs in Africa this summer.

Rebecca: Have you hit Antartica yet?

Josh: That still eludes me, Rebecca. [LAUGHTER] You know, I’d love to be able to say all seven continents, but that’s the last place, but I have high hopes actually. And I know the exact program that I would like to go down to Antarctica. [LAUGHTER]

John: We all have programs we’d like to send to Antarctica, but… [LAUGHTER] Or maybe some faculty.

Josh: Ours would be for a good reason. No, it’s true. There’s a new offering this year in South Africa, very challenging program to put together. It’s out of our cinema screen studies program. And the faculty members will take students for several weeks to do environmental filmmaking. And some of the students will be out in the bush filming wildlife and animals. Others will be near the coast filming sea life and things. And so it’s that group that I hope goes to Antarctica to film penguins next year. [LAUGHTER]

John: Now you mentioned Myanmar, was there any concern there about the instability there in recent years?

Josh: Well, that’s a really interesting point, John. A lot of my work, and I’ve been fortunate in the 18-years that I’ve been at SUNY Oswego, I was at Syracuse University before that, we have had tremendously supportive and stable leadership, particularly from the president. And so it’s not to say we don’t care about risk. We do, we care a lot about it. But I operate from a position where I know that our campus leadership believes in international education and we did long before it became really common. I mean, it is not unusual now for institutions to have 10% or more of their students going abroad every year. That’s kind of the norm now… believe that’s the national average, actually. But we’re still quite a bit more than that. But I know that my campus leadership supports this, in principle. What we do from year-to-year, of course, changes but we were running programs to Cuba long before it was easy to do that. Now it’s relatively easy to send a program to Cuba. iI may get harder soon again, but we were doing it when it was a really rare endeavor. We have had programs that involve being on boats, that require competent swimming ability. We have had programs that climbed mountains… literally like Kilimanjaro. So yeah, there are always risks… so the risk can be political, they can be health, they can be personal safety and security. So we’ve never shied away from that. To me, the question is, “What’s our business there? What reason do we have to go?” I like to say to new staff, for example, that I don’t just throw a dart at the world map and decide we’re gonna open a program there. And I think this gets at the organizational power of SUNY Oswego and properly done, how international education anywhere can fit into an institution’s culture. In the case of Myanmar, it was an initial relationship I made through one of my volunteer activities. I was a volunteer mentor to a program, essentially that was providing distance learning tutorials to would be international educators in Myanmar. So these are people who were trying to develop the skills, the abilities that I have, and others have here. But in a country like Myanmar, which was really opening up after many decades of military dictatorship… arguably still is opening… it’s not quite opened all the way, but it’s more open than it was. So they were trying to instill… and there was a grant for this… to instill that ability in Myanmar higher education institutions so they could become more globally connected. And so I volunteered for that. This is what I do in my spare time. [LAUGHTER]

John: It complements it very well.

Josh: I know. I look for interesting activities like that, that do complement what we do. But also that I found interesting because I didn’t know much about Myanmar. And so I was paired up with a medical doctor who had, essentially, a private medical school and then he was trying to become more internationally aware. So, long story short, he eventually visited us here in SUNY Oswego. We hit it off, and I introduced him to several faculty members. And one of them made a good connection there on her own and now she’s leading a program, our first ever, to Myanmar and particularly looking at transitions from dictatorship to democracy. And she teaches in our Political Science and the Global International Studies Department. So you can see right there I’m always looking for that and I hope it’s been successful across the board. I’m open to any faculty member who has any interesting idea and sometimes I try to pair them up if I think there’s an interesting link that I can help make. And if the faculty member is interested… right, Rebecca? … to go to India and look at art and culture there

John:… and in the Czech Republic…

Josh: and soon the Czech Republic. I’m open to almost any good idea, because I know in the end, it benefits our students. That’s what it’s about. It makes Oswego a more interesting campus. It makes our education stronger. And I know from a research standpoint, that all those things contribute to a student’s intellectual and academic abilities in ways that we’re still just beginning to understand, but I think are more and more proven.

John: And we should note that we did record an episode a few months back, where we had two people talking about one of their study abroad experiences. So, two faculty members, Casey and Jeff, and we’ll include a link to that in the show notes if anyone wants to hear about the faculty side of the experience, and will be interviewing Rebecca when she gets back sometime this fall. Do faculty-led programs attract a different mix of students than the full semester abroad programs?

Josh: I would say in all honesty these days, no. Because our student population is, from my standpoint, and they’re all facing similar challenges, similar obstacles, and are excited by similar things. And I think it’s important to say that to the audience who might not be as familiar with education abroad. Because study abroad, as we used to call in the old days, it really used to be an elite activity. And it was something most students didn’t do. I never could have done it, had I not gotten a really good scholarship as a student… and so it used to be a boutique activity. And it really isn’t anymore. And I would say that any institution that wants it to be mainstream can. It’s not that complicated to do. You just have to believe in yourself, have some funding and staffing. But even after a while that can become self sustaining. So we no longer are looking to create a program that students have to really… I want to say… like be selected for but that is how did the industry used to look at study abroad: that you had to be really a special kind of student. You had to be an ambassador… which is a term I reject actually… an ambassador for your institution… ambassador for your country. That used to be the mindset and so, by definition, it was exclusive in the old days. And so the current thinking… and I think anyone who wants to expand it needs to really embrace this is that it’s an activity potentially every student can do. And when you go there, you have to accept who your students are. And our students are bright and they’re ambitious and articulate, and they’re maddening, and they’re naive, and they’re stretched for time, retention and resources, all those things. And if we’re educators, we need to educate them. And education abroad is part of higher education. So I look at it that way. So, in that sense, I think the students who go on faculty-led short-term programs or embedded programs, which is now by far the majority of our education abroad population… I think those are students who might have been introduced to the idea by their professor in that class. And that’s what’s kind of cool about it from my standpoint, by involving so many faculty members, we have the ability not just to have education abroad be promoted out of my office. But now, I think I count over 30 faculty members this year are involved with our work directly, and they all have friends and colleagues and people know what they’re doing. So, I like to think that in all these classes around the campus, professors are talking about study abroad, talking about their program and that, if a student hadn’t been to our study abroad fair or hadn’t been on our website or one of our sessions, they can be introduced to it that way. And so I think potentially, yeah, potentially that student might have not have thought about it before. Whereas a student going for a longer program… a semester program… even summer… might have been thinking about it longer because you have to prepare more. But these days, I really look at them as the same… or very, very similar.

John: I was thinking on the student side, we have a lot of rural students who often haven’t traveled very much and that a one-week experience, say might seem less intimidating or threatening, and it might open the possibility of study abroad to students who might be a little concerned about a…

Josh: Yeah.

John: …longer term experience.

Josh: I think that that student definitely is still out there. Students from predominately upstate New York were the traditional student population of this campus. But as we know, our campus is a lot different than it was 10, 20 years ago. And so I think now the majority of students are from
Metro New York City area. I know in my class, I teach global and international studies on campus, I always asked at the start of the semester, who has traveled abroad before, and I’m astounded how many already have. So, I think it’s becoming more common. And many students have relatives in other countries. They may not think about international travel as part of an education yet… could be just visiting family or a vacation or something like that. So I think, in that sense, we still have the opportunity to reach people with education abroad, even if they’ve traveled before, but to think about it differently to think about their travels as part of their overall academic experience, maybe even as part of a larger campus effort to have them grow and develop into the best students we can. So, I think that’s what I think about study abroad in those terms. And it’s great to come on a show like this because I realize that a lot of people don’t know that, and it’s something which, in our profession, we take for granted now. But it’s important to keep expressing this to larger audiences, that there are regular high school programs that go abroad. I was at the airport not long ago and one of our faculty colleagues was picking up, I think, her middle school age daughter who had just been on a school trip abroad. Kids are doing all kinds of things. By the time we get them, many of them may have had that travel experience, but it’s still up to us to take them where they are and move them forward.

John: I actually had traveled abroad when I was a freshman in high school to France, Germany, Switzerland.

Rebecca: I know that as a student, and I came from a working class family and I never thought of travel abroad as something that could possibly be something that I could do. But as a graduate student, I presented a paper abroad and that was my first international experience… and it opened up so many doors, and now I try to take every opportunity to travel, as you know. But you know, it really changed things for me. And so I think you’re right, that faculty are reaching some of the students by talking about things in the class. I taught a freshman class this year, a first-year student class and we have a couple of first-year students going with us to the Czech Republic, who had never traveled.

Josh: That’s a great story. I love to hear that.

Rebecca: You know, so that’s really exciting, and I think it works. I know in your book, you talk a bit about this first-time effect. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and the power it has on students?

Josh: I would be glad to. And that book came out 10 years ago now… 2009. And the research collectors was a few years before that. And so, yeah, I could probably use a second edition with some updated research samples, actually… because, in a nutshell, the important finding from that book, which it did hit… at least within our profession… it hit the audience that we were seeking pretty well. It spoke to how students change after they study abroad, and through the process of education abroad in general. Because for as long as there has been something called study abroad, or now education abroad… and just real briefly, education abroad includes internships and research and service learning and things like that. So we say typically “education abroad” now, but for decades, people who did this for a living, and professors who saw their students go abroad for a semester and come back, saw something different about them, and no one could put their finger on it. No one could say what is this? They just seem different. And are they more mature? Well, not quite. Are they more focused on their studies?
Yeah, but that’s not quite it. Are they more interesting and smart? Well, not always. But there’s something about them that was different. And I felt that too… Again, I was from a similar background and thankfully the university I went to head to may study abroad really accessible and I had a good scholarship. And when I came back, I remember my friends who were there who had not gone abroad, there was some like gap between us, it was hard for me to put my finger on. So I sought to do some research to try to answer that question. And it’s far from answered, but at least I think I made a contribution. And there’s a scale called intellectual development. And there are other meaningful ways to look at this kind of development in students, but the way I chose was the intellectual development scale, because it really addresses students understanding of complexity. So, it doesn’t test their understanding of world history or language or even culture, actually. It’s not like a sort of an assessment of the study abroad experience in that sense. It really gets at more basic cognitive abilities, and can you, as a student after the experience, can you think of the world in more complex ways? Can you think of knowledge in more complex ways? Can you understand different perspectives? Do you look at your professors and other authority figures in your life, whether it’s parents or a political leader or or any supposed expert, can you look at them, and understand that they’re not all-knowing authorities, they just have been doing this longer and they have different points of view, even from what they have to express. So, it’s that kind of intellectual ability that it measures. And by and large, like a lot of studies, it did not show that all students have that growth. But I did find a subset of my sample that did and it was statistically significant. And it was those students who had either never gone abroad before, or who had gone abroad for such a short time, that it was clear that it was not an in depth experience. And that was really exciting to go into a research project like that. It was also for my doctoral dissertation. You don’t want to assume anything about the outcome if you do it properly. You may have some hunches, but I wasn’t expecting that. At the end. I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I thought, Well, yeah, that actually reinforces what a lot of us have been observing in this field for a long time… that that experience is powerful, but it doesn’t have a cumulative effect, I realized… and I coined the term first-time effect. And that’s been cited in quite a few other papers, books, and dissertations. I think it’s stuck. And I think about the students we were just talking about, John… these students who have never been abroad before or students today who, yeah, they’ve gone to the Dominican Republic to visit a family member, but maybe it was for a short time, or maybe it wasn’t something that was part of a structured activity, and maybe it was a place they were already familiar with. That, I think, still holds. I think that individual when they go to a place that’s far different, and for a longer period of time, like an education abroad experience, I think that’s still possible. So yeah, I’m proud of it. Now, the profession is looking… and thanks for mentioning the forthcoming book, Education Abroad: Bridging Scholarship to Practice. I was the lead author of a chapter focusing on academic development. And I got interested in that because there hasn’t been a whole lot of research on this particular topic. There’s been some and that is… by academic development, we mean the student’s capacity as a learner… so much more targeted to learning in a college setting. But you can see how it complements well, the former research that I did: that students who come back from study abroad seem like they’re more focused students… seem like they’re more career oriented… they seem like they have their act together a bit more than before. And so there are some ways to measure that, too. It’s far from proven still, but I think there’s an emerging consensus that education abroad is one of those potentially high impact activities that can, first of all, keep students in school, keep them on track to graduation, and help them in their academic careers and their professional careers in ways that… it’s not the only activity… but in ways that a lot of university experiences can’t say. So I’m hoping to keep pursuing interesting and relevant research areas. But I must say it’s easier than it used to be, Rebecca, to do that, because it’s been a lot of research over the last decade especially about what I was interested in. So I found a lot of sources to pull from… a lot more than before, actually. So that’s gratifying.

Rebecca: You see a lot of students have interest in traveling to places like Western Europe, the standard staple places that you mentioned earlier on. But we also have a lot of programs that we’ve touched upon already, that go to other, maybe more out of the way, places.

Josh: Yeah.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about how we get our students to be interested in those places and feel confident to travel in those?

Josh: Yeah, I’m really glad you asked that. And you’re a good example of this. I think the two projects that you and I were working on together, one was to India, the other to the Czech Republic. And both of those are in that category, I would say. The number of countries that we send students to keeps growing, and we already mentioned Myanmar and South Africa. Just this year, we have programs also to Tanzania, and Honduras, and Dominican Republic, and we’ve had students in Russia. And I mentioned Cuba and Vietnam and India. It no longer really is like I don’t want to say noteworthy because it happens so frequently, but you’re right it is… it really is noteworthy. I would say this about that. If we were to promote a semester length program to India… which we do… but not led by a faculty member… not tied to a course… not embedded in the curriculum in such a way that the connection between what that student is doing in a class where their major and that activity weren’t so clear, I don’t think that semester program in India would succeed. In fact, I can say that definitively because we have that, and very few students choose to spend a whole semester in India. However, and I’m just using India as one example, when a faculty member deliberately ties what they’re researching and what they’re teaching about to this trip, and if they’re good professor, and the student looks at them, not only as someone I can learn from for this course, but someone who can teach me something about life…. so we’re talking about mentoring more, actually. And if that professor is willing to put themselves out there and also be a program leader, which involves not just knowing your subject matter well, but getting on buses and subways together, sharing space, being in the same hotel having breakfast every morning, seeing them on good mornings and bad mornings and being willing to say things like, “I don’t know, we’re gonna have to figure this out,” which happens on all of our programs all the time, no matter how well they run… that actually creates the kind of authentic interaction that this generation… they say… craves for and increasingly demands. It’s one of those situations, I think, where if travel itself is now not as difficult as it used to be, for lots of reasons, but yet education abroad is still growing. The value that students see in it, I think, comes from that. It’s learning. Yes, I’m going to India, but I’m going with someone who I really want to learn from and I really see as someone who can help me understand this place. Maybe going there for a semester is too intimidating. Maybe they don’t see the value in it. either. And so the role of faculty in those cases is crucial. They have to be the people who are willing to put themselves on the line really… not just the program. The students say I’m going to India with you. They’re not just going to India, they’re going with you. So I think that really drives the act.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about how when we take students abroad, we help them make sure that they’re not reinforcing stereotypes and assumptions, but actually learning about culture and growing.

Josh: I think we should do that in all of our courses, of course, on campus too… and others have done a lot of research on intercultural development, for example. It’s not really my area, but I think it’s incumbent on all of us when we’re in this role to do our homework and make sure that students do see the country authentically… as little things like, I remember one of the programs that we had to Paris, which, again, a generation ago, we would have presented as “Paris, the City of Lights” and really just shown them the beauty, the art, the grandeur, all of which is there. But I remember talking to this professor about the other Paris, the working class Paris, the very racially diverse Paris, the Paris that was the seat of a vast colonial empire at one point. There’s a different Paris too… then the City of Light and Arc. So I helped her construct an intinerary with this in mind. So it could be a small thing like, for example, from the Paris airport from Charle deGaulle airport into the city, rather than take a bus, you can take a train. And when you take that train, you go by neighborhoods, and you see graffiti. And you see things about Paris that are really not beautiful, they’re authentic. And they’re important for different reasons. But they may not have all been what that student had in mind when they first thought of the idea of Paris. So I think if you approach study abroad that way, and make conscious choices, and then deliberate steps that eventually become an itinerary, and you’re thoughtful about it, you should get there, there should not be an opportunity for a student to go someplace and come back and just say, it was awesome, and only be able to talk about fun things that they’d seen in books before and now they see in real life. That’s a tourist trip. And so education abroad really these days, this is what really we should be doing. We should be constructing programs that add to students intellectually and academically and as faculty lead programs to make sure exactly what you said that we are showing them the authentic reality of places even if it differs a little bit from maybe what the student had in mind before. That’s our job.

Rebecca: I think one of the interesting things that happened when we were in India is we went to the Taj Mahal in May when it’s hot. And we were there when mostly Indians were traveling. There was mostly families that were traveling from other parts of India. And so that experience was very different than a touristy kind of experience that you might have had it at a different time of the year. So we ended up having a lot of discussions about the difference between “Oh, we’re like an international group and like we put our shoes here.”

Josh: Yeah.

Rebecca: And really having to break that down. So, that was an interesting learning moment that was far more learning, then one might have thought. We went there because it was an important architectural work, especially for the course content that we were teaching. But it ended up being this much bigger learning moment.

Josh: You’re speaking also to the importance of faculty preparation and credibility in that moment. And again, if this is for an audience of people who work in institutions that maybe are not quite there yet, or you’re aspiring to that. One of the main points I made when I give presentations and talks on this is that it isn’t that hard to get faculty to that level. Some faculty come equipped already, maybe they were from the country where they’re traveling to, or they’ve traveled there already, but most don’t, actually. And so as part of our administration of education abroad, I build into budgeting, and I build into the sustainable operations of the department, funds for faculty development travel, before I ever want a faculty member to go abroad with a group of students, they need to go there themselves and learn those things and chart out for us what is that ideal itinerary? Now, we have to make choices. We have to make good choices about how we use funds like that, and there’s a competition for it and it’s overseen properly. But we do have, in that sense, it’s almost like a company might have a research and development R&D aspect to it. In a way it’s that. It’s making sure our faculty are developed. And I think, at this campus that was not always widely embraced. It is now and I see faculty members who have just been hired, come to me and say “I heard you have some travel funds.” Words getting out even before we actually announce it each year. But if we do that well, we’lll ensure that the program is safe and properly run. Because that professor’s when they’re program leader, they are the institution. No one else is with them in most cases, I’m not there in almost all cases. Other staff usually don’t accompany programs like that. So if you’re halfway around the world, even if you have a good itinerary and good trip connections and things like that, you’re responsible for everything, really. And so we make sure faculty are as prepared as possible for that. And I think that’s a key to the success of it. It’s work. And I think you could attest to that. It’s still work for the faculty member, but you’re not doing all the work, you’re supported and prepared by the institution as much as possible. And together if we do those things well, all of a sudden you go from 3% to 20% participation… you go from having maybe one faculty-led program in the summer to 20 or 30 a year.

Rebecca: That’s incredible.

Josh: Yeah. And you pick up… if you’re lucky too… put yourself out there… one or two national awards that people find, say, “Hey, you’re doing something special,” but I think we’ve been doing something special for a long time and it’s nice to see that

John: …and we should note that about 23 to 25% of our audience is from outside of the US

Josh: Oh, great, great.

John: So if there’s anyone from institutions that might like to establish a relationship we’ll include Josh’s contact information in the show notes.

Josh: My staff are going to kill me though… we have too many programs. No. Yeah, sometimes my staff.. who are great, they’re incredible people, and all true believers, you have to believe in international education. I will say that for faculty who don’t think it’s a lot of work once they get involved and realize… it’s work, but if it’s work you believe in, it doesn’t feel like work. And that’s what we try to do. But sometimes they think I never say no, to a program idea. And I do… I do say no, sometimes. But there are times when I think, “Oh, that just sounds really cool. We got to do this. We gotta try this.” And we have enough experience, I think, and the connections that we make most programs doable and when it’s not, I will pull the plug on something if I have to, for various reasons, but usually we go for it.

Rebecca: You talked a little bit about some of the preparedness for faculty in terms of traveling ahead of time, but are there other things that faculty can do if they’re going to take students abroad to make it a really effective experience?

Josh: I think that it’s not totally dissimilar to classroom teaching, in that, I think you have to see yourself as others see you. I think a good teacher does that. I mean, I’m not an actor, but maybe that’s what an actor does… be able to see how students might view you. I think that the difference is, is 24/7s. So imagine that you’re with a group of students all day, every day… and again, not just an hour and a half, twice a week. That’s different. I have gone to the lengths of having a mandatory training with all faculty, I used to do it much more informally. But for lots of reasons, not just the risks abroad. But I think with success and growth comes scrutiny and attention and you have to be prepared for that too. So whether it’s students with disability issues, or Title IX, issues like that, as well as some of these more far-flung locations that involve longer flights and riskier scenarios, we just have to be more aware of the preparation and training and kind of legal compliance for lack of a better term. So I do have a mandatory training session for faculty and I go through those things. And yeah, occasionally we scare some people off, I guess, because the idea doesn’t turn into a proposal and never turns into a program. So I think it’s important to be clear with faculty like that. I will repeat that overall, we are growing and growing strongly, including the number of people who are requesting to lead programs and then leading programs. But it’s not unusual for someone to say to me, “You know, I didn’t realize how much student contact I was going to have.” And it makes me wonder what they did think. Maybe they thought that….

John: …they’d meet for an hour a day and then send them off on their own?

Josh: I don’t know. Yeah, and that’s okay…. rather find that out before they lead a program. But I think maybe they’re thinking about traditional models of education abroad, maybe it would be at a study abroad center where the students would just be hanging out with each other and be supervised by someone else. And they’re really not. In most cases, it’s a traveling type program, students are at a hotel or residents or in the case of a more outdoorsy program that might be at a lodge and they’re together. There is no one else. And so I think that does put off some people and that’s okay. I’d rather know that up front and if someone decides “No, I just don’t want that amount of responsibility.” Because students are demanding… they expect certain things, they still expect you to be a great professor, in fact maybe even more so than on campus. But faculty have to watch out for students’ mental health, their physical health, their interrelationships. They assert things, they have to minister discipline at times, there are aspects to this in a way when I say they are the institution, and imagine all the offices on this campus rolled into one person, that’s kind of what it is. But it’s also super fun. And I think the people who thrive in it, realize it’s a really unique opportunity not just to talk about what you know, but to be the person you are or think you are in a global setting…

Rebecca: …or a lot of the things you don’t know…

John: …and to learn…

Rebecca: Right, yeah, I mean, cuz you learn together when you’re abroad. There’s things that you just don’t expect or whatever and you investigate and you learn together.

Josh: That’s what I meant by authentic. It’s interesting how that word is being used so much. There’s so many ways to travel. You can go online, go on some vacation site… it’s easy, much easier than it used to be there… and there are so many ways to learn about the world. You can watch PBS, you can watch documentaries, you can listen to podcasts. So to be special, it has to be different… has to be something really targeted and led well and interesting. So I think when we do that, students are drawn to it, because the result is something intense. And that’s when the learning happens, right? We wish every class of ours on campus were like that. I wish every class was like that. But usually it’s not. Education abroad, properly constructed, it can be… especially the faculty-led model. It’s a shorter model. If you plan well, it can be really high impact in a short time.

John: As we bring in more students from New York City and from traditionally underrepresented groups, the average income of many of these new students may be relatively low. How can low-income students afford international travel?

Josh: For higher education, in general, this is one of the biggest questions of our time, right? How can we get this incredibly bright and ambitious population of young people in our country educated and prepared for their own futures, but also our future… our collective future. And I do believe education abroad plays a part in that. The growth in it has not come without, I think, some really creative approaches to that very question. So I’ve tried very hard to keep our education abroad programs as affordable as possible. In some cases, a student can choose a semester length program, for example, that doesn’t cost them, when all is said and done, that much more than being here. I try as hard as I can, controlling what I can control, to keep costs as low as possible. And there are various ways to do that. If I can refer to another publication I did. Our main professional organization is called NAFSA and they have a guidebook… a handbook to international education and education abroad in this case, and they asked me to write a chapter on strategic planning for education abroad, and I included this aspect of it in addition to the other things we talked about, and that’s budgeting and financing. I really am a strong advocate that in all endeavors you get what you pay for, you get what you invest in. And so I think many institutions don’t understand fully how important it is that the international office or the people responsible for putting programs together have certain discretion over decision making that differ from other aspects of what the university does. Through my department we deal with vendors all over the world, we deal with their airlines or tour providers, banks and bill-paying services. You have to be able to do that. If you put that in the same structure as folks who are buying copy paper on campus or contracting with with vending machines, it just doesn’t work. It won’t succeed… it flat out will not succeed. So SUNY is a pretty progressive institution actually system wide for this. There are some mechanisms in place… little things like being able to transact in currencies, when the value is favorable to you or being able to shop around for the best airline deals or pre-paying expenses that you know you’re going to have… things like that… that as long as it’s all documentable and able to be reviewed, there’s nothing wrong with that, in my view. But there has to be some, I think, understanding that international education is different. And this institution… I’m quite fortunate, there’s always has been a view that, of course, accountability, but discretion. And so if you look at it that way, and not every program that runs makes a profit, not every program that runs even meets its expensive. If I had to cancel every program just because it might lose $1, we wouldn’t be running a lot of the programs. And so the ones that can are the ones who maybe you’re fortunate that there is some favorable cost outcome, maybe we’re planning on an exchange rate being x and it’s that it’s y…. And then you’re like: “Okay, I didn’t have to spend as much on that. “Well, how about the program that in the end, you had to spend more on? if you approach it holistically like that, and I hope I’m doing that reasonably well, you can price programs in a way that aren’t out of touch for students. I think it really starts there. And also we have to make sure we are running academic programs. And so earlier when I said we’re not running tourist trips, I think that applies to this discussion too. Students can use financial aid for this… they can. If it weren’t tied to a course or if it weren’t part of their academic experience, they couldn’t. So, I think it’s incumbent on us to never forget that. And then I think you have to look for opportunities for scholarships, grants and other rewards for students. And we’ve done that on this campus. We didn’t solve it. But we’ve done a lot. I think there are now 10 different scholarship or other grant award programs that students can apply for. I remember when there was only three, and they were were small. Now, there’s a sizable number we gave away over $100,000 last year in scholarship money to students… a hundred thousand dollars. And so that’s sizable.

John: That’s making an impact.

Josh: It is. 18 years ago I think we probably gave away under $5,000 total. So, it’s a staggering leap. And that has helped a lot. And I know many of my colleagues who do really toil because they can’t get any traction on this at their institutions. My advice is always keep at it and also take charge of your own narrative. Even if you could only afford to run one program, run it really well. And then get as much publicity as you can for that program. Show how it’s changing students lives. Because it is. Make sure you care and devote some time to really processing that. Tell that story. Keep telling that story. Someone’s gonna want to listen eventually and build, build, build. SUNY Oswego didn’t always have this vast an array of programs either. Look at what we have now. It can happen, even at a state institution that is a comprehensive college whose students are struggling economically. We can get there. If we can get there, others can get there too.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking what next?

Josh: My latest research interests are still in international education but are more policy areas. So I did a research study over the winter and I presented it at the International Studies Association Conference in Toronto in March and it was well received. I’m going to expand on it. I’m really looking at how scholars, researchers, faculty members pursue internationalization in their own careers and for their own institutions. And in particular, I looked at China and Chinese scholars and researchers who come, not just to SUNY Oswego in the United States, but go abroad for significant periods of time to do research work. And I’m interested in it because if you look at that example, China is a country that was trying to catch up on a lot of things, and I think has caught up on a lot of things. One of those areas has been higher education and internationalization of higher ed in particular. But what I started noticing here at SUNY Oswego, maybe around 10 years ago, is the number of Chinese visiting scholars, faculty members, researchers who come with full funding, and in many cases with full government funding. And I’m in a position to be able to see that and some of them iare n the business school, I think you had one, the art department, and you say to yoursel…, first of all, where the heck is all this money coming from? And second, there must be some great incentive to push this out. We’re not just seeing it once, we’re seeing it a number of times every year. And so I started doing some research on that, and that’s why I’m pursuing that. I think it’s an area that needs to be looked at, because there’s a lot of interest in China right now to begin with. There’s a lot of interest in whether it’s the current dispute over tariffs and trade, whether it’s over technology transfer, what sort of national security. In our case, it’s over this enormous country that still a lot of Americans just don’t go to when they think about education abroad, but there is a lot of exchange and collaborative academic activity. So I’m kind of looking at what’s going on with that? What is the purpose of it? What’s the funding mechanism of it? What are faculty members who choose not just to go abroad with a group of students for a week or two, but to spend six months… a year… in the middle of their career, and to do so regularly? What kind of impact is that having on them as scholars, but also on the institutions where they work and maybe by the country overall where they live? To my knowledge, there’s nothing comparable like that going on in any other place in the world, given the breadth of it. So I’m curious what’s happening with that. And it also speaks, I think, to the broader subject of internationalization because not that education abroad is old news or conquered. There’s still a lot of challenges with it, but I feel we really have made the case well, that education abroad is important. And I think it’s here to stay no matter what today’s challenges might be, I think it’s here to stay. So what other areas of internationalization really are important. And increasingly, I’m looking at areas of the world that we don’t have as much collaborative activity with and forms of international education that are different than just American students going somewhere, because there’s a lot happening. So I guess, stay tuned on that.

For our work on our campus, we continue to try to expand and diversify our offerings. And so I’m really excited this coming year, I expect our first program out of our new criminal justice major, we have our first program out of the health promotion wellness major this year. So there’s still pockets of our own campus that have not been tapped for education abroad, but slowly and surely, we’re getting to all of them. I think.

Rebecca: That sounds like a lot of exciting things coming down the pike.

Josh: Yeah, we’re working hard. I’ll keep doing it until I can’t anymore.

John: It’s great to hear about all those wonderful things and that expansion.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for sharing.

Josh: Oh, my pleasure. Glad we could do this. It’s a rainy Friday here in Oswego.

John: …which is so unusual.

Josh: I know, right?

Rebecca: Well, thank you again.

Josh: My pleasure. Thank you.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.