International cultural studies have taken on a whole new level with the new course called Global Education through Technology, or GETT.
The course involves EC students interacting with students from other countries through videoconferences and computer chatting programs.
“What we’re trying to do is provide personal experience for our students through interaction with other cultures through technology,” Elizabeth Shadish, one of the two professors for the GETT program, said.
“There are four countries involved in the program. They are America, Ukraine, Italy and Lebanon,” Shadish said.
The semester is divided into three four-week sessions. The U.S. is currently connected with Ukraine, while Italy and Lebanon are connecting with each other. After each session, the countries switch off.
A total of 12 students meet Tuesdays and Thursdays to link with international students.
“We had to keep the number of students limited because we really wanted the class to have a personal feel to it,” Shadish said.
Class sessions, which are 1 hour and 15 minutes long, are divided into thirds. The first third of the class is a direct videoconference.
In each session, one professor from the partnership of countries “leads” the discussion, and then the countries switch off the next session.
“What I like about this course is that it’s really about a partnership working together and no country is really superior over the other,” Joanna Nachef, the other professor of the program, said.
During the second part of the class session, each student is paired off with an international student either through a live videoconference or a computer chatting program.
In the last part of the thirds, students who did the live video switch to the chatting program and vice versa.
“It’s really an honor to be chosen to be a part of this program,” Nachef said. “There are only twelve institutions involved with this throughout the country and most of them are universities. We are one of only two community colleges involved,” she said.
Rosina Chia and Elmer Poe, East Carolina University professors, first started the program, connecting to Switzerland, China and Gambia.
“The Department of State soon heard about the program and was interested in the potential of the programs it offered to fund further expansions of the program,” Nachef said.
EC is looking into funding student exchange programs with their partners in the future. GETT may be set up as a prerequisite for the exchange program, but just exactly when the program would be set up is still unknown.
“In a dream world, we’d really like to set up an independent academy on campus where this sort of technology is used in courses,” Shadish said.
“It’s not impossible, because we already were approached by some foreign language professors about the possibilities of implementing this technology in language courses,” she said.
Currently, the GETT course offers one unit of independent study in either music or philosophy. Students submit papers based on their relationships with their partners.
Topics and lectures range from cultures and customs of a country to ideas about families and the ways students view the world.
“Personal partnership and experiences are really the heart of this program,” Shadish said. “We’re really in this to infect the hearts of students.”
