Abstract:

This session will be an interim report and overview of a digital humanities project undertaken by Purchase College at SUNY, sponsored by the US National Endowment for the Humanities. We will present this initiative in hopes that participants at the ICERI 2009 Conference will want to join with SUNY in creating new international course collaborations. We hope to also hold a contiguous Session 2 in which such new course proposals could be discussed and developed.

This project has opened new digital pathways for internationalizing the post-secondary humanities curriculum. It re-purposes available Internet-based tools to create a cross-cultural curriculum by training humanities faculty and students to work online with their peers in other countries through shared syllabi in an experiential learning environment. Humanities faculty in different disciplines including are working online with partner faculty and students abroad. They are being trained in the use of learning management software and social software tools to generate collaborative assignments that “challenge students to negotiate and build shared learning cultures across diverse boundaries” (Stark-Meyerring, 2007.) This project addresses the need for institutions of higher education to find new ways “to equip students with skills and knowledge that will allow them to function effectively across cultures and nations” (ACE, 2000.)

The project’s goal is to demonstrate that any humanities faculty member with energy and vision can teach a course in a globally networked learning environment if given the appropriate technological, pedagogical and intercultural support.
Knowledge comes from many sources and through a wide range of human experience. In a world as interconnected as ours, students need not only to have access to knowledge, but they must better understand the many contexts and cultural points of view which give meaning to what is known.

In American post-secondary education the traditional method for providing student cross cultural educational experience is through participation in study abroad programs. These study abroad experiences are deeply enriching, but less then 4% of American students ever participate in such programs.

The reasons for these low levels of participation are complex, but certainly the high cost of travel and study abroad is a large factor. However, one of the main reasons that students do not study abroad is that they simply do not see the benefit in doing so because their present level of interaction and awareness of other cultures is low and because they harbor stereotypes that make such an experience seem less then desirable. So, while study abroad may be one of the most important internationalizing activities that college students can undertake, there are many obstacles to its wider implementation. COIL offers the unique opportunity to these students of having a substantial international experience without having to bear the cost of traveling and living abroad.

Once students begin to interact with their peers abroad and their stereotypes of who these international students are begins to fall away, they typically become more interested in global realities and in making the investment in time and money to study abroad. And because students are often already engaged with social software like FaceBook and YouTube, they are primed for this hybrid approach, blending online interactions with their academic and social lives.