Virtual Education Opportunities | Faculty
By implementing the “Globally Engaged Classroom”, GEO aims to promote one of Washington College’s core values: engagement with cultures and communities locally and around the globe. Learning to effectively communicate, collaborate, and work across cultures empowers both domestic and international students to be citizen leaders in an ever-changing, globalized world.
Creating Global Classrooms
Connecting and Learning!
Undoubtedly, today’s challenges require educators to re-imagine the relevance, priorities, and methods of delivering global learning opportunities. To strategize new methods of educating globally mobile students, the Global Education Office supports the development of virtual international experiences for AY 2021-2022. By creating a portfolio of such experiences, we aim to facilitate meaningful connections and collaborations with students, experts, institutions, and organizations across the globe. We invite instructors to intentionally design and incorporate into our existing curriculum a “Global Classroom”, in which the virtual connection is a means to advance our mission of growing students’ global competences.
Virtual global experiences can be offered in several modalities ranging from immersive, project-based courses to several short-term global engagement-focused connections embedded within regular WAC courses. Some options are:
- Virtual tours of cities or institutions abroad
- Game design projects with international collaborators
- Dialogues, guest lectures, mini projects with peers and students overseas
- Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects
- Project-based collaborations with international partner institutions
- Short-term workshops and trainings led by international facilitators
- Service-learning modules as a form of experiential global education
- A single session led by an international speaker/ guest
- Projects Advancing United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Are you a faculty member interested in developing a Global Classroom component or curious to learn more about the process? Send us an e-mail to geoFREEwashcoll and complete this interest form. For some ideas, explore University of Kentucky’s Education Abroad Faculty Toolkit and The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative
COIL project in FYS 101: “Witches, Allegory, Myth, and Theme” led by Dr. Cristina
Casado, WAC, and Dr. Jack Kirne, RMIT University, Australia
Pilot Program of project-based courses in AY 20-21:
During AY 2020-2021 there were two courses offered in the Department of World Languages & Cultures which included a virtual exchange international component: HPS 307: Spanish for International Business and HPS 302: Advanced Conversation. In HPS 307, students collaborated in a service-learning project with Ecuadorean NGO, A Mano Manaba, and in HPS 302, students worked on a bilingual group project with peers from Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE) in the Dominican Republic. Here’s the student’s feedback:
“I really enjoyed taking this class this semester. I think if this course is taught in the future it should definitely include A Mano Manaba. I think working with them and doing the bilingual conversations is something that wouldn't necessarily be done in other Spanish classes at other schools.”
“It was a great course. The professor gave us an international experience that I will never forget and will forever cherish. She had allowed us to build connections and gave us the free will to explore and use our own judgement when it came to projects and assignments. Many opportunities to be creative. Overall, this was the epitome of an ideal online learning experience and one that I would truly remember and be thankful for. Great class. It is a lot of work, but I would recommend 10/10.”
“I think that the topics of discussion were great, and I am really glad I took the course. This course was really applicable to the real world, and I learned a lot about what to expect in Latin American countries when it comes to business. I also really loved working with A Mano Manaba in Ecuador, it was an amazing idea and it really solidified my interest in volunteering and in Latin America.”
“COIL helped me learn more about the cultural differences between our two countries. Trying to communicate in my target language with native speakers helped me focus on what I needed to work on with my language-learning and motivated me to improve my Spanish.”