Skype/facebook for working together internationally |
facebook: not just for cute cats anymore.Facebook is popular across the globe, but as educators we don't often think of it as a useful tool in courses. With three simple steps, you can change how its used and turn it into a prime tool for collaborating across cultures, continents and classrooms.
Make it a closed group. Once you create a page for your course, or for each global team, you can add the student names to the group, sending a facebook message to each to join the group, then close the group so no one but the members and faculty can see and comment. Encourage thoughtful posts with questions to encourage discussion. Use this simple five point response rubric to help shape deeper dialogue. Discourage "likes" as legitimate discussion. Encourage student-produced short video clips to greet, say thanks, summarize a meeting. While nothing tops a live conversation, these kinds of methods help students personalize the communication that ultimately strengthens the connections for more effective team work. |
Top Ten tips for improving video conferencingLive video conferencing between classrooms or student teams is one of the best tools to have in your communication tool box. But it can be a disaster (I know, I have been there!) unless you do these simple, but critical things....
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lessons from a three-country collaborationStudents in Belarus, Australia and the US worked together in a Sociology course on Social Control, producing a summary of the lessons learned to generalize to other international collaboration courses. The US university is part of the SUNY COIL network, a rich resource for information in this field.
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design for the triple crownStudents lean best when we design in what I call the "Triple Crown"; 1) A meaningful topic, 2) immediate application of knowledge, and 3) an audience that matters. When students from Egypt and the US co-produced a video together to ultimately showcase to an international audience of their peers about Hip Hop roots in both countries, I knew we had the Triple Crown!
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I often begin my courses by introducing myself to the
International partner class through a video. Here is an example of one I used to introduce the "Developing your Global Brain" course to the students in Egypt. |
This video introduces faculty to the design elements of COIL courses and why this kind of direct, international engagement is essential for students entering today's work world.
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