What sort of impact might social software have on the study abroad experience? Does collaborative blogging between students scattered about the world enhance the educational value of travel? Might blogging for a global audience create opportunities for effective reflection and for contextualizing the immersive experience of living and studying away from the home institution? These are some of the questions explored through Blogging the World Pilot Project, which Middlebury College lecturer in the Writing Department, Barbara Ganley, launched during the 2005/2006 academic year.
As a collaborative program, Blogging the World typically involves some twenty students (five-six each from Middlebury College, Haverford College, and Dickinson College) and three faculty members who formed a pilot group exploring collaborative and individual blogging during study abroad. As strangers to each other before the initiative began, student participants tried out the effects of an online community on their educational experience away from their home and school communities.
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Listen to an interview with Barbara Ganley about blogging, technology and the future of education.
Excerpt from On Civic Engagement by Catharine Wright, Lecturer and Acting Director of Technology for the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research
The way that service learning classes work is as follows. The faculty member generally establishes a “partnership” with a non-profit organization prior to enrollment for the class. In other words, it is part of the course preparation to identify those “community partners.” In my case, I formed alliances with four community partners, one of which was an on-campus student-run organization called Women and Global Peace, an organization spearheaded by Zora Safi and Goretti Namuli and others. These students came out of Middlebury College Assistant Professor of Writing Hector Vila’s first year seminar called "Voices Along the Way," and were already thinking about their education in broader terms than just acing tests. Zora’s purpose, here, for example, as a student who is supported by the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, is to educate herself so that she can give back to her country. She is already committed to a life of service, and you can feel this when you talk to her. She is driven, she is focused on international issues and processes, she takes criticism easily, because not everything for her is so personal—it’s about something larger. So she wants feedback in order to do her work, and she uses it, and is incredibly productive.
Reading and Writing Culture
Dr. Jennifer Hirsch, a Lecturer for the Northwestern University Department of Anthropology and
Director of the Chicago Field Studies Program, designed this course for students who have studied abroad during college and wish to continue learning about their host country and reflecting on their experience.
Dr. Hirsch writes, "Students will share their insights and experiences with each other through class discussion as well as through various personal and analytical writing assignments. They will also read and discuss articles related to the theory and practice of cultural analysis. Course readings will come primarily from anthropology and will revolve loosely around the theme of 'cross-cultural encounters.'
Through these exercises, students will develop the intellectual tools for thinking about their study abroad experience and cultural issues in general from deeper and multiple perspectives. They also will gain a broader understanding of a variety of cultural and social phenomena in different regions of the world. In addition, students will explore a few particular issues about their study abroad countries in depth. Finally, since the course focuses on writing as the medium for reflection and analysis, students will also develop and strengthen their writing skills, through varied writing assignments that will involve extensive instructor feedback, peer review, and re-writes.
Most of the assignments in this class will involve researching particular phenomena related to students’ study abroad countries. Students will be encouraged to examine topics that they would like to pursue further, through a senior thesis, independent study, fellowship, or postgraduate studies. Continue reading.
