Last fall, the College of Engineering ran a pilot course with the Seoul National University in South Korea. The effort is just one part of an item in our college's strategic plan to increase global awareness with our students. Specifically, we are looking at ways we can offer "non-travel based global experiences" to our undergraduates. Why? Because it's a valued commodity with employers in our increasingly global workplace. The likelihood that our students will, at some point, work with and collaborate with peers from other cultures is high.
Why not just have everyone travel abroad? That's a fine idea, and around 40% of incoming students voice some expectation of going abroad during their college years. How many actually do it? The number is closer to 2%. There are a host of reasons for this: expense; falling behind on degree plans; work and family obligations. You get the idea.
As I've mentioned here previously, the pilot course involved a graduate class in industrial design. My involvement was to vet and recommend a technology platform that would allow small groups to work together from thousands of miles away and with a significant time-zone difference.
There are many interesting aspects to the survey results, but the ones most relevant for my role in all of this was how well the collaborative platform was received. And in this case, it was not received all that well. As mentioned in a previous post, the students had the option of using the Wiggio platform for their team assignments. Support materials were provided, and I have a 30 minute overview of the available toolset.
Basically, the survey findings indicated that the students did not perceive any advantage in using Wiggio over email as a means for communication. The question stems in this case where "Wiggio/Email is an effective way to communicate about the group project":
Because of the nature of my job, I'm used to both successes and failures in pilot projects. In fact, I think there's a real danger to rooting for something to be a success; there's always the chance that one could lose objectivity and not assess results with a clear head. It's also the nature of pilots and experimentation that some things work better than others. That said, I don't want to introduce confusion into students' lives by offering them something for which they don't see a value.
There are some interesting methodological issues with these questions as well. For example, Wiggio includes email as a part of its communication offerings. So essentially the question is asking students to compare the utility of A & B, but B includes A. The other thing that strikes me is that there was a bias against the new technology before the students even heard about it; the "pre" survey was administered before Wiggio was introduced to the class. With that in mind, I think some of the lessons learned from the experience are to frame the technology in a more relevant way, and to introduce a platform like Wiggio with a fleshed-out example use case.
There are some very interesting findings from the class regarding intercultural communications, cultural awareness, and anxiety that I won't get into now, but in many ways they were the most important info we collected. I have no expertise in these areas, so I'd feel a bit uncomfortable discussing them, but suffice to say that Penn State students see things in a drastically different way than their peers from Seoul National.
We're hoping to give this course another go soon, this time relying on the Google Apps for Education platform. Should be informative to compare results and see what differences emerge.
Why not just have everyone travel abroad? That's a fine idea, and around 40% of incoming students voice some expectation of going abroad during their college years. How many actually do it? The number is closer to 2%. There are a host of reasons for this: expense; falling behind on degree plans; work and family obligations. You get the idea.
As I've mentioned here previously, the pilot course involved a graduate class in industrial design. My involvement was to vet and recommend a technology platform that would allow small groups to work together from thousands of miles away and with a significant time-zone difference.
There are many interesting aspects to the survey results, but the ones most relevant for my role in all of this was how well the collaborative platform was received. And in this case, it was not received all that well. As mentioned in a previous post, the students had the option of using the Wiggio platform for their team assignments. Support materials were provided, and I have a 30 minute overview of the available toolset.
Basically, the survey findings indicated that the students did not perceive any advantage in using Wiggio over email as a means for communication. The question stems in this case where "Wiggio/Email is an effective way to communicate about the group project":
Because of the nature of my job, I'm used to both successes and failures in pilot projects. In fact, I think there's a real danger to rooting for something to be a success; there's always the chance that one could lose objectivity and not assess results with a clear head. It's also the nature of pilots and experimentation that some things work better than others. That said, I don't want to introduce confusion into students' lives by offering them something for which they don't see a value.
There are some interesting methodological issues with these questions as well. For example, Wiggio includes email as a part of its communication offerings. So essentially the question is asking students to compare the utility of A & B, but B includes A. The other thing that strikes me is that there was a bias against the new technology before the students even heard about it; the "pre" survey was administered before Wiggio was introduced to the class. With that in mind, I think some of the lessons learned from the experience are to frame the technology in a more relevant way, and to introduce a platform like Wiggio with a fleshed-out example use case.
There are some very interesting findings from the class regarding intercultural communications, cultural awareness, and anxiety that I won't get into now, but in many ways they were the most important info we collected. I have no expertise in these areas, so I'd feel a bit uncomfortable discussing them, but suffice to say that Penn State students see things in a drastically different way than their peers from Seoul National.
We're hoping to give this course another go soon, this time relying on the Google Apps for Education platform. Should be informative to compare results and see what differences emerge.
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