The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement

3 Assessment of Globally-Connected Courses: How Successful Global Course Connections Can Make Your Students Less Anxious, Smarter, and More Culturally Competent

Irene López¹ and Deirdre Johnston¹

¹ Kenyon College, USA

² Hope College, USA

Introduction

On a rainy afternoon in Paris, just a few years ago, Deirdre and I sat with a bottle of wine and wondered what, in fact, had we done. We had just finished a very long workshop on how to globally connect our courses and we were bothered by a very central question – do these types of courses even work? And if so, how? Scribbling on napkins, we charted out the different variables that might be involved in effective connections. What, for example, constitutes intercultural competency? And is it possible for students to grow appreciatively in intercultural competence and diversity awareness in just one semester? For students to make appreciable gains, does the course itself need to have cultural competency as its primary focus? Furthermore, what kind of impact do these intercultural interactions have on students, and how does it impact students who are new to global education? Specifically, does it impact those students differently than students who may have previously had a number of courses exploring global learning and the development of global perspectives?

An odd phenomenon observed in our courses plagued our curiosity: did you notice that your students at first thought they had nothing in common with their global partners, but ...