The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement

8 Cross-Training and Perspective-Taking: The Development of an Oral History Project in the Sciences and Humanities

Taylor Allen¹ and Kim Fox²

¹ Oberlin College, USA

² American University in Cairo, Egypt

It has very much integrated the sciences and humanities,and it has helped me live and become a better human overall.

This quote comes from students’ reflections on a project-based oral history collaboration focusing on education’s role in an individual’s well-being, and involving students in two undergraduate courses: Audio Production, for juniors and seniors in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo (henceforth AUC), and Physiology, for seniors in the Biology Department at Oberlin College (Ohio). The project, with its emphasis on developing cross-cultural perspective-taking woven throughout the semester, engages students in exploring the ways education gives shape to psychological well-being, or eudaimonia, through oral histories with older adults. Briefly, eudaimonia refers to the sense of being fully realized as a human, manifesting the best within oneself, including purpose in life, autonomy, environmental mastery, and more (Ryff, 2018). Among the major facets of eudaimonia, purpose in life is emerging as the one most closely linked to positive health behaviors and to physical health, e.g., cardiovascular function (e.g., Kim et al., 2020).

For our global course connection, we seek to bridge the geographical separation of ...