Category: CLAC

Teaching and Integrating International Students

Home By Elizabeth Redden

February 24, 2017

Teaching and Integrating International Students

Various surveys look at biggest academic challenges international students face and the availability of professional development opportunities for professors teaching in intercultural classrooms.

WASHINGTON – What would international students in American classrooms most want their professors to do differently?

A survey of 662 international students at 23 colleges and universities commissioned by ELS Educational Services found that many international students want their professors to:

  • Provide more feedback (35 percent identified this as a desired improvement from among a given list of choices).
  • Seek to understand international students’ perspectives (33 percent).
  • Make classroom materials available after class (32 percent).
  • Provide examples of completed assignments (32 percent).
  • Provide non-U.S. examples in course contents (28 percent).

One caveat for the above numbers is that nearly 12 percent of students in the sample were native English speakers, so their presence in the sample could have skewed some of the overall figures in various ways. For example, 22 percent of all respondents said they’d like their professor to speak more slowly or clearly, while 32 percent of Chinese respondents did.

The sample was nearly evenly split between undergraduates (52 percent) and graduate students (48 percent). The most common classroom challenges identified by the students who were surveyed were: too many writing assignments (65 percent said this was a challenge), too much reading (cited as a challenge by 63 percent of respondents), writing in English (56 percent), participating in class presentations (56 percent), the perceived preferential treatment of native speakers (56 percent), participating in class discussions (56 percent) and professors’ lack of understanding of their culture (50 percent).

More than a third of students — 35 percent — said they felt uncomfortable questioning the opinions of their professors, 30 percent said they felt uncomfortable questioning the opinion of their peers, and 29 percent said they felt uncomfortable speaking in class discussions (the latter proportion was higher among Chinese students, 38 percent of whom said they felt uncomfortable). Nearly a quarter of respondents — 24 percent — said they felt uncomfortable interacting with American students.

Mark W. Harris, the president emeritus of ELS, presented on the findings of the survey during a session Tuesday at the Association of International Education Administrators  annual conference focused on how faculty can “bridge divides” and integrate international students in the classroom. The number of international students in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the past 10 years and now exceeds 1 million, representing about 5 percent of the total student population, according to data from the Institute of International Education.

Recruiting international students was the number one priority for university internationalization identified by institutions who responded to the American Council on Education’s 2016 survey on mapping campuswide internationalization, which the association conducts every five years. In presenting a preview of some of the 2016 data – a full report on the survey is scheduled to be released this spring — Robin Matross Helms, the director of ACE’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement, said that one key finding is that there’s been a “backtracking” in terms of support for internationalization-focused faculty development opportunities from the 2011 to 2016 surveys. The percentage of responding colleges and universities that reported offering these kinds of opportunities was lower in 2016 than in 2011.

About a quarter of institutions report offering workshops for faculty on teaching and integrating international students — “my response was, wow, only a quarter?” Helms said.

“If we’re not providing faculty with that professional development support, that’s definitely a worrisome trend,” Helms said.

Darla K. Deardorff, AIEA’s executive director and an adjunct research scholar at Duke University’s education program, described the different forms faculty development can take – retreats, discussion working groups, invited speakers, faculty panel presentations – with common topics being things like: “classroom challenges for international students,” “moving beyond stereotypes and assumptions,” “integrating non-Western perspectives into what is taught,” “communicating with international students,” “creating a supportive classroom environment,” “learning styles in different cultures,” “understanding classroom behavior,” and “interculturally competent teaching.”

Deardorff also shared recommendations to faculty international students have made in various focus groups she’s conducted with them. Recommendations include:

  • to focus on the professor-student relationship
  • to understand what students are used to (and not to assume)
  • to be very clear on expectations and to provide examples
  • to pay attention to underperforming students
  • to be intentional about connecting domestic and international students in the classroom
  • to not single out international students (by asking, say, “you’re from Australia, what do Australians think of this?”)
  • to connect students with various campus resources available, such as the writing center
  • to use examples from students’ home countries.

“A lot of this we know, but it’s nice to hear it reaffirmed by the students,” Deardorff said.

CLAC @ Denison Interest Group (DIG)

CLAC Meetings with Interested Denison Colleagues (Faculty and Staff)

May 13 and 14, 2015 in the Foresman Lounge, Fellows Hall

clacmtg3We had two very productive and engaged meetings discussing first impressions of the CLAC conference and  further materials and what CLAC at Denison might look  like. Gabriele then gave an overview of the various existing CLAC models and its hybrid models, what it takes to get buy- in from faculty, staff, and the administration, the potential for increased professional development, how to tab into funding sources, and where to learn more about pedagogies and approaches to internationalizing one’s courses and the campus curriculum as a whole.

We also discussed how to more effectively integrate international students at Denison and make their study-abroad experience richer and more culturally relevant and likewise how to enhance and give more depth to the study-abroad experience of our Denison students.

clacmtg8Representatives from various departments and offices across campus were present and collaboratively discussed ideas and made suggestions from their specific point of view. Colleagues from International Student Services, the Registrar, the Library, from the Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts, and Sciences were present.

One distinct feature of CLAC made itself apparent immediately in both meetings: participants in the CLAC enterprise feel welcome and appreciated for the fact that they are multicultural and multilingual. CLAC provides a structure for collaboration and a sense of belonging, where one’s skills and background adds something specifically positive to the campus culture and student learning.

Professional development is another important aspect of CLAC. By collaborating with faculty members from another field, if not another discipline, faculty engage with new ideas, gain new perspectives, see their own area of research and inquiry from a different perspective. There is much pedagogical exchange as well and in that sense faculty mentoring is organically integrated.

CLAC has a subversive element to it: it does break up the professor = authority model for the sake of engaging with students in a productive learning environment where everybody benefits from the knowledge of each other. Students may know a language and bring in knowledge and experiences from a culture that the instructor is not familiar with or knows little, if nothing, about. It empowers students and integrates them more holistically in a learning community that produces life-long learning.

In order for CLAC to happen on our campus, we need a structure. We discussed the various models existing in the many different types of institutions that have successfully built and maintained a CLAC (FLAC, C-LAC, GAC, LAC, LxC) program. It seems that a Denison a hybrid model of some of these is a good solution. From CLAC-light to CLAC-integrated to CLAC-full-immersion, all are possible in some way. However there needs to be an incentive and reward system. It cannot be that faculty are asked to take on an extra, additional workload – such as for example the many directed studies units some of us teach on a regular basis to compensate for special student interest that cannot be accommodated otherwise or chronically under-enrolled upper level courses. In the long run, if it were to take off at all, such a model is not sustainable. Different models exist on different campuses from extra pay for additional units of instruction, to stipends for course development, to banking a certain amount of units to cash them in later for a course release, or a combination thereof.

CLAC fits in beautifully with the goals of GLCA’s Global Liberal Arts Alliance, specifically with the global course connections. At Denison, we already have a couple of courses connected with our partner universities, such as for example with the American University in Bulgaria, where two intermediate level German courses have been team-taught in four consecutive semesters. CLAC can support these efforts in a most meaningful and productive way.

We now have a Center for Learning and Teaching directed by a very invested and supportive colleague, Frank Hassebrock, who has already offered to support CLAC initiatives in any way he can, such a brown bag get-togethers to further explore and discuss ideas and even some funds to make some of these innovative ideas happen in our classrooms. (The new L&T Center will have a physical home in Doane library.)

There are funds available on the federal level for such initiatives as CLAC. There are also a number of private sponsors and foundations that support the internationalization of one’s campus. This requires research, time and much investment for a colleague to pursue. Just like a successful CLAC program needs careful planning, organizing, administering, and bridge-building between the various stakeholders on campus carried out by a designated colleague.

Denison already is a member of the CLAC consortium and has at least 2 active members in that organization at this point. The fact that we hosted a conference for CLAC so early on in the membership period, has opened doors to provide us with advice and support from the very experienced and seasoned members of the consortium in this planning process. Chances are very good that we will pursue CLAC in a well-informed and fruitful way. Most importantly, however, we have enthusiastic colleagues who embrace the potential of these opportunities in their teaching, learning and scholarship. In fact, many have been practicing some form of CLAC already with their students over the years and only need acknowledgement to take their ideas and practices to the next level.

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  1. Introductions and Comments on why CLAC is of interest

Gabriele Dillmann, Modern Languages – German, CLAC @ DU

  • started bringing CLAC to Denison with GLCA’s New Directions Exploration Grant and GLCA’s New Directions Initiative Grant (2011/2012) (Thank you, GLCA!!)
  • combined CLAC with COIL via Globally Connected Courses Initiative
  • joined CLAC Consortium in 2010
  • Denison became member of CLAC consortium in 2012
  • hosted 9th annual CLAC conference at Denison in April 2015
  • member of the CLAC 2016 planning group and CLAC Consortium Repository group

Katy Crossley-Frolick, Political Science and International Studies

  • regrets that students don’t make use of their language skills in courses, wishes to more intentionally make that happen

Sue Davis, Political Science and Interim Off-Campus-Studies Director

  • speaks Russian but cannot integrate Russian into her classroom
  • wishes to internationalize curriculum
  • finds that there are pockets of internationalization efforts but no consolidated structure

Micaela Vivero, Art Studio, Sculpture

  • speaks German, Spanish, English
  • team-taught course with Spanish faculty member “Introduction to Sculpture” in the Spanish language as a parallel course; same students took Spanish language course with Spanish faculty member
  • “One of my most rewarding experience at Denison.”
  • mainly Spanish majors enrolled, understood art from a cultural perspective
  • Issues to address in a follow-up iteration would be: what requirement/s would this course fulfill? How do we avoid depleting courses offered by Spanish faculty? Where would such a course reside?

Fran Lopez, Spanish

  • students learning how their field of study is important in another archive; e.g. complexity theory founded by 2 Chilean scholars; students know work in translation only, but “translation is a traitor,” and not being aware of an ideas origins promotes ethno-centric or US-centric thinking;
  • in a CLAC model, students and professors can learn from each other

Taku Suzuki, International Studies, East Asian Studies

  • attended CLAC conference and saw a lot of potential but also has concerns
  • most interesting: engage more international students more intentionally
  • students as resources in courses
  • Returning students could/should meet intern. students more intentionally
  • OCS transformative, needs reflection and discussion, best moment is upon return
  • Member of Global Studies Refinement Group at DU

Marilyn Andrew, International Student Services

  • International students are eager to make friends with US students, but find it difficult
  • Sending countries are not necessarily receiving countries
  • Diversity lens AND global lens
  • Problem: international students could not take financial aid with them, now international students can take their need-based funds abroad
  • International students as resources, they are living the off-campus study experience, resource to departing students
  • Domestic minorities also a cultural entity for diversity and internationalization
  • Host families play significant role
  • Expand study-abroad experience to a full year rather than a semester, i.e. often only 3 months of abroad experience
  • Costs would not be significant enough to NOT offer that option financially in comparison to benefit
  • Concern about OCS experience being too “American,” not enough immersion in host country
  • Concerns from other colleagues: how to have enough students in upper level modern languages courses if language students are gone for a whole year? Revise major? Many science majors already find it almost impossible to go abroad as is. Changes in curriculum? Often incoming/new chairs don’t allow for the same credit transfers into the major and minor as previous chair. Revisit transfer policy?
  • Importance and benefits of faculty site-visits

Emily Henson, Center for Cross-Cultural Engagement

  • Buddy system supports mixing of US students and intern. students
  • Online matching
  • Integrate intern. students in courses across campus
  • DU has many students who are sons and daughters of recent immigrants, rather than embracing their background, they hide it in order to fit in – Denison a culture of fitting in?
  • Host families to bring intern. and US students together as a way to connect them to each other further

Eva Revesz, German and Writing Across Curriculum

  • very impressed by ideas that came from CLAC conference, in particular Binghamton’s three-tiered course sequence: pre-departure, projects during study-abroad, returning students
  • could see offer such a course for returning students and current international students with a writing overlay to explore and articulate their experiences
  • such a course promotes intercultural learning and proficiency
  • in conjunction with potentially new Global Commerce Major or IS Major

Quentin Duroy, Economics Department

  • member of Global Studies Refinement Group at Denison University
  • looking for ways to increase global awareness on campus
  • sees great importance of bi- or multilingualism as a norm to become effective global citizens
  • language and culture inseparable

Sohrab Behdad, Economics Department

  • has had a keen interest in internationalizing our curriculum for years
  • began current Global Studies meetings over 17 years ago
  • discussed with then president Michelle Myers the need to increase course offerings with international character

Hanada Al-Masri, Arabic

  • sees much merit in CLAC approach for a more international curriculum
  • sees many connections between CLAC and global initiatives
  • ideas expanding everywhere
  • challenge for Arabic: length of language studies required before proficiency increases sufficiently
  • primary base for content courses are heritage and returning OCS Arabic speakers that might be cross-listed with Political Science, Gender Studies, Economics

Cheryl McFarren, Theatre

  • language: French, taught French in middle school and high school for some years
  • teaching theatre is always about teaching culture on some level
  • attended CLAC conference and walked away full of ideas, but will there be enough time and energy to make these ideas happen?
  • Comment: we need to not work more but more effectively and economically with the time and energy we have

Frank Hassebrock, Psychology, Faculty Fellow for Learning and Teaching, Teaching and Learning Center (part-time)

  • his job in his new role of leading the L&T Center is to listen and help with faculty programming and collaborate on projects
  • there will be brown bag meetings to exchange ideas
  • some funds will be available through he center
  • the Center now has an actual physical location on the Atrium level of Doane Library with offices, potentially an AAA (shared) and a resources room
  • Frank’s current office is in Knapp 410-H

Diana Mafe, English

  • field_post-colonial literature
  • multi-lingual (Dutch, English, French) and culturally diverse: lived in Nigeria, Canada, US
  • is interested in diversity, inter- and transculturalism, internationalization of the curriculum and exploring CLAC as one of these means towards those interests

Moriana Garcia, Library

  • is interested in CLAC for personal and professional reasons
  • always searching for opportunities to support DU faculty as a librarian with resources
  • likes to be in dialogue with faculty to know and understand what it is that they need
  • sees great importance of living in and with different cultures and the role language plays in that context
  • languages Spanish, Portuguese, English

Arnie Joseph, French, emeritus

  • finds CLAC compelling for its potential “to put the human back into the humanities”
  • humanities have been sucked out of the curriculum over the years
  • interest in human contact expressed in languages and culture seems to be coming back
  • cheering on from side-lines!
  • attended CLAC conference and felt that too many administrators were speaking about structures and systems, when he wanted to hear more about what actually happens in the classroom
  • New course idea: From Adolescence to Alzheimer’s 🙂

Louis Villanuevo, Economics

  • invited to this meeting by a colleague in Econ who thought that this group may be very much in line with his interests (Sohrab Behdad)
  • teaches Latin-American economic development
  • is multi-lingual: Spanish, English, French
  • sees potential in CLAC to enrich his courses with an even deeper layer of intercultural engagement

Isabelle Choquet, French

  • research interest in the Caribbean
  • is always looking for creative ideas for her courses and to keep her teaching fresh and up-to-date
  • wants to offer students meaningful venues to explore and learn
  • is collaborative by nature and seeks collaborations
  • loved brainstorming atmosphere of CLAC conference
  • wants to engage further

Yadi Collins, Registrar

  • is multilingual and multicultural herself (Turkish, German, English)
  • as administrator has professional interest in new and innovative ideas that might benefit the campus
  • sees herself in the role to make creative ideas by faculty happen from the mechanical side of things
  • there are more than one format effectively addressing programs and ideas
  • sees much benefit in internationalizing the campus across the disciplines
  • CLAC promotes collaboration
  • Can-do personality type! J

Wendy Wilson, Theatre

  • speaks French besides her native tongue
  • is interested in what makes man tick – finds this in studying and exploring multi-ethnic films and art, informs her work in theatre
  • in acting international students, POSSE students, otherwise diverse students, have to overcome different challenges than some other students, everybody has to learn how to work together and is only possible by understanding differences
  • introduced Spanish language in one of the theatre pieces with remarkable results, wishes to do more such projects
  • On the potential subversive aspects of CLAC “The in-between space, the liminal space, is where you can learn – giving up authority takes you there.”

Follow-up from colleagues:

Emily Henson, Program Coordinator, Center for Cross-Cultural Engagement (CCCE)

Thanks again for inviting us and getting everyone together, it was very informative! As a staff member I am always trying to find a way to connect programs/events with faculty and working for the Center for Cross-Cultural Engagement as a program coordinator it makes sense to work together sometimes.

During the meeting you mentioned working more effectively with what we have instead of creating more work for us as we begin this process of becoming a more internationalized as an institution. One suggestion I have is working with the Cross-Cultural Communities (C3), they are our multi-cultural student organizations on campus. They have brought many great speakers, performers, artists, etc to campus, but often faculty do not know about their great event until last minute and and they may not know of great events faculty may organize that connects to their organizations. I work pretty closely with may of these organizations and during my time here I’ve seen many missed opportunities to collaborate. As I’ve talked to students, many of them would like to work with faculty but may not know how or who to reach out to, they also do not plan ahead which makes it difficult. In my experience if faculty or staff reach out to student organizations they are more than willing to collaborate and work together.

One example this year was the Human Right’s Film Festival, I worked with Isis to connect student organizations with film showing that may relate to them. We gave the student orgs an opportunity to facilitate a discussion after each film in conjunction with faculty. Not only was there a higher turnout but the students were able to make connections with faculty that they might not have otherwise.

Another example was an event Hanada, the Middle Eastern Cultural Organization and I planned–we took students to a middle eastern restaurant and a concert called HeartBeat.

I believe that by being more strategic this is a great way to learn about the world without even stepping off-campus. This is also something that can be implemented quicker than bigger projects (such as helping students study off-campus for a year). It’s a little difficult to explain this over email, so if you’d like to talk about this more please let me know. I’m here through May and am really passionate about this.

Quentin Duroy, Economics

Thank you for organizing the meeting. I am very excited about the ‘more global’ dimension of the current curricular discourse on campus. CLAC is very intriguing. I have been teaching a course on social and economic policies in the EU off and on over the past 7 years. Next year I will submit a proposal to AAC to make it part of the Econ curriculum. Once it is established as a regular econ class, I will look into ways to make it CLAC friendly and maybe eventually add French and German units… Vielen Dank for sharing your knowledge and experience!

Laura Russell, Communication

Thank you so much for keeping me in the loop with CLAC. While I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the sessions next week, I really appreciate your involvement in organizing these conversations among colleagues. I hope that in the future I will be able to be involved in further developments. This program probes such valuable intersections for our liberal arts goals.

Advice from seasoned CLAC practitioners on implementing CLAC at Denison: 

“What wonderful news! Denison is poised to become a national CLAC leader.

Three suggestions for CLAC at Denison:

1. Denison should adopt CLAC involvement as a “welcome ingredient” in all faculty hiring, all tenure and promotion cases, and all salary-increase justifications. Not required, but welcome; and therefore always to be looked for and never to be denigrated. This change should come not from the president, though his support would of course be essential, but rather from whatever faculty governance body or bodies deal with these things, including the faculty senate, P&T committee, and even individual departments.

2. CLAC should infuse itself throughout Denison’s curriculum. Non-language faculty should be equal or even greater in number in designing and implementing CLAC. Every academic program should be involved. Links to study abroad and internationalization-at-home should be included in every possible way.  The ubiquitous meaningful use of languages other than English and inclusion of perspectives from all cultures should become a standard expectation for all faculty and students.

3. Denison’s GLCA network should be employed to maximize and expand your CLAC options. Faculty and students at your partner colleges abroad possess a degree of bilinguality to which Denison might well aspire to equal.”

Expand Student International Experiences Without Leaving Your Campus

H. Stephen Straight, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Linguistics, and Founding Director of the Languages Across the Curriculum (LxC) Program, Binghamton University

“1). There’s no 1 right way to establish CLAC.

2). Look to your institution’s champion areas for roots (ours turned out to be the Career Development Center, specific faculty, administrators, staff across campus, and the Linguistics Program and the Anthropology Department, and the Libraries)”

Webinar “What Does an Internationalized Curriculum Look Like? The Promise of Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum” (available at Denison shortly through the L&T Center)

Dr. Suronda Gonzalez, Director, Languages Across the Curriculum (LxC), Global Studies Minor (GSM), Chair, CLAC Consortium

“As Suronda said, one of the great things about CLAC is its flexibility.  I assume Denison is much like Juniata in the need to engage as many stakeholders as possible in the process.  Through our international education advisory groups, we looked at what we were already doing that was CLAC-like (we had many students who were double-majoring in foreign languages and other fields, and then studying abroad in the second field, but in the target language) and focused on those areas first (for example, chemistry students who studied in Marburg).  Then we began applying for grants to connect faculty in the targeted fields with international partners in the targeted languages to integrate CLAC more intentionally into the programs.”

Dr. Jenifer Cushman, Campus Dean / Associate Professor of German, Ohio University Zanesville, President of the Association of International Education Administrators/http://www.aieaworld.org/

“I am working on the administrators’ and faculty members’ buy-in on my campus. I worked closely with each faculty members and designed their own CLAC projects specific to their courses. I also found that preparing students for the coming CLAC projects is very important. So I usually have a mini-workshop for the students at the beginning of the projects.” 

JY Zhou, Ed.D., Internationalization Specialist, School of Education, Stockton University, Globalization Lecture Series: http://goo.gl/zDMFM9, Approaches to Globalize the Curriculum: http://goo.gl/Somvs8

CLAC 2015 Conference Summary

DF1_3775 copyI am very happy to report that our CLAC (Cultures and Languages across the Curriculum) conference was a great success. Over two days, we hosted 90 conference presenters and participants from all over the United States, China and Columbia (both remotely) including 24 Denison colleagues from across the disciplines and support offices (OCS, ISS). Represented were public and private liberal arts colleges, R1 institutions, state universities, regional campuses of Ohio U and OSU, a high school, community colleges, the Air Command and Staff College, SIT Study Abroad (a program of World Learning), a Columbus Global Business Law Company (Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter), and the Modern Language Association (Rosemary Feal) by professors, lecturers, graduate and undergraduate students, teaching assistants, K-12 teachers, campus deans, program directors and coordinators, international specialists, our college president and the executive director of the largest association for modern languages.

The conference program featured 34 presenters, an opening session, 9 panels, and 2 keynote speakers and attracted 56 additional conference participants. Nearly all participants came to Adam Weinberg’s talk, which generated a very lively and engaged discussion among CLACers. Rosemary Feal’s keynote was equally inspiring and stimulating resulting in a spike of MLA membership enrollments that day. :)) You can view Dr. Weinberg’s and Rosemary Feal’s talks on ITunes-U. (Thank you, Joseph Leija!)

The best part about the conference, however, is that it generated much interest among our Denison colleagues. Our participating faculty members came up with great ideas for CLAC components for their own courses and in collaboration with other colleagues. I will be organizing a get-together for all interested faculty and staff members to further discuss and exchange ideas. Please – if you were not able to attend the conference but would have liked to or are interested in internationalizing your courses – join in! I know of several colleagues at DU, such as for example Eric Liebl and Katy Crossley-Frolick, who do wonderful CLAC-friendly work with their students already. Do share your experiences with us! The announcement for this gathering will follow shortly.

It takes the work of a lot of dedicated people to make such an event happen. The success of this conference depended much on our community-spirited and selfless colleagues from just about every office on and off our campus. I would like to express a heartfelt Danke schön! to Simon Gray (GLCA), the CLAC consortium leadership, June Di Marzo and Rosemary Feal from the MLA, President Weinberg, Trish Ruess, the Provost’s Office, Kim Coplin, Susan Garcia, and Susan Kosling, Chris Faur, Yadi Collins, the Alumni Relations Office, Steve Crawford, Jeanne Matson, Cheryl Johnson, Leslie Smith, Dave Selby, Rich Elkins, Jeremy Blake, Kathy Arnholt, Cathy Untied, Jeanie McNamara, Jim Ables, William Sperry, Kris Thompson, Randi Carroll, Ginny Sharkey, Jamie Hale, our talented photographer Tim Black, Jason Bowles, Brian Roberson, Laurie MacKenzie-Crane, Sue Bishop, Perry Robinson, Michael Showman, Melissa Loomis, Missy Hannan, Joseph Leija, my dear friend and conference volunteer professor of French emeritus Arnie Joseph, Denison students Bobby Schell, Kaleigh Poe, and Ryan Smith, Andy Carlson and the Bluegrass Ensemble  – and most of all Vicki Sussman and my great colleague in Modern Languages and conference planning team member Hanada Al-Masri.

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Conference photos can be found here (password protected):

https://gabrieledillmann.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/clac-2015-conference-pictures/

Conference evaluation and feedback can be found here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/M277BKP

Conference presentation materials will be available soon.

CLAC 2015 Conference Program Now Available

As the organizer of this year’s Cultures and Languages across the Curriculum (CLAC) conference  I would like to invite you to participate and engage with faculty and staff CLAC practitioners, from across and outside of the United States in this two-day, all-day event on our campus on April 16 and 17.

As you will quickly see from the conference program and from a more elaborate description of CLAC on my blog, CLAC is by no means a concept limited to modern languages, but rather spans all disciplines and fields of application. In a nutshell: Institutions of all types and size that have a form of CLAC (also referred to as FLAC/C-LAC/LAC/LxC) participate in the shared idea that: “Knowledge exists within and is shaped by culture and, therefore, just as materials in many languages can and should be incorporated into all parts of the curriculum, intercultural perspectives can and should inform the teaching of academic content in many curricular contexts…  CLAC  strives to make translingual and transcultural competence a reality for all students, not simply for those who major in a foreign language or participate in immersive study abroad programs. CLAC engages languages (and intercultural perspectives) to achieve a better and more multi-faceted understanding of content. It focuses less on bringing disciplinary content or culture into the language classroom than on assimilating languages and cultures into instruction and research across a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.” (CLAC Consortium)

If you are interested in these ideas, the conference will be a rich source for learning more about CLAC theory, pedagogy, and the institutionalization and practice of CLAC concepts both from the perspective of CLAC teaching faculty as well as CLAC administrators. The conference spans over two days with all day long events such as plenary sessions, panels, keynote speakers plus two luncheons and a lovely dinner with entertainment from Denison’s amazing Denison Bluegrass Ensemble on the evening of the first conference day.

Our keynote speakers are Adam Weinberg who will welcome our guests to campus and give the first keynote address, “The Internationalization of U.S. Higher Education: Reflections of a New College President,” at the luncheon on the first day, and Rosemary Feal, Executive Director Modern Languages Association, who will give her keynote address on “Language Trends, Trendy Languages: the MLA Perspective,” at the luncheon on the second day.

I look forward to welcoming you to Denison in the spring!

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Transformations Article on the Globally Connected Language Classroom

Our joint case study on the globally connected language classroom was recently published in the online journal “Transformations” on the  Academic Commons website. 

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Summary: The language classroom is a most fruitful place for intercultural, global learning. Digital technologies allow us to make intercultural connections like never before and in the process language-learning benefits from real communication about real issues. Connecting two language courses globally requires overcoming many obstacles and challenges (time difference, collaboration, technology, funding, resources, etc.) but a strong belief that the benefits outweigh the costs serves as a constant source for pushing on.

We look forward to comments from colleagues and students alike! 

A special Dankeschön! to our students in German at Denison and AUBG for your engagement and enthusiasm in this teaching and learning project! 

 

 

MLA Vancouver Session on Visionary Pedagogies

Visionary Pedagogies for the 21st Century: Teaching the Humanities with Digital Technology

As MOOC fever recedes yet the debate about online learning’s future chances and challenges becomes both more realistic and pressing, the humanities urgently need to get more creative and reflective about imagining their future in higher education. This session will discuss concrete ideas and best practices for embedding digital pedagogy assignments and tools into four different kinds of classrooms and courses (foreign language, literature, storytelling, and writing), not only to memorialize and simply transpose what we already do into a different medium, but in order to harness unique affordances of new tools and connected ways of learning that widen the scope of what and how we teach for the 21st century. If we want our students to become mindful global citizens with a sound mastery of digital skills appropriate for this day and age and connect these with the knowledge memories and critical thinking skills that a solid humanities education provides, we need to harness technology in pedagogically creative ways and bring the humanities back into the heart of an increasingly digitally connected society.

Gabriele Dillmann’s talk “Fostering Global and Digital Learning with Google+ Hangout as a Communication and Knowledge Sharing Tool” launches our session with the example of using Google Hangouts in the German language and culture classroom to connect with other students and teachers worldwide. With new cloud-based technologies and a sharp increase in hybrid teaching models, innovative, technology-enhanced teaching and learning projects within a global connections context have become more readily realizable. Specifically, in the language and culture classroom, Google+ Hangout with its multifunctional interaction tools (screen sharing, chatting, whiteboards, presentation software, etc.) has made online hybrid learning uniquely intuitive, inexpensive, inviting and “human” for both students and teachers. We need to teach students more than the technology itself, however: they need to learn digital and dialogue etiquette, how to be effective team players and members of a learning community, and develop group and leadership competencies within a digital context. Dillmann will present concrete examples and offer teaching and learning materials from her intermediate level internationally connected German language and culture course that show both how to use this tool to enhance linguistic and cultural proficiencies, as well as digital competencies that can be applied in any teaching and learning context.

Petra Dierkes-Thrun’s paper “How To Do Things with Books and Screens: Literature and Digital Pedagogy” offers three concrete examples of digital pedagogy in the literature classroom that newly engage students and bring traditional humanities contents and methods to a larger public. An assignment she pioneered in 2012, a popular literary Twitter role play for Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, playfully reimagines this classic novel and posits reading and interpreting literature as creative social functions. In her second example, an Image and Sound Interpretation (using only images, audio, video, but no words, to interpret a poem), students create a collaborative synesthetic digital space that expands traditional close reading methods and goals. Dierkes-Thrun’s third example is a final assignment that replaces the term paper with a teaching sequence, student-produced pedagogical rationale and teaching materials developed by students, for other students or community organizations, which illustrate a new pedagogical paradigm of “critical contribution” online (Cathy Davidson’s term for students’ productive contribution to society via knowledge sharing). The unique new affordances of digital media also increase motivation, Dierkes-Thrun argues: teaching and learning collaboratively and playfully, integrating critical contribution and public outreach into traditional literature course, and giving students (and teachers) a larger sense of purpose and audience for their work.

Alan Levine’s talk “Assignment Riffing: What Happens in DS106 Does Not Stay in DS106” expands our session’s conversation beyond the course, unit, or a particular institution. Unlike MOOCs (of c and x variety),  his open digital story course ds106 uniquely stands as more than one course, but as overlapping ones from multiple institutions with a cloud of open participants. Its Internet radio station and Daily Create challenges offer opportunities outside the course. An open assignment bank not only gives flexibility to choose assignments, but also invites participants to add new ones, a living example of the “adjacent possible” in a course. It may appear ludicrous to house assignments for editing images of famous paintings to include fat cats, creating poetry from titles of songs, or putting fast food in the hands of internet pioneers, but the media created are not the end goals in ds106. Participants open their apertures of creative interpretation, incorporate works of others in a constructive fashion, and narrate their creative process. A frequent spirit of spontaneous “riffing” occurs, not unlike that of improvisational jazz musicians, that ripples far beyond the confines of one course.

Finally, Amanda Starling Gould’s “Assignments, Assessments, and Makerspace Methods in the Literary Digital Humanities Writing Course” offers her Augmenting Realities Duke university undergraduate course as an example of how one might enact a literary digital humanities writing course, detailing the method, motive, and several tested modes for digital project assessment. Because syllabi and course assignments can be as instructive as methodological explanation, the main focus of this presentation will be a hands-on introduction to several digital humanities assignments in the course. Assignments as Digitally Annotating the Graphic Novel, the Final Transmedia Essay & Collaborative Web Journal, Creating Dynamic Digital ePortfolios, the Impossible One-Slide Presentation, and a grand Google Glass Literary App Challenge, invite audience attendees to explore the assignment specifics, tools used, and the students’ final products, and understand their integration within the narrative of the course. Gould’s case study, as well as our special session’s as a whole, aims at sparking critical innovation for integrating the digital into all humanities disciplines and to encourage experimentation that resists the traditional boundaries of contemporary pedagogy in order to facilitate rigorously creative digital learning environments.

These papers are likely to provoke a lively discussion ranging from exchanges of concrete pedagogical ideas and best practices of yesterday and today, to more conceptual, fundamental, and controversial reflections on the challenges and opportunities of teaching language, literature, writing and storytelling digitally today and tomorrow.

PARTICIPANT BIOS

Gabriele Dillmann, Associate Professor of German at Denison University, teaches courses in German language, German, Swiss, and Austrian literature and culture, and seminars on psychoanalytic theory and neuropsychoanalysis. In her teaching she makes innovative use of newest digital technologies to foster language skills, intercultural competencies and global learning, for example in her globally networked German course with the American University in Bulgaria.  She is also very dedicated to Cultures and Languages across the Curriculum (CLAC) and team-teaching pedagogies. Her scholarly interests are increasingly vested in how digital technologies shape how we learn and teach now and in the near future. Her more traditional scholarship is in the area of German Romanticism and psychoanalytic theory, specifically suicide studies. For an updated account of her most recent projects, please visit https://gabrieledillmann.wordpress.com. Last year, she was awarded the Julian H. Robertson Jr. Endowed Chair at her institution for her work in teaching, service, and scholarship.

Petra Dierkes-Thrun is a Lecturer in the Comparative Literature Department at Stanford University with interests in Victorian, fin-de-siècle, and modernist studies, as well as feminist and LGBTQ studies. Her book Salome’s Modernity: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetics of Transgression was published by The University of Michigan Press in 2011. Petra serves as advisory editor for boundary2 (Duke University Press), founding editor of the international online journal The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies, and board member for Rodopi’s Dialogue series. Petra actively incorporates digital pedagogy into her literature and gender studies seminars at Stanford, developing new kinds of student exercises and activities involving social media, learning collaborations with the public, and digital student projects aimed at thoughtful, creative engagement with traditional humanities contents and methods via the new media, as well as blogging about these topics at www.literatureilluminations.org and most recently, consulting for other universities who want to learn more about her ideas. Two years ago at MLA, Petra already organized a session entitled “Literature and Digital Pedagogies” that was chosen as part of the presidential theme and drew a large crowd of interested MLA members.

Alan Levine is recognized for expertise in the application of new technologies to education. A pioneer on the web in the 1990s and an early proponent of blogs and RSS, he shares his ideas and discoveries at CogDogBlog. Among his recent interests are new forms of web-based storytelling and encouraging acts of creativity (including 50+ Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story, pechaflickr, and a thing called the StoryBox), and is an adjunct online teacher of the open digital storytelling class, ds106 for the University of Mary Washington and George Mason University. Levine has held leadership technology positions at the New Media Consortium and the Maricopa Community Colleges. Currently he is providing education consultancy services as CogDog.it. His recent work revolves around application of syndication structures to create of project and course web sites with a distributed network structure for the Hague University of Applied Sciences, the Educational Technology MOOC, the Harvard School of Graduate Education, and Thompson Rivers University. Levine has authored several articles for EDCAUSE Review and most recently a chapter in Invasion of the MOOCs: The Promises and Perils of Massive Open Online Courses.

Amanda Starling Gould is a media-lit scholar at Duke University investigating digital cultures, network ecologies, digital humanities scholarship, and innovative modes of pedagogy. She teaches digital humanities and media studies courses at Duke and has recently been presenting and leading workshops on digital pedagogy and assessing digital scholarship. She is a James B Duke Fellow, a HASTAC Scholar, one of the inaugural PhD Lab Scholars at Duke’s PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge (a member of the Praxis Network), and a newly anointed Duke ‘Flipping the Classroom’ Faculty Fellow. For more information, please see her website, amandastarlinggould.wordpress.com, where she posts updates about publications, research, digital projects, academic activities, and teaching.