Structure and Outcomes of Int’l Humanitarian Engineering Program

by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Dec 22, 2021 | Articles

Posted: Thursday, December 22, 2021

By: Aaron Brown, Ph.D., Metropolitan State University of Denver and Dra Irma Livier De Regil Sanchez, Universidad del Valle de Atemajac

With travel restrictions and lockdowns due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, faculty at Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver), La Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (UNIVA), La Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB Medellin), and SRH University Heidelberg organized a virtual collaborative course in the subject of “Humanitarian Engineering” for the Spring 2021 semester. This course engaged students and faculty from all 4 partners in a virtual workshop to solve pressing issues for the vulnerable communities in the region of the universities. This paper will report on student and faculty engagement in this online program and the contribution to global diversity, equity, and inclusion as measured by a pre and post workshop survey.

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic presented unprecedented global shut downs. Consequently, restrictions in travel and in-person interaction impacted traditional global engagement. While this scenario halted study abroad, it did allow institutions to advance and normalize technologies (such as Zoom) which connect us and allow for global interactions.

MSU Denver, a Hispanic-Serving Institute, has one of the most diverse student bodies in Colorado, with only 1% of students studying abroad. By adapting Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a methodology of creating connection for both students and faculty across countries through online collaborative work and curriculum, we enable more students to engage in global experiences and cultural exchange in a cost-effective interaction. This model, developed by the SUNNY COIL Center (Guimarães & Finadri , 2021), provided the blueprint for faculty from MSU Denver in the US, UNIVA in Mexico, La UPB Medellin in Colombia, and SRH University Heidelberg in Germany to organize a virtual collaborative course in the subject of “Humanitarian Engineering” for the Spring 2021 semester.

By leveraging technology, COIL helps reduce barriers for students facing marginalizing circumstances which might otherwise restrict them from international educational involvement (Guimarães  & Finadri, 2021). Moreover, it allows interaction of students and faculty across distances and borders in a way that can increase global awareness and engagement.

Humanitarian Engineering (HE) is problem solving aimed at improving the capacity of underserved communities. Offering curriculum in this area has been documented to increase participation and retention of underrepresented and minority students in STEM fields (Adams, 2014).  The label, “underrepresented”, is contextual (i.e. a Latino student in Mexico would not be considered underrepresented but a Latino student in Denver would). For this paper we report on the particular experience of the MSU Denver students and how this COIL experience in HE encouraged participation by underrepresented populations and expanded global interaction.

Structure

This experience occurred completely on a virtual platform. Students from the 4 participating institutions attended synchronous lectures transmitted through Zoom, a cloud-based communication App. Over the course of 4 weeks, faculty from the collaborating institutions presented foundational content related to methodologies for implementing HE projects. After lecture material was presented, students were assigned to breakout rooms (a function within Zoom that allows separate sessions to take place within the meeting) where they could work in groups on course activities. Course material linked the development of problem analysis and applied approaches to the United Nations Development Goals (UNDP) (Gupta, Vegelin, 2016). High emphasis was placed on field methods for analyzing capacity and vulnerabilities of communities. Attention was paid to issues of social justice, equity, and environmental impact for the selection of Appropriate Technologies (Bauer, Brown 2014). Additionally, consideration was made for structure which encouraged inclusion of diverse thoughts from differing cultural perspective. Understanding student demographics was also utilize by instructors to direct the course with components that leveraged the “funds of knowledge” of participating students (Verdín, Smith, Lucena, 2019). This methodology applies experiences and backgrounds, often in a cultural context, as part of the learning activity. In this case, student groups focused on projects to address local vulnerabilities they could identify from their personal familiarity with their communities. This was particularly valuable in the community assessment and project selection where imbedded community experience of the students helped identify local issues that could be addressed through HE.

The 4-week seminar was followed by a 1-week workshop consisting of 2 hours per day activities in which students from the partnership universities worked on teams in Zoom breakout rooms to conceptualize projects that addressed problems in their communities that they identified using the methodology presented in earlier lectures. As such, the workshop facilitated a service-learning experience that connected perspectives of students from different parts of the world for projects that could assist their local communities.

Demographics of Students

Of the 22 MSU Denver students that participated in this experience 9 (40.9%) were female. Female students are generally underrepresented in engineering studies and in the case of MSU Denver engineering programs, this level of inclusion is approximately four times the overall baseline program representation. Additionally, 10 of the students involved (45.4%) identified demographically in categories considered underrepresented in the STEM fields in the US (Chen, Weko, 2009). 17 of the 22 participants identified as first-generation students. At MSU Denver there was no targeted marketing for this class. However, the course was open to all interested students with no prerequisites. This openess removed any perceived barriers to engineering and to global education. The diversity of this program reflects the general trend in HE education which has trends towards more inclusivity than the historically technocratic and masculine culture of traditional engineering education (Litchfield, K 2014)

Survey

To understand the impact of this experience, a survey was conducted pre and post workshop. The survey used a mixed methods approach to quantify outcome attributes of HE, COIL and Service projects including questions related to global engagement and participatory methods.
Students were asked to give ranked responses to questions related to these topics. The scores of the pre-course survey and post-course survey were compared using a T test methodology for two paired sample averages. 40 paired questions were asked.

Below are results from one set of paired questions that were given.Students provided ranked responses on a scale of 1-5:

Question 6. Other courses and means have helped me to understand the problems and needs faced by the community in which I live

Question 7. The International Humanitarian Engineering Workshop-Seminar (IHES) has helped me to understand the problems and needs faced by the community in which I live

Variable         responses       Median       Standard Dev        Error
———-           ——-         ————–   —————-    —————-
Other               18                         2.7778            1.0033              0.2365
IHES                  18                        3.5000            1.0981              0.2588

DIFERENCE      18                       -0.7222            1.5645              0.3688

T of responses =         -1.9585
Degrees of Freedom =    17
Significance  p  =      0.0668

Table 1: T test values for sample paired questions

The paired questions produced a mean T value of 2.934 with an average P value of .018. Thus, this survey indicated that awareness was gained by participants of the challenges faced in vulnerable communities in different global settings, of HE impacts on improving community capacity and the impact this course had on global engagement.

It is recognized that the reported results are limited by the small sample size, limited scope and theoretical nature of the projects. Additionally, only 18 of the 22 participants completed both surveys.

Closing Thoughts

This seminar and workshop showed the benefit an online platform can offer in creating opportunity for students to be involved in an international experience. This project demonstrated expansion of global awareness for participants. It attracted a significantly larger population of students categorized as underrepresented in STEM fields as compared to other engineering courses offered at the same institution.  The workshop offered an opportunity for cross-cultural learning and concepts were created that have potential to improve the capacity for low income and/or vulnerable communities in the partnership universities’ regions. Furthermore, connections were made between the students and a true international experience occurred via a virtual platform. Students have expressed that they hope to actualize some of the concepts generated in a post-pandemic setting.

References

Adams, E., & Burgoyne, M. (2014). “Integrating Humanitarian Engineering Design Projects to Increase Retention of Underrepresented Minority Students and to Achieve Interpersonal Skill Related Learning Outcomes,” Proceedings of ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Indianapolis, IN.

Aydin, H., & Cinkaya, M. (2018). “Global Citizenship Education and Diversity (GCEDS): A Measure of Students’ Attitudes Related to Social Studies Program in Higher Education.” Journal for Multicultural Education 12 (3):, 221–236.

Bauer, A.M. & Brown, A. (2014). “Quantitative Assessment of Appropriate Technology” Proc Eng. 78, 345–358. DOI:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.07.076

Chen, X., & Weko, T. (2009). Students who Study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in Postsecondary Education. National Center for Education Statistics 2009-61

Guimarães, F. & Finardi, R. (2021). “Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Internationalization: COIL as Alternative Thirdspace.” Globalization, Societies and Education. DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2021.1875808

Gupta, J., & Vegelin, C. (2016). Sustainable Development Goals and Inclusive Development. International Environmental Agreements 16, 433–448 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-016-9323-z

Litchfield, K. (2014). “Characterizing and Understanding the Growing Population of Socially Engaged Engineers through Engineers Without Borders-USA.” Dissertation, University of Colorado Boulder

Verdín, D., Smith, J.& Lucena, J., (2019, June), “Recognizing Engineering Students’ Funds of Knowledge: Creating and Validating Survey Measures.” ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Tampa, Florida. https://peer.asee.org/33226 

Reviving the Art of Listening as Tool for Global Engagement

by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Dec 22, 2021 | Articles

Posted:  Thursday, December 22, 2021

By: Kathryn Dwyer Navajas, University of Florida

The University of Florida is in a small college town far from the Spanish-speaking cities of south Florida. In 2012, when my department chair asked me to put together a service-learning course in Spanish, the local Spanish-speaking community was mostly affiliated with the university and not much in need of service from second language learners of Spanish or even heritage speakers, most of whom were very clear that any career in Florida would necessitate an advanced level of linguistic and cultural competence in Spanish. Pondering the options, I found an eager collaborator in Deborah Hendrix, of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, who assured me that we could launch an oral history project in Spanish. My learning objectives were for students to improve their Spanish, develop empathy by learning about their immigrant neighbors and families, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and embrace cultural humility through the art of asking questions that prompt reflection and develop the art of listening. Deborah added improved digital literacy, which students would realize through filming a 30-minute interview and then editing it down to 5 minutes and adding subtitles. The oral history project was part of a course focused on the pull and push factors of immigration from Spanish-speaking countries.

The classroom for this course is itself a microcosm of cultural and linguistic differences and insecurities. The students enrolled come from a variety of backgrounds: many are the children of immigrants and some of those are heritage speakers of Spanish; some are second-language learners of Spanish. Apart from the few for whom Spanish is their strongest language, all of them express insecurity about their linguistic competence in that language. Having to do something important in a language one feels insecure about is a way to develop empathy; students experience in the project the reality that many immigrants live every day. They realize that effective communication does not necessarily involve flawless grammar; that the heart can at times communicate more effectively than the head.

The course content challenges the official history they have learned in school as well as the explanation given in many immigrant families that begin and end with “we came to give you a better life,” both of which often have the effect of discouraging further inquiry. Students find themselves studying about the U.S. role in destabilizing their parents´ country of origin and suddenly they have more questions. Even students whose parents came on the Mayflower must come to terms with the legacy of U.S. policies in the countries whose language and cultures they have embraced.

Students thus undertake the oral history project from a place of vulnerability and uncertainty. In order to catch them before they retreat into the known, into what is comfortable, we connect them to the work that students before them have done so that they feel part of a much bigger project. They review the videos made in previous semesters and choose the topic for the video they will make from suggestions solicited from students at the end of the previous semester.  Even while they are working on their own interviews and then editing them, they have to gather six friends, acquaintances, or perfect strangers, select four 5-minute interviews from previous videos, present them and lead a discussion about what they are learning about the immigrant experience. Even though they don´t know everything, even though they may have never discussed these issues with those gathered, they go out into the world to create a space for immigrant voices to be heard and engaged.

Another challenge that students face is group work, which can be fraught, but the oral history project can´t be done alone, so we work to form teams of three that balance linguistic, technical, and people skills. Students must negotiate varying levels of commitment even as they make complex decisions that require cultural sensitivity and ethical discernment, such as how to edit down to 5 minutes what a narrator has told in 30 minutes while respecting that person´s voice and story. At times they have to decide how to handle a story that paints too rosy a picture or one that goes off the rails into a tirade tinged by loss. They have to decide how to prepare subtitles when the speaker is shifting between Spanish and English or when a mistake is made in one language or the other. The decisions they make as a group involve parsing issues of power, emotion, and history. Interviewing a Puerto Rican who arrived months after Hurricane María in 2017 or a Colombian who fled narcoviolence decades ago or a Cuban who walked from Panama to the southern border when the “wet foot-dry foot policy” ended requires empathy and historical knowledge that we strive to develop through curricular choices and classroom practices throughout the semester.

It is now easier than ever to launch an oral history project with global reach. Technology has greatly evolved, and videoconferencing in response to travel restrictions now makes it easier to focus more on the people and the stories they tell than on the challenges of how to record them: lighting, audio, dogs barking, camera angles, the rule of thirds, etc.  While there is some loss of the human warmth we experience in the presence of others, recording on Zoom is much easier than arranging a meeting of four people, hauling equipment, and dealing with so many variables, and it also allows for interviewing people in other countries.

Reviving the art of listening disrupts the drive to make the easy choices, to get the job done, to check off three more credits on the way to a college degree. Tuning in to the voices that contest the official history, that confound the national discourse about immigration, that crack open the family narrative means being willing to reframe what a student may think she knows. Listening to the voices within the team and making collective decisions means being willing to compromise. Listening to the narrators, whose accents and lexicons and difficulty with two languages reflects their own struggles and insecurities, gives students permission to transcend the fear of saying something wrong and to reach across cultural and linguistic differences to engage as global citizens. While our universities pride themselves on producing knowledge, the art of listening and the gift of attention lay the foundation for relationships, across borders, identities, and multiple categories of difference, relationships that, when harnessed to academic knowledge, may provide the horsepower necessary to pull us out of long-standing quandaries about immigration.

To view videos of some of the oral history projects we have done in this course: https://www.youtube.com/user/SPOHP111/search?query=spanish

To explore SPOHP resources for launching oral history projects: https://oral.history.ufl.edu/research/tutorials

(Re)Place Pedagogies for Remaking Place and Spaces Together

by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Dec 22, 2021 | Articles

Posted: Thursday, December 23, 2021

By: Danielle Lake, Director of Design Thinking & Associate Professor, Elon University; Vanessa Drew-Branch,, Assistant Professor, Human Studies Services, Elon University; Sandy Marshall,, Assistant Professor, Geography, Elon University; Bobbi Ruffin, Director of Mayco Bigelow Community Center at North Park; Shineece Sellars, Executive Director of African-American Cultural Arts and History Center

While studying abroad is often seen as a primary pathway towards global education and cultural humility, it can be impractical, inequitable, unsustainable, and questionable as a method of intercultural learning (Hartman et al. 2020; Wick et al. 2019). Meanwhile, often overlooked  forms of boundary crossing—including intercultural service learning with migrants and refugees (De Leon 2014), engagement in intentionally multicultural group work (Reed & Garson 2017), critical service learning (Mitchell 2007), and liberatory decolonizing pedagogies (Constanza-Chock 2020), have proven effective in contributing to intercultural learning. However, even these proximat forms of face-to-face global learning have become a challenge in the era of social distancing and remote instruction. Rather than conceptualizing global citizenship education as only taking place in a particular global context necessitating international border crossing, we explore how interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and interracial collaboration, as carried out through in-person campus/community partnerships and remote translocal connections, can foster intercultural learning. In order to contribute to critical and emerging conversations around diversity, inclusion, and equity in global education, we outline our process, initial findings, and tentative recommendations from the design and facilitation of a cross-course community-based learning project with a local African American history organization and community center under conditions of social distancing over the fall of 2020.

Boundary Crossing Curriculum: Collaboration as Intercultural Learning

The What, Why, When, & Where: The 2020 Power and Place Collaborative was formalized during the summer of 2020. The collaborative includes the African-American Cultural Arts and History Center, the Mayco Bigelow North Park Community Center, and faculty and students from an interdisciplinary cross-course collaboration including an honors sophomore seminar entitled Place and Placing-Making and a senior seminar in health and human services. In support of community-identified goals to center narratives from the African American community in Burlington and surrounding areas in Alamance country, the aim was to create interdisciplinary near-peer teams of students who would work together to conduct remote oral history interviews with community members and co-produce public facing digital stories from these interviews. The collaborative interviewing and digital storytelling process, combined with walking tours of local neighborhoods, created opportunities for students to enter into relationship with, and contribute to, the local community. This place-based experiential learning was combined with trans-local learning in the form of guest speakers, both from the surrounding region and further afield, who shared insights from place-making initiatives in their own communities.

The How: Grounded in a commitment to mutually beneficial community/university relationships, collaborative members spent the summer co-creating the curriculum, including designing assignments, sharing readings, planning the oral history interviews, and scheduling the walking tours and guest speakers.

The Fall 2020 semester began with a focus on building relationships between students and with community partners through class visits from community partners and walking tours of historically black neighborhoods. Before beginning the work of interviewing community members, students first created their own autobiographical digital story examining how their personal sense of place has been impacted by the events of the global pandemic and/or the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Prior to interviewing community members, students also learned the technical tools of digital audio recording and video editing, studied the practical and ethical challenges of community-based learning, and practiced empathetic listening and peer reviewing. These practices provided students with an opportunity to experience first hand how sharing one’s story publically can be both inspirational and empowering, as well as fraught with questions about personal privacy and authenticity.

Over the course of a week, students conducted oral history interviews remotely with community members, who attended their interview sessions using a laptop and microphone set-up at the Mayco Bigelow Community Center. Students transcribed interviews and produced a draft script for their digital story, sharing their draft with community partners who provided additional context and suggestions on potential themes to emphasize. In alignment with relational, cocreative design practices, students then shared a revised script with community members for feedback and suggestions. After collecting images, video, sounds, and music, students edited together their digital stories for additional peer and community feedback. Finally, students and community storytellers presented and celebrated their co-produced stories at a public screening via Zoom.

Aligned with critical race theory, this relational and iterative process developed a sense of community connection, introduced students to a critical understanding of how social constructions of race, place, and identity intersect, and demonstrated the importance of centering on Black voices. Seeking to go beyond victim narratives or understandings of place based on deficiency or lack, we drew upon McKittrick’s (2011) notion of a Black sense of place that “brings into focus the ways in which racial violences […] shape, but do not wholly define, black worlds” (947). As Delgado and Stefancic (2017) point out, “powerfully written stories, and narratives may begin a process of correction in our system of belief and categories by calling attention to neglected evidence and reminding readers(viewers) of our common humanity” (51).

What Did We Learn? Mixed Methods Longitudinal Assessment

Given our commitment to understand how locally situated engagement mediated by technologies yields outcomes similar to and different from conventional forms of education abroad, the collaborative is also engaged in a mixed methods, longitudinal research study. The study seeks to understand how our approach to engaged learning 1) generates knowledge networks connecting students, instructors, and community partners across multiple locales, 2) impacts efforts towards deep listening and empathy, and 3) imbues a greater sense of humility, nimbleness, and resiliency. As a part of this study students were asked to complete the Global Engagement Survey at pre- and post-semester intervals. In order to track the longitudinal value of this approach, they will also be asked to complete the survey two years out. In addition, we have conducted observational analyses and plan to conduct semi-structured interviews with students over the next four years.

While it is too early to share substantive longitudinal results from the GES survey, initial analysis of written reflections and our own observations have led us to believe this cross-course community-based learning project increased students’ understanding of and appreciation for local place history, including the incremental and small scale efforts that people pursue toward the broader aim of social and racial justice. As one student reflected at the end of the semester, “I was really blown away by [our interviewee’s] commitment to the community and how hard she has worked to create a sense of place.” This student went on to note that this project has led her to commit to designing-with communities, saying “I learned so much through this project and I hope to bring this knowledge to future community-oriented endeavors.”

Another student wrote that they especially valued the opportunity to break “the narrative of discussing Black geographies as placeless.” This student valued how the stories did not attempt to present placed narratives within a “context of suppression and loss,” saying their oral histories engaged both “big thematic questions about race and the County” while also “celebrating the lives of our interviewees.” In this way, the collaborative storytelling process not only created opportunities for learning about and engaging with community at the local scale, but also thinking critically about broader scale issues of racial justice.

We also found that the iterative, experiential, and relational learning process of collaborating directly with community members appeared to teach students resiliency and humility and confronted them with the real world ethical challenges of participatory research and design.  One student put it aptly, saying that their “digital story is about learning and unlearning.” Another began their post-course reflection by writing, “I was rather nervous at the idea of interviewing and then telling the story of the interviewee.” However, after getting feedback from the community partners and the interviewee, and after “hours upon hours of hard work and sitting with this story,” the student reported that they “learned so much” from the process, including the strong influence that place had on their interviewee.

Challenges and Tentative Recommendations

Given that these projects unfolded in the fall of 2020, the long-term, post-course value of these practices is yet to be determined. We are committed to pursuing our longitudinal, mixed method study over the next four years in order to trace the threads that unfold. Nevertheless, we can offer some tentative lessons learned and recommendations.

Our collaboration benefitted from institutional support for community-based learning including project funding, direct support via reduced teaching loads for faculty, access to summer stipends for curriculum development, and (limited) structures for team-teaching. Even still, our participatory approach clashes with the need to have relationships and plans in place prior to student enrollment in our courses. We sought to mitigate this by involving students in the post-project evaluation and design ideation for future iterations of the partnership. Likewise, we aim to involve students from past course cohorts in these future iterations, whether as teaching assistants, interns, or undergraduate researchers. The outcomes of this long-term approach to creating scaffolded opportunities to deepen engagement with local communities will be the subject of further research.

References

Alden Rivers, B., Armellini, A., Maxwell, R., Allen, S. and Durkin, C. (2015). Social innovation education: Towards a framework for learning design. Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning. 5(4), 383-400.

Bennion, E. (2013). Moving assessment forward: Teaching civic engagement and beyond. In A. R. Millett McCartney, E. A. Bennion, & D. Simpson (Eds.). Teaching civic engagement: From student to active citizen (pp. 437-445). Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.

Brown, T. (2019). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation (2nd ed.). Harper Business.

Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. Cambridge: MIT Press.

De Leon, N. (2014). Developing intercultural competence by participating in intensive intercultural service-learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 21(1), 17-30.

Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press.

Hartman, E., Reynolds, N. P., Ferrarini, C., Messmore, N., Evans, S., Al-Ebahim, B., & Brown, J. M. (2020). Coloniality-decoloniality and critical global citizenship: Identity, belonging, and education abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of study abroad, 32(1), 33–59.

Hernandez, K. (2016). Service and learning for whom? Toward a critical decolonizing bicultural service learning pedagogy. Doctoral Dissertation, Loyola Marymount University.

Hill, P.L., Pasquesi, N., Bowman, A., & Brandenburger, J. W. (2016). Longitudinal research and student civic outcomes. In J. A. Hatcher, R. G. Bringle, & T. W. Hahn (Eds.), Research on Service Learning and Student Civic Outcomes: Conceptual Frameworks and Methods (pp. 283- 302). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Hoover-Plonk, R. M. (2015). The potential role of domestic co-curricular alternative spring break (ASB) experiences on participants’ later civic behaviors and attitudes [Doctoral dissertation, East Carolina University]. East Carolina University ScholarShip. https://thescholarship.ecu.edu/

Hurd, C. A., & Bowen, G. A. (2020). Attending to outcomes, relationships, and processes to advance democratic practices in service-learning and community engagement. International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, 8(1), 1-8.

Kennedy, E. D., McMahon, S. R., & Reis, D. (2020). Independence in the making: Using Makerspace experiences to build foundational entrepreneurial competencies. Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy 21(4), 1-14.

McKittrick, K. (2011). On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(8), 947-963.

Micheli, P., Wilner, S. J., Bhatti, S., Mura, M., and Beverland, M.B. (2019). Doing DT: conceptual review, synthesis and research agenda. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 36(2), 124-148.

Mitchell, T. D. (2007). Critical service-learning as social justice education: a case study of the citizen scholars program. Equity & Excellence in Education, 40(2), 101–112.

Reid, R., & Garson, K. (2017). Rethinking multicultural group work as intercultural learning. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21(3), 195-212.

Ruha, B. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new jim code. Polity.

Seidel, V.P. and Fixson, S.K. (2013). Adopting design thinking in novice teams. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 30(1), 19-33.

Wick, D., Willis, T. Y., Rivera, J., Lueker, E., & Hernandez, M. (2019). Asset based learning abroad: First generation Latinx college students leveraging and increasing community
cultural wealth in Costa Rica. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 16(2), 63-85.

Centering Student Needs and Marketing for Global Education Beyond 2021

by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Jul 21, 2021 | Articles

Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2021
By: Subgroup of 2020-2021 Education Abroad: Marketing, Outreach & Recruitment Task Force

As college students return to campus and study abroad resumes with increased vaccinations around the world, what will study abroad look like and how will we reach out to marginalized and diverse students to market study abroad? COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all of our lives but it has impacted our students of color even more economically, academically, and socially. Do our students even need to study abroad at a moment when meeting the basic needs of their family and community seems overwhelming?

As we consider reaching out to students about study abroad and marketing study abroad to them, let us consider the needs of our diverse students and work with them to reimagine their own global education and engagement.  In this work, we must be mindful of our own office’s capacity and institutional resources that can support students as they chart their own path.

Student Needs

“If students are not well, not only physically, but mentally, if they are not living in a safe space or don’t have access to nutrition, if they can’t pay their bills, those are the things I care about most as a faculty member this semester,” Soria said. “It’s about a change in perspective, having a philosophical shift of mind, to really be more ethically devoted to students and caring and compassionate to students.” (Inside Higher Ed)

The concept of Maslow before Bloom was quite helpful to us in our thinking.  Basic needs must be met first before students can study and think about their own path, including study abroad.  Even students who were planning to study abroad before the pandemic may have concluded that this is no longer an option for them.

We need to meet our students where they are, with empathy. Let us listen to our students tell the story of this moment and let them guide the conversation about what is possible for them in the post-COVID era amidst disproportionate economic impacts on BIPOC communities, growing tensions from racial reckoning, increases in anti-Asian violence, headlines of mass shootings, ongoing sagas of immigration struggles, and uncertain vaccine regulations.

Marketing to them during this time will look more like individual conversations about their goals and how to help them meet their own goals, as opposed to beautiful pictures of a group of students in a stunning location on social media.  Students may have been personally affected by the loss of a friend or relative due to the pandemic and hence desire to ask questions in a more private setting.

For example, in addressing the barriers faced by first-generation students it is important to speak with them about international travel, the fear of being away from family and friends, and the need for a passport.

Global Education & Engagement

While a traditional study abroad experience may not be possible for students who are about to graduate and students whose life situations have changed because of COVID-19, let us reframe the conversation with those students and speak about what is possible and what the options are. The key is to broaden their perspective so that they can learn about opportunities that are available but may not be familiar to them, and to remind them that they can have a meaningful international experience even if it is not called study abroad. Taking the time to explain these opportunities to them is essential, as they may not be familiar.

Some of the opportunities that exist for students to go abroad after graduation include employment opportunities abroad, graduate school abroad, international internships, grants and scholarships, and partnerships. There are numerous opportunities to teach English abroad in a foreign country, whether through an organization such as JET in Japan and the Teaching Assistant Program in France, or through an organization like English First. Students may explore graduate school abroad, attending an American university with a campus abroad or an accredited foreign institution. There are numerous grants and scholarships such as the US Student Fulbright Program and Schwarzman Scholars that support graduate education abroad. Opportunities such as the Peace Corps also help graduating students live and work abroad.

Beyond speaking about international opportunities after graduation, what are some ways that institutions can maintain global engagement with students even while few students are studying abroad? A passport initiative on campus for US citizens who have never had a passport may help students who have never been abroad to prepare for study abroad or international travel in the future.  Requiring them to learn about study abroad as they obtain their passport may help your office with visibility.

Virtual exchanges, conversations, and internships with global partners are also an innovative way of helping students and your institution to maintain global engagement during this time of limited mobility. Roundtables with international colleagues and developing events, such as workshops or symposiums on international scholarships can help spread awareness on global opportunities that are usually reserved for International Education Week.

Office Capability & Institutional Resources

Helping students think through going abroad after graduation is not something that study abroad offices regularly do; it will take time and resources at a time when all of us are dealing with so much.  Does your office have the ability to do this additional work with students? If so, study abroad team members are uniquely positioned to speak to this, either because of their own experiences abroad or their work in international education.

In speaking with students and helping to explore their paths, it is important to refer them to resources that are available on campus.  Several offices can be key in supporting students in their planning.  The Career Center will work with students applying for positions abroad; the Fellowship office will support students as they apply for national & international scholarships and grants.  Other key offices on campus could be the International Student office, the Counseling Center, the Alumni Affairs office, faculty, student organizations, and financial aid.

Ideally, some of these conversations are best to be held on an individual basis.  However, we must be cognizant of our offices’ resources and human capital.  When possible, try recording a virtual presentation or create a page on your website dedicated to additional information such as post-graduate opportunities for students to access on their own time.  Although it may seem impersonal, especially for non-traditional students, it will be more efficient than trying to schedule individual conversations with every student or it may shorten your meeting time as you can always refer them back to the online resources.

One thing is clear, we will need to redefine global education and how we market it, and despite our best intentions, we cannot do it all ourselves.  We will need to leverage our resources now more than ever.  Reach out to your professional networks.  For example, we can collaborate with outside foundations and organizations that can support our students in their global education journeys with graduate international opportunities such as Schwarzman Scholars.  As we ask students to think about things in a new light, can your institution do the same?  Can they be flexible with certain policies to allow students to study abroad before they graduate or create new ways for students who have just graduated to earn graduate credit for a summer study abroad experience?  Can you work with your providers to offer faculty workshops or fundraising strategies for students?

As you assess your students’ needs in the post-COVID era, you may be able to identify not only the challenges faced, but also new opportunities to make global education a reality for your students. We believe the key will be to always maintain an empathic approach.

Reimagining Global Education. Our Thoughts for the Future

Schedule a primer meeting with your office. Maslow before Bloom does not only apply to your students.  We encourage you to check in with your team regularly and take a pulse of where they are in their wellness journey.  How are they coping with the myriad of social, economic, and political issues happening at the same time? Like the students we work with, our team members are navigating unprecedented challenges.  What can the team realistically take on during this time as additional projects? Are there resources across campus that would be helpful during this time that would decrease your team’s workload? First start with ‘self’ and then organize on what can be done.

Empathizing with students. Show compassion for life circumstances and missed opportunities by engaging with them in meaningful conversation and working through the range of emotions. Acknowledge the difficult truth that students may not have the quintessential study abroad experience that can be a hallmark of the undergraduate experience. FOMO is real, so how might that inform future opportunities to pursue? Be mindful of the difference between espoused or publicly stated support, versus the support that is actually enacted in day to day interactions. Be courageous in naming the impacts of today on our mental health and normalize the asking for help.

Market with empathy. Hold a focus group with students you wish to target and build some strategy around what their specific needs are.  For example, developing a passport initiative, like Georgia State University, to offer free passports to underprivileged students that are interested in studying abroad later or going abroad after graduation. Events like this promote your office and programs while addressing a roadblock for students.  Consider ways of involving parents and families in clarifying what global education can do for students’ future job and career prospects. What is the cost, time, and energy required to embark on these alternative paths?  Parents will benefit from seeing this experience as an investment.

Use your programming as a pathway for global education. Lead with budgeting and finance workshops that can help with study abroad and general goal planning. Or tag along in workshops from your financial aid office to identify ways for self-fundraising you can recommend to students concerned about meeting the costs of study abroad.  Coach students through exploring other opportunities to gain hard skills, work experience, language skills, and post grad opportunities. Especially nowadays, encourage students to join language study initiatives where virtual programs can accommodate high quality practice with native language speakers all over the world.

Finding time to reflect and enact the lessons learned.  Hold debrief sessions with students to keep reframing our work. Hold round tables with past participants and prospective students to co-author a new vision of global programs. Take time to review their experiences with their program’s and office staff. If possible, create a brief report that can be used as documentation to advocate to your institution’s leadership.

Additional thoughts for the future. We leave you with other questions to consider in this conversation. What are the needs of students’ most impacted by COVID and how might you prioritize them? What is your office’s capacity to account for the imbalances of resources on campus? How can you create more purposeful and intentional marketing towards students who otherwise would not have the opportunity to engage globally due to COVID? How can you expand your professional network to include people that can better support your marketing strategies? We don’t have all the answers but offer these insights to help you create change in the places and spaces that matter to you the most.

Resources

Anderson, Greta. “Alcohol Affects College Women’s Academics More Than Men.” Inside Higher Ed. June 2, 2020.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/06/02/alcohol-affects-college-womens-academics-more-men

Kimble‐Hill, A. C., Rivera‐Figueroa, A., Chan, B. C., Lawal, W. A., Gonzalez, S., Adams, M. R., Heard, G. L., Gazley, J. L., & Fiore‐Walker, B. (2020). Insights gained into marginalized students access challenges during the COVID‐19 academic response. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 3391– 3395. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00774

McCorristin, Roric. “Diversifying Study Abroad Participation: What historically black colleges and universities can teach predominately white institutions.” NAFSA. November 1, 2019. https://www.nafsa.org/ie-magazine/2019/11/1/diversifying-study-abroad-participation

Tai, D., Shah, A., Doubeni, C. A., Sia, I. G., & Wieland, M. L. (2021). The Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the United States. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 72(4), 703–706. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa815

GSU Free Passport Initiative:  https://mystudyabroad.gsu.edu/freepassport/