by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021
Authors:
- Patricia Sagasti Suppes, PhD, Director of Global Education, Hartwick College
As most higher education institutions worldwide pivoted quickly to online learning due to the pandemic, some began to see an opportunity to innovate through partnerships. Very little has been written about the connection between transnational partnerships and greater access to international education. This article seeks to fill that gap and mentions some examples of transformative projects that will provide unique and long-lasting collaborations that increase equity and accessibility to and from U.S. higher education. The pandemic has paused most international activity, and many are using this time to lay the groundwork for innovative new models. The examples mentioned in this article are in the planning stages and expect to be rolled out later this year or next.
Partnership structure
Direct international partnerships are a relatively new model in the US, and our thinking about them is evolving (Buck Sutton, 2020). Changing needs and emergency situations like the 2008 financial crisis and the current COVID-19 pandemic have exposed the weaknesses in the traditional direct exchange model in which the extent of a partnership involved the mobility of a small number of students. Comprehensive partnerships have broader and deeper connections through multidisciplinary collaborations that involve both leadership and faculty (Gatewood, 2020b). Inviting faculty to actively participate in the development of programs provides creativity and buy-in and greater integration into academic programs, which in turn gives more students access to international education as it is woven through the curriculum. Thoughtful development of deeper partnerships that encourage varied collaborations between partners can include traditional direct exchange and incorporate new models.
As we strive to recover from the current crisis and are finally becoming more aware as a nation of racial and economic inequalities, there is ever more recognition of the importance of global interconnectedness. As A. Gordon (2020) points out, international education is a high-impact practice that can foster transformative experiences, but it is traditionally not accessible to many students. Transnational partnerships can offer a greater depth of interaction through joint research, meaningful Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), traditional direct exchanges, community engagement, and sharing of resources.
Partnership Models
Transnational Education (TNE) has been practiced by UK institutions for many years, but it is a relatively new practice in the US. TNE differs from international education essentially in location. As defined by Caruana & Montgomery (2015), citing the Global Alliance on Transnational Education, international education involves student mobility to a partner institution, whereas transnational education involves students staying in their home country and receiving an education from an international institution. The latter is achieved through online education, branch campuses, or franchising. However, this is an ever-evolving field and new models combine aspects of both.
One example of this diversified collaboration is being planned out by Hilbert College in Hamburg, New York. Hilbert’s President, Dr. Michael Brophy, has set up partnerships with institutions in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Turkey, Portugal, and other countries for progression articulation, micro hubs, and dual degrees1 (personal communication, March 25, 2021). Hilbert students are also encouraged to study abroad at the partner institution. Because it’s a partner, Hilbert can cover the students’ room and board and travel costs. Marketing and outreach efforts to communicate advantages and affordability will encourage Hilbert students, many of whom are first-generation students, to study abroad. Since faculty have the greatest influence on students, their involvement in projects develops the buy-in needed to promote programs. In addition, these are true partnerships that foster “equality in decision-making, mutual influence, and mutual benefit” (George Mwangi, 2017, p. 36) in that they equally benefit both institutions and their students.
An example of a new model that involves creative collaboration is being planned between Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York and the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) in Gloucestershire, England (P. Delaney & N. Ravenscroft, personal communication February 22, 2021). In their Mobility Entrepreneurship program, faculty will teach connected courses in which students will work collaboratively online to develop a project. In January of 2022 the U.S. students will travel to England and both groups will go together to Berlin for an international experience that will involve networking with entrepreneurs. Throughout the semester students will continue to collaborate and have virtual lectures. At the end of the semester the English students will travel to Hartwick and the groups will present their work together. Both institutions largely serve local students who would not traditionally travel abroad, and while the travel portion of the linked courses is not mandatory, there will be financial support for travel. Students who choose not to travel will have the chance to participate in the virtual part of the collaboration and will host the other students on their own campus. Both institutions plan to make this the basis for broader collaborations.
Community colleges are also beginning to participate in international partnerships. College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California and Universidade Fernando Pessoa in Porto, Portugal are creating a Canyons micro hub on UFP’s campus that will provide UFP students the opportunity to earn an Associate’s degree in one of ten majors (J. Cheng-Levine & N. Trigo, personal communication March 30, 2021). Students can transfer to a four-year program at UFP or at a U.K. or U.S. institution, or go directly on the job market. As part of the agreement, there will be faculty and student mobility in both directions, facilitated by institutional funds. This opens opportunities for community college students to travel and for European students to gain a shorter, more affordable degree with an intercultural component.
How this helps students and communities
The most effective international experiential learning is transdisciplinary and occurs throughout an education. This can be best achieved through embedding international experiences in the curriculum in diverse combinations (in person, online, hybrid). Short exposures such as guest lecturers and longer experiences such as semester-long collaboration, as well as faculty-led programs and dual degree programs, have a greater impact when there are multiple global connections. As C. Duncanson-Hales (2014) points out, supporting students to become global citizens involves developing their skills over their entire higher education experience (p. 93). With a variety of experiences students from the US who couldn’t afford or hadn’t considered the possibility of study abroad benefit from multiple intercultural experiences. Even those who can’t travel, such as students with family obligations or undocumented students, can benefit, and students in countries with lower average incomes can better afford a U.S. education.
Conclusion
Traditional international partnership models are being reconsidered, and institutions are heading toward more strategic and creative connections (Gatewood, 2020a). In order to better serve all students, we must engage in more meaningful and equitable international partnerships.
References
Buck Sutton, S. (2020). Foreword. In J. Gatewood (Ed.), NAFSA’s guide to international partnerships: Developing sustainable academic collaborations [Kindle Book Ed.]. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Caruana, V. & Montgomery, C. (2015). Understanding the transnational education landscape: Shifting positionality and the complexities of partnership. Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, 8(1), 5–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24717999
Duncanson-Hales, C. (2014). Chapter response II: International experiential learning. In N. Loewen, C. Duncanson-Hales, & G. B. Lester (Authors), Effective social learning: A collaborative, globally-networked pedagogy. 1517 Media, 92–98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9m0t51.15
Gatewood, J. (2020a). Introduction. In J. Gatewood (Ed.), NAFSA’s guide to international partnerships: developing sustainable cademic collaborations [Kindle Book Ed.]. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Gatewood, J. (2020b). Comprehensive international partnerships. In J. Gatewood (Ed.), NAFSA’s guide to international partnerships: Developing sustainable academic collaborations [Kindle Book Ed.]. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
George Mwangi, C. A. (2017). Partner positioning: Examining international higher education partnerships through a mutuality lens. The Review of Higher Education, 41(1), 33–60.
Gordon, A. J. (2020). Embracing our greater purpose: The role of international education in advancing educational equity. In L. Beger (Ed.), Social Justice Education: Research, Practice, and Perspectives [Kindle Book Ed.]. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Sidhu, R. (2015). Using postcolonial scholarship to address equity in transnational higher education. Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in theSocial Sciences, 8(1), 73–94. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24718002
by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021
Authors:
- Philip A. Ojo, Professor of French and Affiliated Faculty of Global Learning at Agnes Scott College
Global Learning at Agnes Scott College includes a week of cultural immersion travel, which allows participants to “explore and engage with the world” through exposures to vastly different people, places, cultures, and perspectives, and through learning activities that build intercultural competencies.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing travel restrictions, the college was compelled to look for alternative global learning opportunities, including new teaching strategies, digital educational tools that are resistant to disruptions, and local global resources. Simply put, the pandemic made us rethink and reimagine our pedagogy for effective instruction and sustainable learning.
Like many institutions, Agnes Scott College went virtual for all educational activities, including the required week-long global cultural immersion travel. This shift entailed a tremendous amount of creativity, flexibility, adaptability, and resilience in the face of various uncertainties that threatened to disrupt learning. Going virtual meant creating meaningful virtual programs that would help achieve the learning outcomes of global learning by “connecting globally while grounded at home.” Indeed, if there is a silver lining to these challenging times, it is the growth of virtual programs which has increased access to international education and global learning (Yavich, 2021).
It is within this framework that students of Journeys – (Post)Colonial Legacies (Martinique & New Orleans, LA) participated in a virtual global cultural immersion program March 8-11, 2021, as an alternative to the traditional week-long study tours of the destinations. The French Caribbean island of Martinique and New Orleans, LA were selected to provide opportunities for virtual explorations of (post)colonial legacies.
In order to gain some of the advantages of in-person study tours, and in consonance with Li Ling Apple Koh (2021)’s belief that “[t]he key to a virtual tour is to increase student involvement through engaging activities and meaningful interactions [and to create] an engaging virtual tour experience that is an alternative to in-person field trips,” the program included engaging presentations, tours, recorded talks, discussions, reflections, collaborative tasks, and other learning experiences that provided meaningful immersion experiences. All of the sessions were led by experts with specialized experience in their respective fields.
During the first sessions, participants learnt about Martinique’s precolonial and colonial histories, the consequences of the abolition of slavery, and the social structures in contemporary Martinique, as well as the complex history and cultural diversity of New Orleans, a melting pot of European, African, and American cultures.
A multimedia presentation, interspersed with breakout room activities and engaging discussions, allowed participants to realize that for four centuries, almost all aspects of life in Martinique were deeply influenced by the sugarcane-based economy, with production organized on plantations that depended on slave labor. They also listened to a pre-recorded audio tour and watched a photo slideshow that walked them around the grounds of the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana to learn about the history of slavery on a sugarcane plantation.
Another multimedia presentation on La Savane des Esclaves, a reconstructed village, provided an opportunity to discover Martinique’s history and traditions through the lens of slavery. “New Orleans Music Tour” spoke to the African roots of this culture and contextualized its connections to the Caribbean. The presentation allowed participants to learn about jazz and brass bands, as well as rock ‘n roll, and how each genre has contributed to the unique cultural identity of New Orleans.
Participants learned to make local Martinique dishes under the instruction of a Martinican chef, who weaved the history of the local cuisine into the lesson. The hands-on and collaborative activity allowed participants to realize that Martinican cuisine is a mixture of African, French, Caribbean, and South Asian traditions; the recipes often reflect the complex history and diverse cultural heritage of the island. They also followed along with a chef from the New Orleans School of Cooking to learn to make classic New Orleans dishes, which are a blend of West African, French, and Spanish cooking techniques.
At the end of the virtual program, students exceeded expectations in several learning outcomes, including identifying and describing (post)colonial legacies; i.e., how slavery and colonization have shaped and are still shaping the relationships between marginalized cultures and dominant culture; and engaging across differences and in meaningful intercultural communication.
During the post-program reflection session, participants listed the following keywords that best captured their virtual global cultural immersion experience: “thought-provoking,” “eye-opening,” “connectedness,” “impressive,” “expansive,” “well-rounded,” “chaotic good,” “interesting,” “informative,” “intriguing,” “engaging,” “bonding,” “connected,” and “immersive.” This positive feedback confirmed that the learning outcomes of the program were achieved. It also validates Seifan, Dada, and Berenjian’s idea that active learning—especially in the forms of collaborative tasks, team-based and project-based learning, and hands-on activities, even virtual—enables students to make meaningful connections between concepts and real-life experiences (2019). Zoom interactivity and the fact that most of the participants are digital natives also contributed to the success of the virtual global cultural immersion experience because participants were able to easily connect, interact, and foster community among themselves. In this way, they gained some of the benefits of in-person learning experiences.
In order to enhance students’ virtual learning, the institution also availed itself of the local global learning resources provided by Atlanta, a global metropolis that offers a rich ethnic and cultural diversity, by participating in the Global Communities Internship Program1, a collaborative project funded by the Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative (AGREC). This project facilitates global learning and intercultural understanding in a local context by providing unique opportunities for connection with immigrant communities, cultural exchange, and service-learning from local global perspectives. Representatives of the partner institutions and community organizations attended the mandatory virtual pre-global cultural immersion classes, and their active participation and engaging conversations provided enriching experiences for Agnes Scott College students. An Agnes Scott College student is currently interning with one of the community organizations, with the goal of taking advantage of the transformative power of virtual, local global, experiential learning.
Overall, the virtual global cultural immersion program was a truly transformative experience. This innovative way of teaching global learning broadened the cultural horizons of participants: they were immersed in Martinican and New Orleans cultures through the lens of (post)colonial legacies, and they demonstrated global awareness and intercultural understanding. The virtual program was a literal transposition of the in-person experiences participants typically get at the physical destinations, with the advantages that participants did not have to leave their homes, travel leaders did not have to worry about in-country and international transportation challenges, there was minimal carbon footprint, and there was plenty of time to focus on the content, as long as participants knew how to manage online (Zoom) fatigue. Thanks to this virtual learning, students successfully “completed the program’s learning experiences and assignments” while grounded at home (Toner, 2020).
References
Koh, L. L.. Building an immersive and engaging virtual tour experience. Faculty Focus. Retrieved March 26, 2021 from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-course-delivery-and-instruction/building-an-immersive-and-engaging-virtual-tour-experience/
Seifan, M., Dada, D., & Berenjian, A. (2019). The effect of virtual field trip as an introductory
tool for an engineering real field trip. Education for Chemical Engineers, 27, 6–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ece.2018.11.005
Toner, M. (2020, June 4) A worldwide web of virtual learning.. NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Retrieved March 30, 2021 from https://www.nafsa.org/ie-magazine/2020/6/4/worldwide-web-virtual-learning
Yavich, R.. Study abroad gone virtual” The International Highlight (November 2020). Retrieved March 30, 2021.
by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021
Authors:
- Amit Ray, Program Director and Lecturer, International Business School, Hochschule Fresenius University of Applied Sciences
- MaryAnne Hyland, PhD, Interim Dean and Professor, Robert B. Willumstad School of Business, Adelphi University
- Priya S. Nayar, Director, North America, Hochschule Fresenius University of Applied Sciences
The diversity challenges faced by specific groups vary between communities, countries, and cultures. Students in international education gain a deeper understanding of diversity issues by examining these variations within these different contexts, and ideally gain firsthand experience via international mobility. As the COVID-19 pandemic closed off borders and shut down campus activities, higher education institutions had to look for new approaches to providing their students with opportunities for intercultural exchange.
Given the above context, a new partnership was established between Hochschule Fresenius in Germany and Adelphi University in the United States. Business school student groups from both schools came together to research and compare the cultural, historical, and legal contexts of diversity issues in their respective countries. Doing so forged new international contacts and established relationships at a time when physical social activity was at a minimum. Against the backdrop of an increasingly polarized social and political environment, this partnership also provided students with a vital opportunity to gain diverse perspectives on global issues and trends.
This article outlines the process and outcome of the collaboration, as well as includes student insights from both the German and American participants.
The demands of a globalized society and economy have led higher education institutions to focus attention on the development of international and intercultural competencies (Deardorff 2006; Islam & Stamp, 2020). These competencies are promoted by periods of study abroad, which exposes students to new cultural environments (Williams, 2005); however, with COVID-19 restrictions limiting international travel, international higher education institutions have had to look for new ways to support students in developing these critical skills.
One approach is the expansion of collaborative learning between institutions, where intercultural skills can be developed by students working within a framework of interdependency towards a common goal (de Hei et al., 2020). An example of such an undertaking is the Trans-Atlantic Virtual Exchange and Collaboration (TAVEC) project between Hochschule Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Germany and Adelphi University in the United States, which brings international students together in a collaborative and fully virtual co-teaching format.
With TAVEC, students developed their intercultural communication and digital competencies by coming together for a virtual academic collaboration embedded across four different courses in the faculty of business at both universities. The virtual medium of the project provided access to cross-cultural experiences for a broader target group of students. The collaboration results were presented during a virtual transatlantic student conference at which students presented their team projects to a larger audience.
In one of the sub-projects, students taking undergraduate Human Resource Management (HRM) courses formed inter-institutional groups and built on the diversity content of their module by jointly researching a selected dimension of diversity in their respective countries. They examined issues such as the historical context, legal framework, and societal impact, and the final deliverable was a short group project presentation with all team members.
For students at Hochschule Fresenius in Germany, the relative course sizes meant that most project groups consisted of a single Fresenius student, which the students were initially hesitant about, as they were wary of being outnumbered, while also having to communicate in a foreign language. Although all Fresenius students had a good working knowledge of English and used it as the language of study, only some had had the opportunity to use it hands on, in order to establish the kind of intense cooperative relationships that the project would entail. However, once engaged in the project, the foreground of language concerns was replaced by an awareness of cultural differences. These centered largely on communication and project management styles, such as the establishment of a project plan and fixed milestones. Some Fresenius participants reported adapting their approach, as they were wary of conforming to a perceived negative stereotype of “overly organized” Germans, in accordance with Hofstede’s cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede Insights, 2021).
The students at Adelphi University in the United States had the benefit of having the project work conducted in English, which for the vast majority is their primary language. In addition, due to the larger number of students in the HRM class at Adelphi, none of the students were the sole Adelphi representative on their team. These two factors created the possibility of ethnocentrism becoming an issue for the student teams. To address this, the instructor spoke explicitly with the Adelphi students about being understanding and respectful of the fact that the Fresenius students were not working and communicating in their first language, and also to be mindful of the fact that there were more Adelphi than Fresenius students on each team. The instructor asked the students how they might feel if they were the only Adelphi student on an all-Fresenius team to help with perspective taking.
The Adelphi students experienced valuable opportunities for learning with reference to communication competencies. For example, one Adelphi student found that the Fresenius student on her team did not contribute sufficiently. The Adelphi student reported researching German culture and learning that Germans tend to be more reserved than Americans. With that knowledge, the Adelphi student adapted their behavior and gave the Fresenius student more time to “open up” and contribute, which is what ultimately occurred. Another example was the texting app of choice for the Adelphi and Fresenius students. While most Adelphi students were not familiar with WhatsApp, most groups used this app due to the recommendations of their Fresenius teammates. From the instructor’s perspective, this was an indicator that the Adelphi students were not being ethnocentric about doing their work “the American way.” In addition to learning about diversity regarding their project topics, the students were also learning how to function as part of a culturally diverse team.
With the concern that diversity issues are not prominent enough in Human Resource Management education (Bierema, 2010; Hite & McDonald, 2010), the TAVEC project provides a valuable opportunity to enhance this component of the curriculum. By strengthening the formal diversity content with an international collaboration, the project also contributes towards addressing the gap between diversity education and diversity training (King et al., 2010) as well as allowing students to deepen their understanding of positionality, which highlights that identity changes according to the social context (Bierema, 2010).
The combination of diversity education in Germany and the United States also brought together different cultural and historical perspectives on the subject. Although diversity covers a range of interpersonal and inter-group differences, a contextual prioritization of dimensions in different countries is evident: in the USA a significant proportion of the discussion is devoted to issues of race and culture, with dimensions such as religion and sexual orientation present to a lesser degree (Bierema, 2010; Rubin, 2018). In contrast, the diversity agenda in Germany has a stronger emphasis on gender and the development of measures to address structural sex-based inequalities in the economy and society (Page Group, 2018). The individual project groups were free to select which dimension of diversity they chose to address, and an interesting result was that none of the groups chose to examine race or culture and only one group chose gender; the most popular dimensions were age and physical ability. In other words, the students largely avoided projects that risked being controversial by dividing group members, and instead selected “safe” topics in which all students identified within the same category. One cause of this could be that the time devoted to the project did not allow for many diversity education sessions to be held with both Fresenius and Adelphi students together, thereby limiting the awareness of common reference points that the project work was building upon.
In conclusion, the TAVEC project provided an opportunity for intercultural exchange during a time when international mobility was limited. Students working virtually on a team project allowed them to learn about how diversity is viewed in different countries and gave the students firsthand experience being part of a culturally diverse team. In many cases, the established rapport between group members enabled them to exchange perspectives on a range of cultural, social, and political issues. Against the 2020 backdrop of the global health crisis, Black Lives Matter movement, and the US presidential elections, students valued the opportunity to discuss current events across cultural boundaries and gain insights and deeper understandings. The opportunity for the students to participate in a virtual conference, and possibly a mobility component, extended the opportunity beyond a one-semester classroom experience, which should provide a more enriching experience for the students.
References
Bierema, L. L. (2010). Diversity education: Competencies and strategies for educators. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 12(3), 312–331. DOI: 10.1177/1523422310375024
Deardorff, D. K. (2006): Identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241–266. DOI: 10.1177/1028315306287002
De Hei, M., Tabacaru, C., Sjoer, E., Rippe, R., Walenkamp, J. (2020). Developing intercultural competence through collaborative learning in international higher education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(2), 190–211. DOI: 10.1177/1028315319826226
Hite, L. M., McDonald, K. S. (2010). Perspectives on HRD and diversity education. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 12(3), 283–294. DOI: 10.1177/1523422310374974
Hofstede Insights (2021, February 18). Country comparison Germany and United States. Retrieved from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/germany,the-usa/
Islam, M. S.; Stamp, K. (2020). A reflection on future directions: Global international and intercultural competencies in higher education. Research in Comparative and International Education, 15(1), 69–75. DOI: 10.1177/1745499920901951
King, E. B., Gulick, L. M. V.; Avery, D. R. (2010). The divide between diversity training and diversity education: Integrating best practices. Journal of Management Education, 34(6), 891–906. DOI: 10.1177/1052562909348767
PageGroup (2018). Diversity management studie 2018. Aktuelle Entwicklungen, Zielsetzungen und Ausblicke für Unternehmen in Deutschland. Available online at https://www.charta-der-vielfalt.de/uploads/tx_dreipccdvdiversity/Diversity%20Studie%202018.pdf
Rubin, D. I (2018). From the beginning: creating a diversity and multicultural education course at Jacksonville State University. Education and Urban Society, 50(8), 727–746. DOI: 10.1177/0013124517713612Williams, T. R. (2005). Exploring the impact of study abroad on students’ intercultural communication skills: Adaptability and sensitivity. Journal of Studies in International Education, 9(4), 356–371. DOI: 10.1177/1028315305277681
by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021
Authors:
- Michaela Moura-Koçoğlu, Ph.D, Assistant Teaching Professor – Florida International University
As higher education institutions increasingly recognize the need to prepare students to be successful global citizens, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects represent a gateway to facilitate the process of Global Citizenship Education (UNESCO, 2015) by internationalizing the curriculum and incorporating innovative learning approaches across borders, nations, and cultures. This paper shares outcomes from a COIL environment between Brazil and the US on online gender violence: Online spaces increasingly replicate discrimination of and violence against vulnerable populations that exist offline, particularly against women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and members of Black and Brown communities. Students at the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at Florida International University in Miami, USA and students of Digital Media Design at Fatec in São Paulo, Brazil research, compare, and contrast forms of online gender violence with the goal to cultivate social engagement. Collaborations such as these reinforce the recognition that online gender violence is not culture-specific, but instead, a global challenge that needs to be addressed through global problem-solving strategies.
Online Gender Violence
Gender-based violence is a pervasive human rights violation at the intersection of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability (Crenshaw, 1989). The Internet, computer technologies, and social media have significantly accelerated the scope of gendered violence in online spaces: Increasingly, we observe that offline discrimination and oppression of women and sexual and racial minorities is replicated in diverse online spaces (Backe, 2018; Dhrodia, 2017; Madden et al., 2018; Vickery & Eberbach, 2018), thus forming a “continuum of violence” (Kelly, 1987, 1988, 2012). Violence against women, girls, and gendered minorities constitutes a global epidemic (Krug et al., 2002; Watts & Zimmerman, 2002), with women particularly at risk from men they know (Garcia-Moreno et al., 2006; Rose, 2013; UN Women, 2019; WHO, 2016), targeted for specific forms of digital abuse because of their gender (Citron, 2014; Henry & Powell, 2016). Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is defined as:
Action by one or more people that harms others based on their sexual or gender identity or by enforcing harmful gender norms. This action is carried out using the internet and/or mobile technology and includes stalking, bullying, sex-based harassment, defamation, hate speech, exploitation and gender trolling (Hinson et al., 2018).
In other words, we are talking about willful and repeated harm inflicted on people based on their gender or sex with the help of technology, regardless of geographical location, which is prevalent across the globe (Henry & Powell, 2015).
The critical assessment of gender and social justice conflicts is a central tenet of the women’s and gender studies classroom. Thus, the idea was born to incorporate global student collaborations into my curriculum to research and address cyberviolence which disproportionately affects women, girls, and LGBTQ+ young adults.
The Importance of Global Citizenship Education
Global awareness and engagement are at the center of an ongoing Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) partnership: Within the context of my course Gender Violence and the Law,, study groups composed of Digital Media Design students from Fatec in São Paulo, Brazil and Women’s and Gender Studies students from Florida International University in Miami, USA apply quantitative and qualitative feminist research methodologies to analyze and address global instances of online gender violence.
This comparative framework enables students to acquire knowledge about issues that are local in scope and global in reach: For example, one cohort of students examined gender violence in their local media, including commercials, advertisement, video games, and music videos, comparing and contrasting the way in which different media forms globally reinforce harmful gendered and racialized stereotypes. Synthesizing their research allowed students to get a sense of a common humanity, based on shared values and respect for difference and diversity. Another cohort was tasked with the design and implementation of a global survey on experiences or observation of online gender violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation, particularly spotlighting the self-censorship and silencing of diverse voices. Through a critical assessment of social and gender justice challenges in the online environment, students from both Brazil and the US developed a more in-depth understanding of the pervasiveness and global problematic of online violence. Moreover, participation in COIL projects cultivates students’ sense of responsibility to address global incidence of social injustice: Global student cooperation and collaboration resulted in the creation of Facebook groups, Instagram sites, and awareness campaigns to provide a safe space for information about and exchange of ideas about online gender violence. All of these processes are reflected in the learning outcomes: Students have to demonstrate knowledge about the interrelatedness of online gender violence, compare and contrast global experiences of online gender violence from multiple perspectives, and demonstrate competence in global and intercultural problem solving.
Conclusion
As long as gender-based violence is normalized in societies across the globe, online hate, threats, and violence against women, girls, and sexual and racial minorities will be posted, tweeted, and blogged. And we should be concerned: Online gender violence constitutes a global public health concern, resulting in sexual, psychological, physical, or economic abuse. Survivors report to suffer from fear, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, PTSD, and even chronic illness (Citron, 2009, 2014).
Higher education plays a central role in Global Citizenship Education (UNESCO, 2015), for which COIL projects in the feminist classroom serve as an effective tool: Collaborating across the globe to address gender-based violence, online and offline, generates a sense of connection, cooperation, and agency in students. Students’ willingness to engage in advocacy for a more inclusive, tolerant, and just world reinforces the notion that cultivating respect for and engaging with global communities constitutes a transformative framework towards global recognition of gender equality as a basic human right.
References
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by HOLA@HAJINKIM.COM | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021
Authors:
- Phillip M. Motley, Associate Professor of Communication Design and Faculty Fellow for
- Service-Learning and Community Engagement, Elon University
- Amy L. Allocco, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Multifaith
- Scholars Program, Elon University
- Mathew H. Gendle, Professor of Psychology and Director of Project Pericles, Elon UniversityMaureen Vandermaas-Peeler, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Research on Global Engagement, Elon University
The COVID-19 pandemic forced a reimagining of global engagement opportunities and reminded us that global education should encompass not only student mobility but also an internationalized curriculum at home with an emphasis on community engagement, cultural diversity, and interdependence (Agnew & Kahn, 2014; Caruana, 2014; Hartman, 2020). At our institution over 80% of students study abroad, and we are also deeply committed to local civic engagement and community partnerships. As travel ceased we were inspired to augment these partnerships. Rather than reducing or eliminating opportunities, enterprising faculty instead redesigned their offerings to further diversity and global learning goals through local community engagement.
We describe redesigned global experiences in three programs, Multifaith Scholars, Periclean Scholars, and a graduate international service-learning course, in which the goals align with broader University emphases on engaged learning and high-impact practices (HIPs), particularly undergraduate research, global learning, and community-based learning (Kuh, 2008; Kuh & O’Donnell, 2013). Research indicates that participation in these HIPs correlates to student engagement, retention, and enhanced learning outcomes, including those related to diversity (Boyer, 1998; Johnson, 2010; Johnson et al., 2015; Lopatto, 2006). We highlight programmatic aspects we retained and those we modified, delineate our rationales, and analyze the effects on our students.
Elon’s Multifaith Scholars program engages students in intercultural learning through academic coursework, faculty-mentored undergraduate research, and community partnerships. Each scholar majors in Religious Studies or minors in Interreligious Studies, undertakes a two-year research project focused on religion and society, and participates in a sustainable partnership with our local mosque. Founded in 2017, the program aligns with research suggesting that intercultural learning is catalyzed through active engagement and immersive experiences, as students undertake research, pursue partnerships, and develop relationships within diverse communities locally and globally (Banks & Gutiérrez, 2017; Deardorff, 2009; Engberg, 2013; Hovland, 2014). Given the prominence of global education and the values of global citizenship at Elon, many scholars integrate study away experiences into their undergraduate research projects and conduct fieldwork in local and international global settings. As the pandemic accelerated and travel restrictions took effect last Spring, several Multifaith Scholars were in precisely this position, poised to conduct summer research with sex workers through an NGO in India, among refugees in Tanzania, with communities on a sacred mountain in Cambodia, and with resettled Muslim immigrants in a small city proximate to campus. Their carefully scaffolded research studies were upended as global partners headed into lockdowns, study abroad programs were suspended, and IRB approvals were rescinded. In the ensuing months, mentors collaborated to activate local networks so scholars could shift their research to cognate global communities in local contexts, while students incorporated scholarship on diaspora populations into their literature reviews and trained in survey methodologies. Although these pivots relied in most cases on existing local contacts, in others they demanded that we establish new associations with communities where we now see the potential for nourishing abiding, sustainable relationships. At every stage in developing these networks, we have deliberately sought to build collaborative, inclusive relationships that are reciprocal, ethically sound, and equitable.
Elon’s Periclean Scholars initiative facilitates immersive engaged learning experiences that span students’ sophomore, junior, and senior years. Throughout its 18-year history, the Periclean Scholars program has primarily focused on the development of international community partnerships in a diverse set of countries. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic froze our ability to travel to partner locations, and a lack of consistent high-speed internet access made remote work with our international partners untenable. As such, we had to rethink the way in which the Scholars program operates, and this ultimately resulted in a re-centering of our work within local and regional spaces. The pandemic provided our Scholar cohort groups with an opportunity to intentionally incorporate local/regional partnerships into their work. For example, the Class of 2023 (current sophomores) took the topic foci they intended to work on in Sri Lanka and identified partners in local organizations to engage in these efforts. The Class of 2024 (current first-year students, recruited to the program during the height of the pandemic) was able to leverage the challenge of not being able to work abroad to nimbly transition from planned experiences in Morocco to a deep engagement with DEI and racial justice efforts within the University’s local community. To be clear, the program’s forced shift to work within local contexts isn’t simply a “Band-Aid” for pandemic times that will be discarded once travel abroad is again viable. Rather, the pandemic has pushed us to think and act more deeply to integrate meaningful local partnerships as a component of a broader student experience, particularly in relation to advancing community racial, social, and economic justice efforts. In this unexpected way, the pandemic has actually been a positive force in our programmatic development. We have become more aware of the many ways in which working with global populations and issues from within a local context substantially increases student inclusivity and access to programming.
Elon’s Interactive Media graduate program includes an international service-learning course taught during our January term. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to make significant changes to how we delivered the course this year: First, we shifted delivery to May to buy time for redesigning portions of the course; second, we made the decision to teach the course within local communities instead of abroad. This required reexamining the cross-cultural and global learning opportunities afforded by the course, ones that we may have taken for granted when it was offered internationally. Previously, faculty often relied on the international context to partially achieve global and intercultural learning objectives; we were able to focus less on setting them up and more on helping students reflect on and process their experiences. Teaching the course locally requires that we be intentional about how community engagement in this context can still meet these goals. Doing so is a challenge but also presents opportunities: to specifically determine what global culture looks like and where we find it around us; to infuse ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion into our practices such that we are mindful of injustices and inequities within our own communities; and to create ways to sustain partnerships proximate to the university so that they can be continued and strengthened over time (a greater challenge abroad). These adjustments, while clearly in response to the pandemic, have encouraged us to think more carefully about ways to infuse community-based learning into the curriculum beyond this specific course. Incorporating community engagement into fall semester courses may allow us to scaffold learning objectives for the international service-learning experience by more intentionally connecting local issues to global contexts. Facilitating students’ abilities to analyze learning experiences they have “here” and “there” so that they can synthesize the two, rather than mentally segregate them, will allow us to graduate more ethically and culturally aware citizens.
As seen in these case studies, the pandemic catalyzed our immediate pedagogical redesigns but also enabled us to consider longer-term modifications that include global issues closer to home and ways to deepen community mentorship opportunities. We will strive to cultivate global citizenship closer to campus and to invest in local partnerships that align with faculty scholarship, student interests, and the challenges of diversity-focused and equity-minded liberal education.
References:
Agnew, M., & Kahn, H. E. (2014). Internationalization-at-home: Grounded practices to promote intercultural, international, and global learning. Metropolitan Universities, 25(3), 31–46.
Banks, J. E. & Gutiérrez, J.J. (2017). Undergraduate research in international settings: Synergies in stacked high-impact practices. CUR Quarterly, 37(3), 18–26.
Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. (1998). Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America’s research universities. State University of New York at Stony Brook for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Caruana, V. (2014). Re‐thinking global citizenship in higher education: From cosmopolitanism and international mobility to cosmopolitanisation, resilience and resilient thinking. Higher Education Quarterly, 68(1), 85–104.
Deardorff, D. K. (2009). Implementing intercultural competence assessment. In D.K. Deardorff
(Ed.), The SAGE handbook of Intercultural Competence (pp. 477–491). Sage Publications.
Engberg, M. E. (2013). The influence of study away experiences on global perspective-taking. Journal of College Student Development, 54(5), 466–480.
Hartman, E. (2020). How are we interdependent, and how might cosmopolitical thinking help us grapple with that? In E. Hartman (Ed.), Interdependence: Global Solidarity and Local Actions. The Community-based Global Learning Collaborative.
Hovland, K. (2014). Global learning: Defining, designing, demonstrating. Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Johnson, W. B. (2010). Student-faculty mentorship outcomes. In T. D. Allen & L. T. Eby (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring: A Multiple Perspectives Approach (pp. 189–210). Wiley Blackwell.
Johnson, W. B., Behling, L., Miller, P .C., & Vandermaas-Peeler, M. (2015). Undergraduate research mentoring: Obstacles and opportunities. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 23(5), 441–453.
Kuh, G. D. (2008). High-impact educational practices: What they are, who Has access to them, and why they matter. Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Kuh, G. D. & O’Donnell, K. (2013). Ensuring quality and taking high-impact practices to scale. Association of American Colleges and Universities. Lopatto, D. (2006). Undergraduate research as a catalyst for liberal learning. Peer Review8(1), 22–25.
