‘Connecting Globally while Grounded at Home’: The ASC Experience 

by DA Global | 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.

1.  Special thanks to Johannes Kleiner, Associate Director for Civic and Community Engagement at Emory University, and Dr. Ruthie Yow, Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist at Georgia Institute of Technology, for spearheading this project. Thank you also to Jongdae Kim (Re’Generation), Amber McCorkle (Clarkston Community Center), Kenja McCray (Atlanta Metropolitan State College), Whitney Morgan-Jackson (Georgia Piedmont Technical College), and Monty Whitney (Morehouse College) for participating. ↩︎

Transatlantic Virtual Exchange and Collaboration: Examining Diversity

by DA Global | 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

Global Student Projects as a Catalyst for Social Engagement: Findings from a Brazilian-American Collaboration

by DA Global | 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

Backe, E. L., Lilleston, P. & McCleary-Sills, J. (2018). Networked individuals, gendered violence: A literature review of cyberviolence. Violence and Gender, 5(3), 135–46.

Citron, D. K.____. (2009-2010). Law’s expressive value in combating Ccyber gender harassment. Michigan Law Review, 108(373), 373–416. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/mlr108&div=18&id=&page= 

Citron, D. K. (2014). Hate crimes in cyberspace. Harvard University Press.

Dhrodia, A. (2017, November 20). Unsocial media: The real toll of online abuse against women. Medium: Amnesty Global Insights. https://medium.com/amnesty-insights/unsocial-media-the-real-toll-of-online-abuse-against-women-37134ddab3f4 

Duggan, M. (2017). Online harassment 2017. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/07/11/online-harassment-2017/

Garcia-Moreno, C., Jansen, H., Ellsberg, M., Heike, L., & Watts, C. (2006). Prevalence of intimate partner violence: Findings from the WHO multi-country study on women’s health and domestic violence. Lancet, 368, 1260–1269.

Henry, N. & Powell, A. (2015). Embodied harms: Gender, shame, and technology-facilitated sexual violence. Violence Against Women, 21(6), 758–779.

Henry, N. & Powell, A. (2016). Sexual violence in the digital age: The cope and limits of criminallLaw. Social & Legal Studies, 25(4), 397–418.

Hinson, L., Mueller, J., O’Brien-Milne, L., & Wandera, N. (2018). Technology-facilitated gender-based violence: What is it, and how do we measure it? International Center for Research on Women. https://ncvc.dspacedirect.org/

Kelly, L. (1987). The continuum of sexual violence. In J. Hanmer & M. Maynard (Eds.), Women, Violence and Social Control: Essays in Social Theory (pp. 46–60). Humanities Press International.

Kelly, L. (2012). Standing the test of time? Reflections of the concept of the continuum of sexual violence. In J. Brown and S. Walklate (Eds.), Handbook on sexual violence (pp. xvvi–xxv). Routledge.

Krug, G., Dahlberg, L., Mercy, J., Zwi, A., & Lozano, R. (2002). World report on violence and health. World Health Organization.

Madden, S., Janoske, M., Winkler, R. B. & Edgar, A. N. (2018). Mediated misogynoir: Intersecting race and gender in online harassment. In J. R. Vickery & T. Everbach (Eds.), Mediating misogyny: Gender, technology and harassment (pp. 71–90). Palgrave MacMillan .

Rose, S. D. (2013). Challenging global gender violence. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 82, 61–65.

UN Women. (2020). The world for women and girls: Annual report 2019-2020. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/06/annual-report-2019-2020 

UNESCO. (2015). Global citizenship education: Topics and learning objectives. Paris. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/

Vickery, J. R. & Everbach, T. (Eds.). (2018). Mediating misogyny: Gender, technology and harassment. Palgrave Macmillan.

Watts, C., & Zimmerman, C. (2002). Violence against women: global scope and magnitude. Lancet, 359, 1232–1237.WHO. (2016, November). Violence against women: Intimate partner and sexual violence against women. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

COVID-19: A catalyst for rethinking global engagement

by DA Global | 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.

Seeking Global Equity and Engagement in Community With Our Newest Neighbors

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021

Authors:

• Molly McSweeney, MA, ESL Tutor/Volunteer – ReEstablish Richmond and Literacy Pittsburgh

In 2011, Uwe Brandenburg and Hans de Wit wrote that the internationalization of higher education had lost its way as its focus had shifted from the “why” to the “how.” A decade later—during a global pandemic, when international mobility has been severely restricted and higher education institutions have made herculean efforts to accommodate students in time zones that span the globe—global educators can benefit from re-investing our energies in the “why.” As Bryan McAllister-Grande and Melissa Whatley suggested in 2020, now is a valuable and necessary time to take stock of things like the “unintended consequences of mobility” and “access to and outcomes of participation…that do not involve international mobility” (p. 2).

Meanwhile, a lot has changed in the United States and the world since 2011. There is room to frameshift, even and especially during the challenging days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Keeping perspective helps. As the number of displaced persons has increased over the past decade due to wars, natural disasters, and climate change (UNHCR, 2019), populism has grown around the world (Hazelkorn, 2020), and the Biden administration has proposed to significantly increase the cap of refugees coming to the United States (Hauslohner, 2021). I have moved multiple times, domestically and internationally, as I have worked on international programs. Expanding my own worldview and supporting individuals in navigating cross-cultural experiences are my professional raisons d’être. So, in 2019, when I moved back to Richmond, Virginia, after living and working in Rome, Italy, I was excited to reacquaint myself with my increasingly diverse hometown.

In a certain sense, as a global educator-global learner, I have been returning to the “why” since I moved back to the United States. Through the non-profit organization ReEstablish Richmond, in November 2019 I began tutoring ESL one-on-one to newcomers in Richmond and helping plan an annual volunteer summit in collaboration with a resettlement agency and other community organizations. Although my family and I have again relocated, a silver lining is that I continue to volunteer virtually through ReEstablish Richmond and now through Literacy Pittsburgh. I have found that staying connected to and establishing roots is important, as this grounds me both personally and professionally. Facilitating intercultural learning has been a common thread throughout most of my career path. Also, community engagement was an area that I wanted to focus on as I transitioned back to the United States and have sought both to give back to and to (re-)learn my community. Therefore, I have felt that I have something to offer through these experiences, but also something to gain. 

We can all learn from each other, locally and globally, as I was humbled to share through co-presenting with my ESL student about building community and learning together at this year’s volunteer summit (Adli & McSweeney, 2021). This is especially true and necessary during a pandemic. As I have witnessed one of my students complete her ESL program at community college and another be accepted to graduate school, I have learned a great deal about the perseverance of my newest neighbors and the apparently not-so-foreign concept of icebreakers during orientation in Afghanistan.

It turns out that taking a hyper-local approach to my own “get out of your comfort zone” project, which began pre-pandemic, has offered a really valuable way to discover how community-university partnerships can serve to strengthen intercultural and global learning in an inclusive, just, sustainable, and ethical way, not only for mobility-based programs (Hartman et al., 2018). Students who may not have the means or desire to spend a period of time in another country may be more incentivized to actively engage in a curricular or co-curricular project-based learning experience in their local community, especially if it helps prepare them for a career. At the same time, pathways that offer students opportunities to support marginalized populations, for example, through which they share equitable roles and acknowledge asset-based contributions, can lend themselves to impactful relationship building where both groups have an investment. Exposing students (as well as faculty and staff) to global issues “at home” has the potential to spark an interest in pursuing a global engagement opportunity abroad in the future, whether through traditional study abroad, research abroad or with international colleagues, an internship (virtual or abroad in-person), a service-learning experience (virtual or abroad in-person), or a partnership. Virginia Commonwealth University, in fact, offers these types of opportunities through their living-learning program (Virginia Commonwealth University Global Education Office, n.d.).

Civic engagement can also be a component of local engagement with global issues. For example, while Radomir Ray Mitic (2019) has found that participation in education abroad increases first generation students’ voter participation, I would propose that the cultivation of civic dispositions is also possible locally, based on my own experience preparing a newcomer for her citizenship test. MetroLab Network (n.d.) offers additional inspiration about how local engagement might promote civic engagement, such as through Carnegie Mellon University’s Metro21: Smart Cities Institute (2021). Another outcome of the type of local engagement mentioned above is that students may choose to pursue an AmeriCorps position after graduation.

Oftentimes, what I have observed while supporting students on-program, while abroad, is that if the program component does not connect in a tangible way to the requirements of their program, or if it is not a checkbox that might help them get a job, they usually will not invest in authentically engaging the community. It is our job to connect the dots intentionally and to model these types of pathways. For instance, Marcy Sacks (2020) at Albion College has demonstrated that exposing underrepresented students to research archives in the United States can be a powerful way to effect structural changes. This could be tailored to a global learning opportunity in a local or virtual context, since sources and exhibits often include topics that are globally relevant and accessible online. For example, a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course between a professor in the United States and Italy, or a guest lecture series by NGOs that focus on migration in different parts of the world, could add rich exposure to global issues that deepen students’ understanding of their engagement with the local community. Such place-based exposure to local-global issues, therefore, can open up the possibility for global engagement to be more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible, and therefore more enduring and impactful.

As Amanda Sturgill (2020) explains, understanding our own environments can help us recognize barriers within our own communities, and this kind of border crossing “at home” can lead to an increase in equity. Perhaps even more powerful than crossing oceans to study in another country, where students’ stays are temporary, the kinds of local engagement mentioned here can support opportunities for even deeper shared learning, which can lead to what Dawn Michele Whitehead (2017) frames as shared understanding of essentially shared problems, and in turn can lead to shared futures. I, for one, am hopeful for the opportunities that had already existed but that were not fully recognized prior to the pandemic, and I am inspired by the possibilities that are out there as we chart the future of global education together.

REFERENCES

Adli, S., & McSweeney, M. (2021, February 9). Building community: Learning together through client-volunteer matches [summit session]. Refugee and Immigrant Volunteer Summit 2021, Richmond, VA (virtual event).

Brandenburg, U., & De Wit, H. (2011). The end of internationalization. International Higher Education, (62), 15–17. https://doi.org/10.6017/ihe.2011.62.8533 

Center for Engaged Learning. (2020, August 11). Amanda Sturgill on crossing borders at home [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRMfF296ouI&feature=youtu.be

Hartman, E., Kiely, R. Boettcher, C., & Friedrichs, J. (2018). Community-based global learning: The theory and practice of ethical engagement at home and abroad. Stylus Publishing.

Hauslohner, A. (2021, February 5). Biden seeks to restore ‘badly damaged’ refugee resettlement program. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/biden-refugee-executive-order/2021/02/04/52a31840-6726-11eb-8468-21bc48f07fe5_story.html

Hazelkorn. E. (2020). Higher education in the age of populism: Public good and civic engagement. International Higher Education, (100), 6–7.

McAllister-Grande, B., & Whatley, M. (2020). International higher education research: The state of the field. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Metro21: Smart Cities Institute. (2021). Citizen engagement – Metro21: Smart cities institute – Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/citizen-engagement/index.html 

MetroLab Network. (n.d.). MetroLab Network: A network of city-university partnerships. https://metrolabnetwork.org/

Mitic, R. R. (2019). Cultivating voter participation among first-generation college students: The relationship of study abroad participation to post-college voting behaviour.  In R. M. O. Pritchard, M. O’Hara, C. Milsom, J. Williams, & L. Matei (Eds.), The three Cs of higher education: Competition, collaboration and complementarity (pp. 205–232). Central European University Press.

Sacks, M. (2020). Promoting inclusivity in academia: A case study in taking underrepresented students to research archives in the United States. In J. Gillespie, L. Jasinski, & D. Gross (Authors), Faculty as global learners: Off-campus study at liberal arts colleges (pp. 269–273). Lever Press. https://doi:10.3998/mpub.11923682.27 

UNHCR. (2019). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2019. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf

Virginia Commonwealth University Global Education Office. (n.d.). Service. Virginia Commonwealth University. https://global.vcu.edu/vcuglobe/service/Whitehead, D. M. (2017). Foreword: Global learning: Shifting from an option to a priority. In I. Nair & M. Henning (Authors), Models of global learning (pp. v–vi). Association of American Colleges and Universities.