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During Fall Semester 2004, students at EMU, AGU, and CTU worked together in a new IC3 (inter-cultural communicative competence) format of learning. Whether through AGU and CTU courses on British & American Literature or through EMU coursework on the Culture & History of Vietnam, professors on each campus coordinated questions, assignments, and objectives to serve an expansive community of learning. The topics addressed paralleled topics, questions, and objectives in the draft-stage Bending Bamboo materials. From their respective cultural vantage-points and course syllabi, these students worked together on the following topics: cultural identity; war and reconciliation; poverty reduction and economic development; gender issues; art and culture.
The following question is being addressed by the AGU, CTU, and EMU students as they near the end of their semester of co-study via IC3. Through group work, they are to make an initial post in answer to this question, then read each other’s comments, and finally write an individual essay and self-assessment as part of their final exam. Below are the first four posts from the EMU groups. Students are also invited to use this forum to suggest constructive changes to this learning approach.
“ Has this IC3 dialogue helped you understand more about yourself, even as you have studied the culture and history of others?”
Group I – Tiffany, Josh, Mike K, Kevin, and Amy :
Since the beginning of the class, we agree that as students we have gained a well-rounded knowledge of Vietnam and its people through various readings and also through the online dialogue. The big question seems to be, “If we had just relied on books and lectures without having the IC3 forums, would our learning of Vietnam be the same?” The level of participation in the forum plays a major role in how much we actually got from the course itself. But rather through just reading different conversations or being heavily involved in dialogue, there is a consensus that the forum allows all of us to take different things from each other and learn.
The amount of time that goes into each forum and the amount of time that goes into each post, particularly on the Vietnamese end, sometimes makes the whole online dialogue experience somewhat overwhelming. If we spend 10-15 minutes on a post and never get a response to it by one of our fellow students or by a Vietnamese student, it seems like perhaps nobody is reading our ideas, or if they are the ideas aren't worth responding to.
In the fourteen weeks that we have been in this course, we have gained book knowledge, but the self-reflection we have gained is perhaps the most important. Since we can only truly learn about a country’s culture and history by visiting and spending time in that culture, we do have a disadvantage in that aspect. However, the online forum has allowed us (more than any other history class) to be in touch with a different culture on a daily basis. We are now able to reflect on certain Vietnamese issues (for example gender issues, poverty, and economic development) and then apply them to our own culture. This self-reflection that we feel each of us has gained is crucial to understanding other cultures and in turn understanding our own. However, we are left to wonder, if this forum were taking place at a public university as opposed to EMU, would the students be as self-reflective and open in accepting various viewpoints?
