Blended Learning
Blended learning courses introduce a lifelong process of combining community-based knowledge, classroom teaching, and interactive web-based instruction.
Inter-cultural communicative competence
Language acquisition is a doorway through which a learner may enter an understanding of another’s culture and perspective. While the English language is often relied upon for worldwide communication, English is neither the bedrock of local or global “best practices” in development, change, and governance. Thus while the inter-cultural communicative competence (IC3) curriculum introduces ten worldwide development topics and uses English as its primary medium for instruction, all students of this curriculum are challenged to advance their second language skills. This web-based coursework links students across geographic and cultural boundaries. It does so through inter-lingual, inter-cultural dialogue concerning a common pursuit of just and lasting development and conservation. It creates extensive communities of learning and empathy that include students, community leaders, and development experts. The topics in this IC3 curriculum include Identity, Food and Water Security, Primary and Reproductive Health, Education, Poverty Reduction, Post-Conflict Renovation, Trade, Development Partnerships, Art and Culture, and Globalization. Gender is a recurring concern that is included across all of these topics. Students post to each other their “best answers” at the conclusion of each chapter of language and IC3 lessons.
Interactive online instruction
While Eastern Mennonite University students already enjoy a rich cross-cultural experience and represent numerous countries of origin, interactive online instruction provides them with web-based instruction and relationships with students in diverse lands. Through the IC3 curriculum and other virtually connected coursework, EMU undergraduates have been regularly relating to classes in Iran and Vietnam. You may link to some sample syllabi for courses taught on the history and culture of Vietnam and Iran – lands defined as enemies of the United States. Interactive online instruction may also occur right on one’s own campus. It occurs inter-departmentally and across the undergraduate- graduate student line. EMU is fortunate to receive scores of Fulbright Scholars for advanced study and practicum work in the Conflict Transformation Program. These international graduate students have carried on an online and face-to-face discourse with EMU’s undergraduates in the History and Philosophy departments. This is not “distance education” as it has often come to be practiced – a “knowledge dump” from one place onto another. Rather, these classes elicit through interactive online instruction each student’s learning in the context of classes that engage communities from around the world. Students contribute to online forums and “best answer” postings, thereby complementing their instructors’ web-based and in-class materials. These virtual learning opportunities also challenge students to hone web-based library, data, and information technology resources.
Applied practicum work
Real life situations give shape and meaning to course content. No aspect of IC3, interactive online instruction, or conventional in-class studies is removed from the assets, needs, questions, and goals of communities beyond the campus grounds. While it is up to each scholar to define “community,” it may be taken to mean, generally, any group that has something in common and the potential for acting together. A community may define itself and its own goals while immersed in partnerships of state-society, grassroots-leaders, and outside-inside expert actors and resources. Applied practicum work calls upon students to integrate coursework, internships, cross-cultural studies, and off-campus service-learning. The application of course materials in applied contexts outside of class causes students to engage in critical analysis as they listen hard to others, synthesize diverse arguments, juxtapose data and disciplinary knowledge, and evaluate the relevance of newfound learning.
Cross-cultural programming
Each EMU student builds on classroom learning through at least nine credit hours of cross-cultural programming.. Month- and semester-long options provide immersion opportunities in scores of countries. This IC3 curriculum has been tested through pilot cross-cultural trips and virtual course links with students in Vietnam and Iran. Other recent possibilities for cross-cultural studies and service learning have included Argentina, Austria, the Caribbean, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lesotho, Lithuania, Navajo Nation, New York City, New Zealand, Palestine, Peru, South Africa, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, and Washington, D.C. Before and after these immersion experiences, EMU welcomes students and community members to a Sunday evening Foreign Film Series that co-screens and discusses films from around the world with communities in Vietnam and Iran. Hundreds of viewers at each cultural node watch, discuss, and then go online to post their thoughts about cross-cultural questions and themes presented in the films. This past year, the Union of Student Organizations and the History Department have co-sponsored this film series.
Unconventional classroom instruction
While our professors and students do engage in classroom activities that are conventional – reading books, instructor-student dialogue, analysis, and exams – they do so alongside role-playing, cross-cultural dialogue, study tours, and service learning. A large part of the latter unconventional classroom instruction includes the co-mentoring among young people and scholars as they articulate and process each other’s “best answers” from diverse vantage points. Thus in the course of a blended learning week, students in an EMU class may discuss reading materials from an International Relations book, work through in-class pods to discern their collective answer to a development question, log onto the IC3 curriculum for continued inter-lingual and inter-cultural studies, post their “best answers” to virtual classmates in another country or link with EMU students in the middle of their own cross-cultural study abroad, consider the latter’s perspective and follow-up questions, and evaluate their own new learning through this blended learning process.
Celebration
Lifelong learning is a precious pursuit. It provides energy for communities to discern goals, think critically, and live compassionately. Lifelong learning and “living on the edge of change” empower people and their communities to demonstrate ownership of the future. With these high objectives in mind, graduation should well be a lofty moment of celebration. And along the way, hospitality is another virtue for informally celebrating this blended learning process. Group meals in the homes of students and professors, evening discussions at the campus coffee house, the Sunday evening foreign film series, and guest speakers and refreshments are as important as any classroom or online venue for building extensive communities of learning.
