Great cross-cultral education

Rosian Chia is a professor in the Department of Psychology at East Carolina University. Her presentation together with her colleague Biwu Yang on Education for Generation Y is a pretty detailed introduction to the project they’ve been successfully doing. The project goes very well with the trend of the growing use of technology in education; it does international education technologically. Basically, they provide courses on anthropology, psychology and other courses to students who cannot afford to study abroad. The way they teach is much more student-centered. Students have various ways to communicate to each other via internet, specifically skype, blog, wiki, email, and so forth in class simultaneously and after class for more discussion and communication. The project is working well because it does not need so much money, but can bring great benefits by properly using sources cross-culturally. It is win-win.
The best thing, to my knowledge, is that students are excited about the way they are taught. Actually, they are not taught; they are learning initiatively with their peers in other countries. They are touched at heart by communicating with “real” people from different cultures. It would benefit them most if they are learning culture, or intercultural communication. They can learn real culture from real people. The different teaching pedagogy will also be something of culture. The presentation covers even the challenges the project faces and the ways to approach them, including different Time Zone, technology, language and so forth.
The project is pretty applicable and will definitely benefit countries where education needs more help. Take China as an example, most universities have sound multi-media equipment, locked in labs with nobody using them. The co-teaching via internet will help promote computer-aid teaching. Another fact is that language major students want to communicate with real foreigners to improve their language proficiency, but they don’t have any access to them. Knowing this project, I think it would be a good idea for the exchange of culture by having language classes from abroad and offering native language classes to abroad. Besides, the meanwhile exchange programs are always taken by very few elite students, but this model offers opportunity to every student equally the chance to experience the live, real foreign languages and cultures. It is a money-saving, practical model which worth our efforts to benefit student interculturally.