ICIA: Enhancing Cross-Cultural Communication and Transnational Perspectives

1. ICIA: Enhancing Cross-Cultural Communication and Transnational Perspectives

2. Curricular Themes and Sites • Fall Semester Sites: South Africa, Tibet, Brazil, U.S. • Spring Semester Sites: Vietnam, Great Britain, Iraq, U.S.

3. International Partners • International Rescue Committee: Working in over 25 countries, including with immigrants in the San Diego region, to provide relief, resettlement services, and advocacy for people uprooted or affected by war and oppression.

4. International Partners • Horace Mann Middle School: a neighborhood school serving a predominantly immigrant population and launching an innovative curriculum focusing on social justice

5. Learning Objectives • Foster cross-cultural and historical understandings of identity (cultural, national, racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, gender, political) within a global context; • Enhance students’ abilities to construct bridge between learning inside and outside the classroom and across cultural and national boundaries;

6. Learning Objectives • To deepen critical reflection on the interrelationship of peoples on different parts of the globe; • Foster appreciation of difference and diversity; • Acquire skills that enhance communication and understanding among diverse constituencies (students, faculty, community learning partners, site directors)

7. Learning Objectives • Draw upon multiple sources, methods, and perspectives to enhance global understandings and critical thinking abilities; • Develop multiple literacies.

8. Service Learning Blogs • Students compiled a semester-long service learning blog that required their reflections on the connections between the service experience and other course content. • Goals: • Increase student interaction concerning service learning experience; • Increase and streamline faculty feedback. • https://blackboard.sdsu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_99599_1

9. Blogs for Service-Learning Site Directors • Address serious challenges of communication among students, faculty, service-learning site directors. • Must be in place from day one.

10. Changes? • Most students unfamiliar with blogs. • Prepare a checklist for students to better prepare them for success. • Like any long-term, ongoing assignment, clear check-points necessary throughout the semester that provide faculty monitoring and help students address questions and problems.

11. Student Power Point Presentations • Required of all students as way to represent important aspects of service-learning experience • Translation of service learning experience into academic language and academic forum, e.g. providing historical context to their experience for their faculty and peers. • Bridge between classroom learning and community-learning experience. • Enriched curriculum for all students by creating globalized curriculum for peers. • Introduce the sites to others who may be working at the alternative site next semester or in the future.

12. Student Achievements with Technology • Outstanding use of technology directly integrated into class performance (visual, charts, text, music, images). • Global curriculum enhanced through link back into readings with international content and specific curricular themes such as multiple cultural identities.

13. ASSESSMENT • Selected response format assessment that addresses general learning objectives; • Open narrative response format that contains relevant information; • Selected response survey collecting data on use of technology specifically; • Power-point portfolio assessment by three-person faculty team • Service learning blog questions specifically address objective of “acquire skills that enhance communication”