Creating a global university

I have recently been involved with an early experiment in building collaborative teaching in a university. The university that I am working for, RMIT, has a priority one vision statement to become a global university. It already has campuses in two cities, Melbourne, Australia and Hanoi, Vietnam. In addition it teaches in other locations through partnership agreements. In my role as academic support, I have been advising two academics who ran a course in Marketing Management from November 2007 to February 2008. We were seeking to foster student interaction, create opportunities for benchmarking work and replicate the kind of environment that the students might experience in a multinational workplace. We used a wiki as the learning environment to achieve these things. Several areas of difficulty in creating collaborative teaching activities across borders became apparent during the exercise.

Administrative: Semesters in the three locations of Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi were not synchronized. Secondly, students needed to have fully completed the enrolment process to be able to access the technology. This was in contrast to face-to-face situations where work-arounds are more easily implemented.
Pedagogy: The administrative constraints meant that the academics were restricted in the pedagogical approaches that they could use. This was turned quite creatively into a positive by using peer review.
Technical: The difference in bandwidth between the campuses inhibited students from interacting as effectively as the academics had hoped. Also, the particular wiki engine being used was run in pilot conditions on a development server with a lot of manual intervention to facilitate student access. This created login difficulties that hopefully would not exist in a full production mode. However, it highlights the issue around ‘login’ that can be an obstacle to cross-institutional collaborative projects.
Cultural: Some students found the idea of publishing their work in a public domain quite confronting.

I would be interested in knowing if others have been involved in similar endeavors and whether there are any matches with your experience. Perdita

Hello Perdita and Gary,

I would love to discuss global education with you both!

I've been working with an international student journalism program that has encompassed both Cypress College and Lutsk University in convergence journalsm reporting through two Fulbright awards-not mine-however, I've been very lucky to have been part of the projects in a variety of ways. I've been working with Cypress Department Chairman, Robert Mercer, whilie I completed my undergraduate and graduate studies (during which he received two Fulbright awards) that provided him with funding to design and facilitate two pilot projects integrating student journalists from both countries.

In the interum, I worked with him as a tutor, a mentor (in field work, studio and in various production platforms), an assistant instructor and eventually as the instructional designer for the initial start-up of his most recent seminar this year that was hosted in both Cypress, CA, and Lutstk, University (Ukraine).

My graduate program through Cal State Fullerton (MS Instructional Design and Technology) located in Fullerton, CA, USA, focused on the design of curriculum in web-based environments andt the incorporation of technology, and I focused my research throughout the program on the obstacles to second language learners in both f2f and online environments with the hopes of moving into curriculum design of global learners~

I recently completed a summer session at Cal State Fullerton's American Language Program where I taught Fundamental Vocabulary, Intermediate Grammar and Advanced Composition to international students (f2f) and am currently looking for fall semester instructor/IDT positions, but I would love to become part of the consortium and have notified Mercer that you're assembling (hopefully, both he and I can join you in your upcoming skype session or schedule another at a mutually convenient time.)

My background and experience can be viewed at LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect with me.

I would love to learn more about your ideas and can be reached at lorealwrites@gmail.com .

My skpe account name is "reportin_rocks".

Very nice to meet you both and I look forward to futher communications.

Most cordially,

L'Oreal Battistelli

Replies

Gary O. Roberts May 8, 2010 at 2:28pm

Perdita,
This is an interesting project you undertook. Sometime in the future, I would like to discuss this project in more detail (perhaps via Skype). I am a technologist and administrator from a University in the United States.

Gary Roberts
Alfred University
- Perdita Harper > Gary O. Roberts May 13, 2010 at 6:29am
  
  Gary
  
  Great to hear from you and yes, I'd be happy to talk about the project on Skype. I'd also be interested to hear about any online multicultural learning communities that you are developing or have established.
  
  Perdita
  - Gary O. Roberts > Perdita Harper May 13, 2010 at 7:33am
    
    Perdita,
    This is great to hear. I will contact you in the next several weeks for a Skype conference to discuss your work and some possibilities. I am looking to find individuals throughout the world who would be interested in creating a working consortium to further these projects.
    - L'Oreal Battistelli > Gary O. Roberts August 11, 2010 at 8:53pm
      
      Hello Perdita and Gary,
      
      I would love to discuss global education with you both!
      
      I've been working with an international student journalism program that has encompassed both Cypress College and Lutsk University in convergence journalsm reporting through two Fulbright awards-not mine-however, I've been very lucky to have been part of the projects in a variety of ways. I've been working with Cypress Department Chairman, Robert Mercer, whilie I completed my undergraduate and graduate studies (during which he received two Fulbright awards) that provided him with funding to design and facilitate two pilot projects integrating student journalists from both countries.
      
      In the interum, I worked with him as a tutor, a mentor (in field work, studio and in various production platforms), an assistant instructor and eventually as the instructional designer for the initial start-up of his most recent seminar this year that was hosted in both Cypress, CA, and Lutstk, University (Ukraine).
      
      My graduate program through Cal State Fullerton (MS Instructional Design and Technology) located in Fullerton, CA, USA, focused on the design of curriculum in web-based environments andt the incorporation of technology, and I focused my research throughout the program on the obstacles to second language learners in both f2f and online environments with the hopes of moving into curriculum design of global learners~
      
      I recently completed a summer session at Cal State Fullerton's American Language Program where I taught Fundamental Vocabulary, Intermediate Grammar and Advanced Composition to international students (f2f) and am currently looking for fall semester instructor/IDT positions, but I would love to become part of the consortium and have notified Mercer that you're assembling (hopefully, both he and I can join you in your upcoming skype session or schedule another at a mutually convenient time.)
      
      My background and experience can be viewed at LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect with me.
      
      I would love to learn more about your ideas and can be reached at lorealwrites@gmail.com .
      
      My skpe account name is "reportin_rocks".
      
      Very nice to meet you both and I look forward to futher communications.
      
      Most cordially,
      
      L'Oreal Battistelli

This reply was deleted.