Your Name and Title: Barbara c.g. Green, Assistant Chair Composition Department, School of General Education
School or Organization Name: Kaplan University
Co-Presenter Name(s): Carrie Hannigan, Josef Vice, and Stephanie Thompson
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Various locations in the United States
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): Other educators
Short Session Description (one line): Using Composition and Technology to Foster Global Citizenship
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
A report emerging from the 2007 Conference on English Education Leadership and Policy Summit entitled “Globalization and English Education” noted that educators needed “to equip students with a knowledge of global literacy and the critical awareness of how globalization defines and positions their languages, symbols, identities, communities, and futures” (¶ 1). As online universities offer students even greater opportunities to communicate with those beyond their state and national boundaries, this mandate becomes even more urgent. Students must not only prepare to communicate, someday, in a global society; they have to do so within their online classrooms.
Online education has the capacity not only to reach a global audience, but also support student use of technology in ways that are conducive to futures where communication crosses borders, cultures, and intellectual differences by way of the Internet. Kaplan University uses the ECollege platform to bring content to students through the Internet, while the courses on the platform are striving to rely on more than just discussion boards, chat rooms, and email in order to educate students. For example, the General Education’s Composition Department and Writing Center has designed courses and content in multimedia formats to reach students through a variety of literacies, such as audio and visual, along with supporting student expression through multimedia assignments in composition and technical communication courses. Although the courses are offered through the Internet, Kaplan’s students are often reluctant to adopt multimedia due to their inexperience with technologies beyond email, classroom postings, and MS Word; instructors are required then to not only teach traditional writing and communication skills, but also to facilitate learning new technologies as a means to reach audiences outside the classroom.
The first important example of this from Kaplan University’s Composition Department is CM107. The first of Kaplan’s required composition courses teaches students to see themselves both as writers and members of a larger community. Using Joseph Campbell’s metaphor of the heroic journey, the course motivates students to find the heroic writer within themselves and encourages them to embrace the challenging journey they will face to become writers and global citizens. The course designers and instructors aim to give students the strength and skills that they need to use the written word to help others, not only those with whom they are in direct contact but also the larger global community.
Working hand in hand with CM107, CM 220 encourages students to write about a “big idea” that solves a problem in their community and asks students to think both locally and globally. Early steps in the writing process focus on how the problem affects them and their immediate community, but as they engage with classmates and their instructor in weekly Invention Labs and conduct research, they consider the broader implications of their argument on a global audience and create a technology presentation such as a blog, web site, or video that can communicate their big idea beyond the classroom.
Lastly, the theme of utilizing technology in fostering globalization can also be found in two upper-division courses: the very new CM230 (Creative Writing: Fiction and Nonfiction Narrative) and CM415 (Effective and Appropriate Communication in the Workplace). Starting with CM230, this course teaches students to apply critical thinking to their fiction and nonfiction writing by guiding students to think globally in terms of audience awareness and audience response as well as by asking them to look at diverse selections from classic and contemporary literature. Students are exposed to readings, discussions, synchronous seminars, and audio files of writers talking about various aspects of writing. In CM415, students work to glean what makes for successful, effective, and appropriate communication in the workplace in terms of addressing internal, external and global audiences. Students must think complexly in terms of using technology effectively to communicate globally, and the final project guides students to deal with an international client to resolve a volatile situation.
Globalization and English education. (2007). Conference on English Education Leadership and
Policy Summit. National Council of Teachers of English. Retrieved from
http://www.ncte.org/cee/2007summit/globalization
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: None.
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