Teaching Across Boundaries: Global Classrooms at Georgetown
During this round table session at TLISI, participants heard from two Georgetown faculty who have used video technology to teach and to engage students in collaboration across geographical and cultural boundaries. In her Diplomacy and Culture course, Ambassador Cynthia Schneider used computer videoconferencing software to have Georgetown students discuss and collaborate with fellow students in the Middle East. In his Causes of War course, Professor David Edelstein used Georgetown's new Telepresence classroom to virtually merge his Georgetown class with its counterpart in Qatar. Presenters and participants examined examples of student work and evaluated the impact and outcomes of these interactions in virtual space and in real time.
Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, Distinguished Professor in Practice of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service, recognized that the mind-opening and world-changing possibilities of higher education offered the perfect opportunity to bridge the divide of the "West" and the "Arab & Muslim World." By partnering with non-profit organization Soliya, and enlisting videoconferencing resources from CNDLS, and the Gelardin New Media Center, Schneider created Georgetown's Soliya Connect initiative that enables Georgetown students to experience a sense of global community without leaving campus.
The Soliya Connect program at Georgetown has already achieved a nationally visible presence. The lead story on the December Edition of CNN International's "Inside the Middle East" is a 5 minute segment that profiles the experiences of students in Professor Schneider's Diplomacy and Culture class at Georgetown University and the American University of Beirut as they participate in Soliya's Connect Program.
Professor David Edelstein's Causes of War seminar took place in one of the newest technological additions to the Georgetown Main campus, the telepresence classroom located in New North. The classroom and telepresence technology was used to simultaneously teach this course to the students on the Main campus and to the students on the Doha, Qatar campus.
The idea of telepresence technology is different from other kinds of videoconferencing technologies in that everything in the room is designed to create the look and feel as if you were in the same room with the people that you are connecting with across a distance. Screen size and resolution, lighting, ceiling height and other factors are intentionally designed to create an intimate feeling of being in the same space as the people on the other side of the screen, which is key to what actually happens in this room.
Designed to support the intimate pedagogy of a small interactive seminar based on discussion rather than lecture, Edelstein was able to use the telepresence technology to create a space for people to connect—a space for a meeting of minds—that collapsed the distance between students and created the opportunity for true learning across continents and cultures. Watch the video of Professor David Edelstein's Causes of War course on the right.