This symposium will address the pedagogical, cultural and institutional challenges of university-level instruction which takes place across continents. In this era of global economy, intense international university exchanges, interdisciplinarity, team-teaching and e-learning it is urgent to explore the challenges and the opportunities of teaching that involves instructors and students who are located physically on different continents, whose expectations are shaped by different national educational traditions, and who are bound by diverse administrative, legal and economic requirements. This perspective builds on a joint seminar taught by Professor Miernowski and his French colleague, Professor Stéphane Lojkine, from the University of Aix-Marseille, a long-time partner of UW.
Questions to be explored:
– How to build a transcontinental classroom? The technological response. What are the technological tools, the skills required, the difficulties and the opportunities created by new technologies in long-distance synchronic and asynchronic teaching.
– How to deal with a flat-screen professor? The students’ response. Students’ experiences of learning with instructors who are physically located on another continent.
– How to engage students whom you will never meet (in person)? The instructors’ response. The experiences and questions from the instructors who either have taught or would like to teach in different institutions located all over the world. Different disciplines of learning need to be involved.
– How to manage an intercontinental university? The administrators’ response. Practical solutions from administrators to organize the course of study, cultivate the institutional identity and break the bureaucratic barriers with intercontinental teaching. The Wisconsin Idea has to be implicated.