"A Game Changer": Network Collaborative Courses Satisfy the Demand for Globally Integrated Learning

In the four years since OSUN’s inception, Network Collaborative Courses have emerged as a vibrant example of partners’ commitment to integrating teaching and learning across the network. Network Collaborative Courses (NCCs) are co-designed by faculty from multiple institutions across the globe and taught in person on each of the collaborating campuses, with students coming together both online and offline to work together on assignments and projects.
 
Responding to a Need for Expertise

NCCs were first offered during 2020 and over four years their popularity among students and faculty has grown at an impressive rate. The number of NCCs available each semester has grown from 6 (fall 2020) to 17 (fall 2023) with over 30 unique courses being offered in total. Student enrollment in NCCs has increased four times over, with 2,000 students enrolling in fall 2023. The number of faculty members involved with NCCs has increased two-fold, with over 100 faculty currently co-designing and co-teaching the courses. The number of participating institutions has increased from 5 to 22, with partners hailing from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe. 

The strong numbers demonstrate that NCCs are responding to a need for online access to global and interdisciplinary expertise on topics relevant to the issues that students and their communities face. NCCs also expand opportunities for many non-traditional students – including refugee and displaced students – giving them access to a dynamic and rigorous learning environment while allowing them to collaborate with peers from across the globe.

Surveys conducted by OSUN demonstrate that the vast majority of students and faculty participating in NCCs believe that the courses significantly enhance learning outcomes and help students gain unique insights into some of their most pressing challenges. Over 90% of students would recommend taking a network course to a friend and a similar percentage describe their course experience as good or excellent. 

Unique Course Design for Unique Objectives

According to Anita Tarnai, NCCs Program Manager, the courses are unique for several reasons. The diverse academic backgrounds and cultural capital that network faculty and students bring to the courses inform a truly collaborative and diverse knowledge creation process. The project-focused and student-centered pedagogy at the core of NCCs greatly enhances the teaching and learning experience. Finally, the courses are defined by three educational objectives: global learning, intercultural competence, and teamwork. These aspects, inherent in all of the courses, ensure that students and faculty benefit from the courses’ distinctly collaborative and networked design.
 
“The global learning feature gives students the opportunity to understand international systems and make their own connections between global and local issues,” says Tarnai. “The intercultural competency component gives faculty and students the ability to relate to peers from different backgrounds.”

Eva Egensteiner, Assistant Program Manager for NCCs, says that the first two components actively support curiosity and an open-minded approach to considering others’ ideas. In addition, “the teamwork component focuses on students developing the skills and mindset needed to synthesize and build on others’ contributions, which helps to enable effective collaboration.”

“Collaborate, Compromise, and Excel”

Surveys show more than 80% of students strongly agreed that the peer collaboration they experienced in the courses helped them to develop better team working skills, including being a better listener and communicator. One student from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya who took “Visual Storytelling for Civic Engagement” says that “teaming up with a partner was a game-changer. We shot, edited, and crafted the final video idea together. It taught me how to collaborate, compromise, and excel in a team environment.”
 
Approximately 90% of students said that course materials taken from different geographies and disciplines “reflected the diversity of the students and faculty in the classroom,” confirming the global learning aspect of NCCs. Similar survey results convey that students felt instructors effectively established an inclusive environment for all pupils and that the courses increased their ability to “relate to people from different geographies, and see my own situation and the course content in an intercultural and global context.”

“I learned to accept and learn about different world views,” says a Bard Early College student who took “Epistemology of Conspiracy Theories.” “Meeting those who live in other parts of the world and hearing what opinions they have on a topic made me realize that there is a diverse view of opinions.” 
 
Students enrolled in NCCs also benefit from engaging in project-based learning that is frequently centered on community engagement. They co-create knowledge “artifacts,” including digital media that gets repurposed as supporting materials for future courses and real-world collaborations that address social inequities. 

Students have also engaged in and benefited from multiple co-curricular activities, including a Digital Theaters workshop and performance at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia; a Human Rights advocacy workshop and conference at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan (AUCA); and a Geographic Information System (GIS) data visualization conference at Central European University in Austria and AUCA. All of these course experiences allow students to gain skills that will be sought after by future employers.

Enhanced Faculty Pedagogy and Expertise

Faculty also benefit from the unique co-design, co-teaching, and co-curricular activities aspects of NCCs, according to Tarnai. For example, when faculty from across the network came together to develop curriculum at meetups in Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, and Turkey, they not only met pedagogical needs but also shared their collective strengths. In such instances, faculty have become better teachers by learning from each other and gaining expertise in a variety of disciplines outside their experience.
 
“The network meeting we had at AUCA assisted us in brainstorming and subsequently formulating balanced curriculum activities that help facilitate global learning, both in terms of pedagogy and in terms of activities,” confirms Jana Lozanoska, a Human Rights Advocacy instructor at Al-Quds Bard.

Registration is now open for Fall 2024 Network Collaborative Courses. Students from across the network can choose from 14 courses. The deadline for priority registration is June 1 and the deadline for final registration is August 15. 

Search Network Collaborative Courses for Fall 2024

Post Date: 04-20-2024