Professors’ Virtual Collaboration Cultivates a Global Community

It has almost been a year since I embarked on a partnership with Benedicte Kivle, a faculty member from VID Specialized University in Norway, as part of the Norwegian Panorama VE/COIL Partnerships Initiative and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Institute on Virtual Exchange/COIL. The program, sponsored by the AAC&U and the government of Norway, aims to strengthen higher education ties with the United States and Japan. 

 We were part of a larger group of educators and administrators representing several American colleges and universities, along with institutions in Norway and Japan. I was part of the St. John’s team that included Zoe Petropoulou, Ph.D., Senior Director for Global Engagement, and Associate Professor,  St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Cynthia R. Phillips, Ed.D., Executive Director, Center for Teaching and Learning, Office of Online Learning and Services, and Associate Professor, The Peter J. Tobin College of Business; and Ian M. August, Assistant Director of Digital Learning. The VID team included Kivle and colleagues Hanne-Liv Østtveit-Moe and Tobias Tungland. 

With the program now in the final stages, I would like to share some brief reflections on the experience from the perspective of one who taught as part of the collaboration between St. John’s and VID Specialized University. 

Overview

The shape of this experience was in three parts. First came the intensive professional development, in which all participants were engaged. 

This consisted of extensive readings, videos, monthly meetings with other teams worldwide with AAC&U representatives, and all-important monthly planning meetings between the St. John’s and VID teams, all taking place over a period of four months. This is where we began to imagine the collaborative course Kivle and I would be teaching together in the fall semester for students in First Year Seminar (FYS): the City and Social Imagination at St. John’s, and in VID, a master’s level course on Community Development.  

The second part of the experience brought all US, Norwegian, and Japanese teams to Bergen, Norway, for in-person workshops and meetings and opportunities to prepare team presentations delivered to the entire group over the course of a few days. Both in the online preparatory work and in Bergen, the work progressed in two tracks: administrators and faculty.  

We were also fortunate enough to travel to Oslo (through the fjords, by train!) to visit VID Specialized University and get to know our partners even better. 

The final piece, and the most important, was the realization of all our professional development and preparation in the form of the course partnership within the structure known at St. John’s as the Global Online Learning Exchange, and in the larger world, Collaborative Online International Learning. Together, the two teams built a collaborative course that focused on the concept of “community” in ways that supported each “home” course from mid-October to mid-November.  

St. John’s University’s mission includes a focus on Vincentian values, and the partnership between St. John’s and VID especially resonates here, in my view. It goes without saying that this was a global experience for students, another important element in the St. John’s mission, but more than that, the core values of both St. John’s and VID are grounded similarly. As the VID website states: “Through our studies, knowledgeable, reflective, and courageous professionals are trained. VID has a particularly strong research profile within practice-relevant research, diversity, social inequality, particularly vulnerable groups, and global Christianity.”  

Together, we easily found common ground through our shared values and prepared course learning goals that served each institution’s identity.

Although some students in FYS may have expected, as gleaned from their presurvey responses, a more “Eurocentric” experience, they soon found that their partners in Norway were from all over the world, including Iran, Madagascar, Philippines, and Ukraine.

Academic Service-Learning is a required element in all FYS courses, and because my version of the FYS course last semester focused on climate issues, I decided to develop relationships with local community gardens to resonate with our overarching theme of “community” in the metropolitan area, beginning with St. John’s very own organic garden and composting efforts, as well as other gardens in the area, including Paradise Community Garden in Jamaica, Queens.

Students from St. John’s learned about the efforts of those in Norway in this regard as they worked together on presentations that were based on their parallel work in “the field.”    

When we first applied to the institute, each of us made sure to describe how our courses individually addressed the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. For example, goal 11 focuses on community development, making “cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Goals 12, 13, and 15 ask us to address issues surrounding climate, responsible consumption, and life on the land.

Our project resonated well with these goals. Looking both backward and forward, many thoughts occur. Surely, we achieved targeted goals, but we also consider, “How could we have done this better, and what lessons were learned for next time?” For now, suffice to say this was truly a once in a lifetime experience, and I am filled with gratitude.