DePaul University’s Global Learning Experience (GLE) is a relatively new initiative that was established to provide students with opportunities to engage in collaborative projects, mediated by technology, with students abroad. GLE exposes students, some who have never traveled out of the country or considered studying abroad, with an opportunity to journey to another country via their GLE course without leaving the state.

GLE activities and projects are designed by faculty partners (typically one professor at DePaul and a professor(s) at an institution abroad) and range from concepts such as the creation of interactive, collaborative virtual tours to innovative 3D design projects. Students have a chance to work with their peers around the globe and learn cultural similarities and differences that impact (or don’t impact) collaboration and development.

Some of the residual benefits for students include building an international network of peers and working on teams globally. It’s no secret that companies, educational institutions, government agencies, etc. are eager to find talented graduates with diverse experiences. The University of Southern California Annenberg developed an infographic which suggests that “today’s global economy demands a more unique and effective working environment. Virtual teams consist of employees who are the best people for their jobs, but who are not geographically close to a company’s headquarters”. (USC Annenberg, School of Communication & Journalism). In GLE courses, students are exposed to a virtual team experience and are better equipped for the globalized workforce.

Global engagement

Different perspectives can impact how we view the world. In each exchange that we have with someone from another culture, there’s a good chance that we’ll be exposed to a diverse way of thinking and in turn, our perspectives are broadened. If that’s true, how do we adequately prepare students for these types of exchanges? The answer: provide faculty with tools to help facilitate their interactions. DePaul’s GLE workshop does just that.

As part of the preparatory process for conducting a GLE, faculty at DePaul complete the GLE workshop, a comprehensive two-week hybrid course (five online modules and two face-to-face meetings) designed to support them in preparing for the GLE proposal (i.e., learn more about the details of the GLE proposal process) and implementation. In one of the modules, intercultural considerations is a topic area that we delve into in terms of providing strategies to prepare students to collaborate with their foreign partners. Faculty read a number of articles, engage in an online discussion, and participate in breakout sessions led by an in-house intercultural communication expert. They walk away with a number of tools that not only deal with intercultural considerations, but also logistics management and technology tool options.

In the Harvard Business Review, Neely writes “creating successful work groups is hard enough when everyone is local and people share the same office space. But when team members come from different countries and functional backgrounds and are working in different locations, communication can rapidly deteriorate, misunderstanding can ensue, and cooperation can degenerate into distrust” (Neely, “Global Teams That Work”). Strategies that faculty utilize, some that they’ve extracted from the GLE workshop, could help mitigate a few of the issues that the global team members experienced in Neely’s article.

Endless possibilities

The long-term implications of the GLE program for students post-collegiate years are limitless. One student that was interviewed spoke about an interest in traveling and/or studying abroad; while another student discussed the perceptions of difficulty in terms of connecting because of the cultural differences that never manifested. There’s lots of value in hearing from the students, and it’s part of the reason many faculty include a reflective summary at the conclusion of the GLE project.

One thing’s for sure, GLE is a cost-effective approach to exposing a larger population of the college community to an international experience. In many instances, it yields an interest in pursuing a study abroad experience which is an added bonus.

References

Neely, T. (2015, October 1). Global Teams That Work. Retrieved November 16, 2015, from https://hbr.org/2015/10/global-teams-that-work

University of Southern California Annenberg. Virtual teams in the global economy. Retrieved November 16, 2015, from
http://communicationmgmt.usc.edu/msp-resources/infographics/infograph-virtual-teams/