Features
Students develop cultural awareness through virtual exchange programs
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By Stephanie Koons
ne of the most significant setbacks to higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was the cancellation of study abroad and international exchange programs. In the College of Education, aspiring English language teachers interested in immersing themselves in another culture were confronted with the harsh reality that their plans to live and work overseas were curtailed. However, College of Education faculty members and their counterparts in Ecuador and Japan decided that they could make the most of the situation by facilitating meaningful cross-cultural dialogue in a virtual space. “We thought, well, we’ll shift a little bit to try to develop some online experiences,” said Elizabeth Smolcic, teaching professor of education (English as a Second Language). “Many of our students don’t have a lot of experience with people from other countries. We noted that kind of an experience, whether it’s in person or dialoguing on Zoom … could be really transformative.” For more than a decade, Smolcic said, the College of Education has been offering the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) with immersion program in the Ecuadorian cities of Cuenca and Otavalo. The program began in the spring semester as part of a five-course, 15-credit teaching certificate program. TESL certificate coursework would be completed during summer courses on-campus and then continued in Ecuador, where students engaged in a teaching practicum with a mentor teacher
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Penn State Education
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When the pandemic canceled study-abroad and international exchange programs, faculty in the College of Education and their counterparts abroad brought the students together virtually.
who guided them through the design and instruction of a contentbased or theme-based English language course to Ecuadorian students. When the program, along with other study abroad opportunities at Penn State, was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Smolcic and Magda Madany-Saa, a teaching assistant in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, put their heads together to figure out how they could give their TESL students some practical teaching experience. During the fall 2020 semester, Smolcic and Madany-Saa cotaught a class, “Language and culture in the classroom: issues for practitioners” that was set up as a virtual exchange with their counterparts in La Universidad Nacional de Educación (UNAE), a public teacher’s college in Ecuador. In the first session of the class, Penn State and UNAE students met as a group on Zoom and then were paired in one-onone partnerships: one U.S. and one Ecuadorian student. The
students were provided structured discussion topics they could reflect on later in writing. During that time, Smolcic said the students “developed friendships, learned a lot about language and culture, and multilingualism and global awareness.” For the spring 2021 semester, Smolcic and Madany-Saa said they decided to increase the amount of time the U.S. and Ecuadorian students spent with each other in class. Diego Cajas, a faculty member at UNAE, Smolcic and Madany-Saa alternated teaching the class over seven weeks, when the Ecuadorian students joined their American counterparts via Zoom for group readings and discussion. In the third phase, which started in the fall 2021 semester, the instructors combined the students’ in-class and out-of-class interactions so that they reaped the benefits of both formats. Forty Penn State and UNAE students — 20 from each institution — met for 10 weeks but the students also met outside of class to discuss topics related to intercultural competence and globalization.
