Sixth College Internships in Dublin
A UCSD Global Seminar
This page is intended to be an e-portfolio designed to communicate my approach towards developing and teaching “Sixth College Internships in Dublin,” a 8-week faculty-led, study abroad program at UCSD. While I developed and ran this course for the first time in Summer 2022, I have since participated in the Forum on Education Abroad’s Global Learning Launchpad (GLL), which provided me with new strategies that I have begun incorporating into my program design and pedagogy. Therefore, in the following I will be sharing not only my approach to the program, but highlighting how the program has been enhanced by the GLL training.
Program Overview
Sixth College Internships in Dublin is a unique Global Seminar (i.e. short-term study abroad program) that provides students with a comprehensive academic, professional, and cultural experience in one of Europe’s most vibrant cities. In this program, students work as interns at organizations that complement their interests while taking two remote courses that fulfill their Upper Division GE requirements: CAT 124RS and CAT 125RS. These classes are designed to prepare students for academic and professional success in a globalized world and cover topics such as intercultural communication, globalization, professionalism, identity, global citizenship, and sustainability. Outside of class, we use the city as a textbook and students are encouraged to take advantage of all Dublin has to offer through excursions to historical sites, museums, and other local attractions.
By the end of the program, students will be able to:
Critically analyze and interrogate the influence of culture, communication, and identity on their own lives and the lives of others
Identify and effectively communicate across diverse linguistic, cultural, and political environments and audiences
Identify their own personal values, articulate how those values manifest in their professional pursuits, and develop strategies to live and work in a manner consistent with their values
Understand the impact of their own actions on larger political systems and cultural structures
Appreciate and effectively navigate the growing influence of globalization on their lives and their professional fields
Course SyllabI
Students in the global seminar will take two, remote courses while living in Dublin.
The first course is CAT 124RS, which is designed to complement students’ work as interns. The purpose of the course is to provide students with an academic framework that allows them to critically reflect on, analyze, and learn from their internship experiences in meaningful ways. Click here for CAT 124RS Syllabus with comments explaining GLL updates.
The second course is CAT 125GS, which is designed to introduce students to public rhetoric and practical communication in a globalized world. The purpose of the course is to teach student how to communicate effectively across diverse linguistic, cultural, and political contexts in order to prepare them for success in their personal and professional lives. I am still updating the CAT 125RS Syllabus, but hope to make it available soon.
Approach to Student engagement
Since the two courses that accompany this global seminar, engagement can be difficult; particularly when I as the instructor am not able to share the same experience of being abroad with the students. However, to make up for this chasm, the courses are designed intentionally to allow for as much sharing and touch-points as possible.
In CAT 124RS, the course that accompanies students' internship experience, I have decided to break up the “ZOOM discussion sessions” into smaller 5-6 person groups that meet every other week rather than having the entire 22 person class meet all at once. This will create a more intimate setting where students will have more opportunity to speak and share their experiences in a more meaningful and interactive way. Within these discussion sessions, we will employ a quasi-story circle methodology, where students will go around the room sharing their experiences/reflections on a specific topic related to that week’s theme. This set-up will once again serve to create more connection amongst the students and by learning from one another allow them to enhance their overall intercultural communication and understanding abilities. Relatedly, I have also incorporated lessons early in the program that teach and demonstrate students how to critically reflect so that they are clear understanding of what true reflection and sharing looks like. Additionally, in order to create synergy through the course and the students internship experience, I have tailored the assignments to enhance and reflect their experience outside the classroom, culminating in a final reflective assignment intended to help illuminate the many lessons they have learned over the previous 8 week. Lastly, I have also made it more of a priority to check in with program partners throughout the course of the program to get a better sense of what students are experiencing on the ground so I might be better able to relate to what they are going through at any given point in time.
In CAT 125RS, the upper-division writing course and communications course, everything will be done asynchronously in order to allow students maximum flexibility given the extent of their other (i.e. internship) obligations. However, in order to ensure that student engagement stays high, I have instituted several new tools for this year. First, I incorporated an optional pre-departure gathering with students to allow us to get to know each other and share some of our feelings before departure. During this gathering, I also had students complete a reflection activity to help a) students identify some of their assumptions, anxieties, or concerns, and b) allow me to understand their needs, interests, preferences in order to better tailor my pedagogy and course design. Second, I have integrated more regular “check-in” recorded videos with students that will be posted throughout each week, rather than just a single video at the start. The purpose behind this is to give students more opportunities to hear from me in shorter clips that are much more accessible and manageable in terms of attention span. Third, I realized that I had not previously provided students with enough literature or information related to the place they are occupying (i.e. Dublin), so I have gone back and incorporated more readings and developed new lessons that will hopefully better orient and prepare students for life in Dublin, and Ireland, in general. Lastly, in the assignments I have revamped many of my discussion board prompts to better integrate reflection with the course materials/readings. For example, I have tried to move away from more open (and thus general) prompts like “reflect on your experience this week…” and exchanged them for prompts like “reflect on Hannah Gadsby’s quote “we learn from the part of the story we focus on,” how can you apply this sentiment to your time and/or experiences in Dublin thus far? By providing students with prompts that ask students to connect the course material with their own experiences, I am hopeful that it will create an added layer of depth and complexity to their thinking.
Assessment
The courses of this program use a mixture of formative and summative assessment in order to, hopefully, provide a more holistic assessment approach. My goal is to assess students on their engagement throughout the program and incentivize them to stay engaged through practical, applied assignments.
In CAT 124RS, students will be assessed through our ZOOM story-circles based upon the depth, and thoughtfulness of their engagement. Additionally, students will submit assignments throughout the quarter that will be graded individually based upon a simple 5 point scale. Students will also always receive written comments from me in terms of areas for further expansion and guidance for places where improvements could be made.
For CAT 125RS, students will be assessed on their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills through reflection posts that ask students to integrate or connect the readings of each week with their own experiences in Dublin. Students will also be graded through several major assignments including: a personal narrative, a community engagement activity, and a final presentation. Lastly, students will also be graded on their participation on a Discord chat group, where they will be graded on posting weekly observations of things they encounter while abroad. This last element is intentionally designed to create community and knowledge sharing amongst the group of students.
Teaching Philosophy (Global)
My approach to teaching is grounded in experiential education, social justice, and civic engagement, and is tailored to facilitate three core student outcomes that go beyond the content of any given course: critical reflection, self-empowerment, and civic engagement. Together, these three outcomes reflect my belief that learning should not be the destination of education, but a process that leads to the maturation of one’s behaviors, perspectives, and actions. Thus, my teaching philosophy is one that emphasizes the necessity of pairing classroom learning with outlets for community action and real-world application in a manner that equips students to be engaged and thoughtful global citizens who are prepared to advocate for and work towards the future they seek.
Critical requires that students develop knowledge of the environment around them while investigating how their own identities inform how they see the world. For example, in my courses, I intermix literature on communication studies and/or globalization with that of critical race theory and feminist theory to challenge students to articulate, in both discussions and writings, how their own positionality plays a role in their understanding of a topic in both familiar (domestic) and unfamiliar (abroad) environments.Through learning the perspectives of others, I have found that students are better able to appreciate their own political and social identities and to think critically about their own cultural assumptions. I have also found that developing this awareness in group settings is an effective tool in creating a greater sense of community and trust within and outside of the classroom.
Self-empowerment requires that students begin to understand their agency in society and their own proximity to the topics covered in any given course. To instill this sense of empowerment, I focus on emphasizing critical thinking and encouraging students to bring their own knowledge into the classroom. This belief is what motivates me to always leave flexibility in my syllabi, so that students can have input in what topics we engage with throughout the course. Additionally, it is why in my courses I ask students to bring in examples from their own social media platforms or life-experiences (particularly in study abroad courses), and allow students to choose the content or topic they wish to incorporate into course assignments. By using material that originates from their own lives, the barriers to participate in class discussion are lowered, resulting in students becoming active learners and contributors. I have also found that by affirming students’ own knowledge and experiences, their abilities to dissect and critically analyze information is greatly enhanced, as is evident through the final projects and papers they submit. Ultimately, centralizing student knowledge allows students to see the relevance of the course to their own lives while instilling a sense of empowerment and responsibility that extends beyond the classroom.
Lastly, I believe that a quality education should not only expose students to new knowledge, but provide opportunities to apply that knowledge in actionable and observable ways. To cultivate an ethos of civic engagement, I design my courses to ensure there is always an element of experiential, global, or community-based learning. While this can take many forms, some examples I have implemented in my courses include having students use video software to create their own political campaign videos; connecting students to community experts through participation in a Town Hall event; giving students the opportunity to present their writing or research in public forums; placing students in volunteer or internship positions at community organizations and business; and studying and volunteering abroad.
By providing students opportunities to see how they can use their knowledge outside of the classroom, it is my goal to provide them with a lasting belief in their ability to contribute to their communities and the world in meaningful ways. Ultimately, I believe this philosophy and my success as an educator at UCSD, is clearly demonstrated in my student evaluations as well as my the courses I teach, not least of which is my short-term study abroad + internship program in Dublin, Ireland.
Key insights
As someone whose area of scholarship and academic study falls directly within the field of education abroad, I came into this program with a pretty solid foundation in terms of best practices in the field. But even with this foundation, the GLL provided me with immense value in terms of validating some of my current approaches while helping me to fill in gaps in my courses as well as my knowledge.
One of the most important things I learned throughout the GLL program was not just the importance of reflection, but how to facilitate it in a more effective way. I have always struggled to get students to dig and think deeper, to really apply a critical lens, and through this training I developed many strategies that I look forward to employing. For example, I have already rewritten several of my prompts so that they are much more specific and intentional in getting students to draw connections between the course material and their lived experiences. Importantly, I also learned the value of preparing students to do reflection properly. So, at the start of the program I will not teach students how to reflect rather than assume that “critical reflection” is something that students already know how to do if given the chance. Afterall, reflection, and particularly critical reflection, is a skillset to be develop not an inherent competency.
Moving forward, I know that my program will need to continually be updated and improved, such is the work of an educator. However, I feel much more comfortable and confident in my abilities to run these audits to detect and improve areas that are not working as well as they could be. I am also excited to apply these skills in the future as I build new global seminar programs to other areas of the world -- and hopefully, one day, be able to go with students on these trips and try these new lessons in person!