Session Title: The Classroom Without Walls in the Global Village:Linking Ghanaian and Canadian Students in the Virtual Classroom

Time & Date: 11:00 A.M. – 11:45 A.M., Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Location: Rm. 155, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC)

Session Description: This paper presents findings of a pilot course web conferencing course on Globalization involving largely students and instructors in Canada and Ghana. The paper will highlight the challenges confronted, lessons learned and lessons unlearned throughout the more than two years planning and implementation of the project, whose principal objective was to create geographically distributed collaborative learning and teaching between students and faculty in developed and developing countries.

The undergraduate and graduate course on Globalization (Sociology of Global Inequalities), which was implemented in the Spring of 2008 (from January 7 to April 21), was conceived on the basis of two ideas—“Classroom without Walls” and “Global Village.” It was designed, using a unique interactive multimedia approach to link students and faculty in two international locations—Ghana and Canada. The course, through the integrative information and educational technologies, aimed to break the boundaries of time, space and distance thereby facilitating the sharing of knowledge between the students at the three sites. What is more, it sought to create a “networked collaborative learning environment” for students and instructors at the University of Ghana and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada.

Conference Stream: Learning & Teaching

Session Format: Paper Jam

Presenter: Dr. Charles Quist-Adade