Scarborough, Isabel, Ph.D.

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Scholarship at Parkland

Parkland College SPARK: Scholarship at Parkland Global Studies Initiatives in Social Sciences 2020 - 2021 Global Studies Initiatives in the Social Sciences Spring 2021 Final Report AY 2020-2021: Initiative for the Development of Global and International Studies in Social Science Courses at Parkland College Isabel Scarborough Ph.D. Follow this and additional works at: https://spark.parkland.edu/global_studies_2021 Open access to this Article is brought to you by Parkland College's institutional repository, SPARK: Scholarship at Parkland. For more information, please contact spark@parkland.edu. Parkland College Global Studies Report, page 1       “Development of Global and International Studies in Social Science Courses with Community College Faculty at Parkland College”   PROJECT REPORT   For Title VI funding awarded by the Center for Global Studies, the European Union Center, the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center, and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign   Academic Year 2020-2021    Summary: This report describes the results from year three of a four-year project proposed to provide faculty in social sciences at Parkland College with resources to redesign their instructional materials and improve the curriculum taught in their courses. The purpose of this curriculum redesign is to incorporate current case studies and scholarly work from Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Eurasia, East Asia, and the Pacific, and Global Studies more generally. A year of primarily online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the landscape of instructional design in higher education and highlighted the importance of emphasizing awareness of global issues in our student learning objectives. Similar to the first year of this project, faculty met in a series of workshops to share their course redesign ideas, receive feedback from their peers, and prepare new course assignments or modify existing ones to meet the goal of globalizing their class materials. The results from these workshops joined a growing collection of open access teaching resources in Parkland’s institutional repository—SPARK—that have proven to be helpful to community college faculty, students, and scholars on globalization education. Noteworthy in this year’s efforts was that the number of participants almost doubled from past iterations to 5 full-time and 10 part-time faculty. The theme for this year was “Interdisciplinary Collaborations” and welcomed a handful of participants from sister departments in the Division of Arts and Sciences, in addition to faculty from 8 different social sciences disciplines. All work meetings were held virtually given pandemic restrictions; a format that proved to better accommodate faculty schedules.    Parkland College Global Studies Report, page 2  Project Background The Department of Social Sciences at Parkland College houses ten different disciplines that introduce students to the study and exploration of our social, economic, and political world, and the distinctive human connections that build this complexity. Students in our department’s courses, the majority of whom transfer to four-year institutions, are taught in small classes with an emphasis on experiential learning and applied pedagogy. As in all community colleges, the courses taught are introductory and two-hundred level and fulfill general education requirements. Social Sciences at Parkland partnered with the Center for Global Studies (CGS), the European Union Center (EUC), the Russian, East European and Eurasian Center (REEEC), and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies (CEAPS) at the University of Illinois to provide faculty training with instructional design and promote student engagement with global issues. This project is part of a Title VI funding cycle from these area studies centers for 2018–2022. In the first half of the project’s term, faculty at our community college revised their syllabi and created or modified assignments to increase an awareness of and inform global issues into their courses, supervised student Honors Projects with a global focus, purchased research and teaching materials for the college’s library, and trained in online teaching methods. The results from past years have all been uploaded to Parkland’s scholarly repository, SPARK. This past academic year (AY2020–2021) is the third of this four-year endeavor. The following report describes the work accomplished and project objectives met during this time.   Project Goals The goals for the four-year project to promote global and area studies at Parkland College social sciences courses, are:  1. Promote the addition to Parkland’s social science courses of instructional materials on global issues with a focus on the European Union, Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, East Asia and the Pacific. 2. Provide social science faculty with instructional design tools and aid them with the implementation of new course materials in the classroom. 3. Encourage Parkland College students to work on Honors projects for social science courses with a focus on global issues on the European Union, Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, East Asia and the Pacific. 4. Provide a forum for Midwest community college faculty in the social sciences to use the teaching material developed with CGS grant funds to contribute to their own course redesign and encourage education on global studies issues by these faculty in their home institutions.   Yearly Report: Faculty Workshops and Work Meetings The changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic that necessitated our instruction to migrate almost completely online had us modify our proposal last year to provide training on online instruction. Consequently, our efforts for AY 2020–2021 were focused on getting back on track with the original schedule to promote curriculum redesign efforts among our faculty. Something we learned over the past academic year was that the virtual format for work meetings and the challenges of the pandemic had faculty yearning for more spaces that would promote collegiality and social contact with peers. On the other hand, virtual platforms did help promote greater participation in professional development opportunities for part-time faculty who have other work obligations and tight schedules. Based on this data, the year’s work was structured as a series of informal work meetings by two groups of 7 and 8 Parkland College Global Studies Report, page 3  faculty each, book ended by workshops with the entire group. Each group also had a Microsoft Teams chat set up where members shared course materials they were redesigning to ask for and receive feedback and plan their final presentations. The meetings were all held virtually, and the small number of participants and required sharing of ideas resulted in creating a space where faculty also shared experiences and became part of a de facto support and professional network. In this way, faculty connected with peers while maximizing the efficiency of their time commitment. Following is a description of the resulting course redesign process.   Course Redesign The Project Coordinator for this initiative recruited and committed a group of Parkland instructors to work on redesigning their course materials to internationalize their class content in the Spring of 2021. As noted above, the format agreed upon for the work meetings was virtual on both Microsoft Teams and Zoom platforms. Faculty began working on the course materials they would share with other project participants in the Spring semester. Faculty discussed and finished their course redesign in a series of workshops scheduled from May 24 to June 15, 2021.   The following table lists the instructors who participated in this professional development experience, with the classes to which they will apply their newly acquired training in Fall 2021 (including if the course has more than one section that was redesigned), projected enrollment in course sections, and area focus enhanced by their curriculum development. What is different from previous years of this project is that the number of participating faculty nearly doubled and social sciences faculty were joined by three faculty from the Humanities department and two instructors from Fine and Applied Arts.   Faculty Name Redesigned Course, Number of Sections, Projected Enrollment Fall 2021 Area Focus Lauren Anaya Introduction to Anthropology, 1 section, 30 students Global Studies Shannon Bridges Issues in Criminal Justice, 1 section, 25 students Russia, Europe Amy Chamley Introduction to Early Childhood Education, 1 section, 15 Global Studies Andreea Chiritescu Introduction to Macroeconomics, 2 sections, 50 Eastern Europe Leanne Cunningham Interpersonal Communication, 1 section, 25 East Asia Brooke Ferguson World Geography, 1 section, 25 students East Asia Dale Gardner Introduction to International Relations, 1 section, 25 Global Studies Dorie Geissler Introduction to Sociology, 2 sections, 60 students European Union Jennifer Gleason Introduction to Child Psychology, 1 section, 30 Global Studies Jody Littleton Public Speaking, 2 sections, 50 students  European Union Annie McManus Introduction to Child Psychology, 1 section, 30 Eastern Europe Amy Penne Western Culture, 2 sections, 50 students European Union Cristina Prestin-Beard Introduction to Sociology, 2 sections, 50 students Eastern Europe Patricia VerStrat Women in Arts, Cultures, and Societies, 1 section, 30  Global Studies Ruijie Zhao Cultural Values in the Eastern World, 1 section, 25  East Asia Total participating faculty: 15 Total course sections redesigned: 20 Total projected students impacted: 520   Parkland College Global Studies Report, page 4  As the table above shows, course redesign took place in 15 classes, five of which will have two sections taught by that instructor. The projected impact of this year’s work for Fall 2021 is 20 course sections enrolling close to 520 students in twelve different disciplines. The details of this course redesign and of the interdisciplinary collaboration ideas that emerged from this year’s work are detailed below.   Teaching Materials The full reports presented by each of the fifteen faculty who modified their courses to raise awareness of global issues and incorporate material from the areas of the world represented by the centers funding this initiative have been uploaded to Parkland’s Scholarly Repository, SPARK. Each faculty report features the same four questions that asked participants to describe the assignment or teaching course materials they redesigned, note how these changes contributed to Parkland’s Global Awareness learning outcome, and ended with a reflection on how exposing students to material from other world areas and faculty interdisciplinary collaboration benefitted the teaching and learning process. It is important to note that the majority of faculty participants did not limit themselves to a description of the assignments and course materials they modified but copied assignment instructions and rubrics at the end of their reports. In this way, faculty continue to contribute to the repository of open access teaching resources that has emerged from this four-year initiative.   The course redesign discussed by faculty in these reports include myriad paths to explore global and international issues. An exploration on Google Earth of virtual tours of archaeology sites in Uzbekistan, France, and India has been added for a section of Introduction to Anthropology (ANT 101). Students taking Issues in Criminal Justice (CJS 225) will be asked to compare the legal systems of Russia or other Eastern European or European Union countries to analyze how different nations uphold individual rights, including compliance with laws. Students of Introduction to Early Childhood, CHD 122, will cover a new unit asking them to research how early childhood education is viewed and practiced around the globe. Introduction to Macroeconomics (ECO 102) now features a historical review of Eastern European economics prior to 1989 and asks students to engage with economic principles based on this contrast and comparison with our current economic capitalist system. A powerful personal experience drives student discussion in this class exercise. COM 120, Interpersonal Communications, will now use depictions of Hmong immigrants in the media to engage in a discussion of cross-cultural communication and how culture affects meaning.   World Geography (GEO 140) already engages students with work from East Asia, the Pacific, and the European Union. This new iteration will ask students to discuss a new set of countries where they will pin these locations on Google Earth and provide a summary of recent news story and location analysis. The same recent news analysis takes place in Introduction to International Relations (POS 202) where students will compare recent news items on global issues to discuss political changes in the US and abroad. In a class discussion of collectivist vs. individualist societies, students in Introduction to Sociology (SOC 101) will explore how socialization takes place in the Netherlands and other countries compared to child rearing in the United States. Another faculty will modify a different section of the same course to examine Global Juvenile Justice with case studies from Eastern Europe among other world areas. Introduction to Child Psychology (PSY 207) will also be redesigned by two different faculty. One asks students to compare practices and perceptions in different cultures on topics such as immigrant children, infant sleeping arrangements, violence against children, and ethnic minority youth. Parkland College Global Studies Report, page 5  Students are asked to critically engage with each of these reading assignments which, scaffolded, increase awareness of the global nature of our world. The other course section deploys fairy tales and folk tales from around the world to open student’s minds to the diversity of cultural values in our world. The course also speaks to the historical connection of our own cultural mores to Eastern and Western European story telling.   The instructor modifying the Public Speaking (COM 103) curriculum, has redesigned an assignment where students will be exposed to communication patterns from speakers across the globe, with an emphasis on European Union countries. Lastly, three different faculty teaching Humanities courses on Western Culture, Women’s Studies, and East Asian Studies (HUM 101, 102, 103, and 121) will revise their class sections to provide inter-cultural comparisons on issues of women’s rights, climate change and activism, and storytelling as a vehicle for cross-cultural understanding. All of these redesigned course materials will be tested in classes in the Fall of 2021. Lastly, continuing with work in this project from the previous academic year, one of our participating faculty this year was able to supervise two Honors papers that students produced in Sociology and that will also be published on our Institutional Repository, SPARK, joining other Honors projects with a global focus from last year. We hope to be able to continue the supervision of student work engaging directly with global issues in next year’s efforts.   The Year’s Project Results: Interdisciplinary Collaborations One lesson learned from the past pandemic year is that faculty in all areas of study had to take a close look at their teaching methods in order to keep students engaged with learning on fully virtual or hybrid formats. Another was the increasing importance and relevance of raising global awareness in course materials. More importantly, we learned that global issues forge a bridge between courses as students learn about similar topics from different lenses, and faculty benefit greatly from seeing how content they cover in their courses is taught in other disciplines. All of these lessons put together made us aware that interdisciplinary collaborations are key in promoting the internationalization of our curriculum. This past year, we piloted reaching out to faculty from our sister departments in the Division of Arts and Sciences and had a handful of instructors from Humanities and Fine and Applied Arts join our work meetings. Social Sciences is a de facto interdisciplinary unit housing ten different programs and course prefixes and the wealth of resources brought to our meetings by faculty from different backgrounds is what made our workshops so successful. Expanding this to other departments was the logical next step, which we hope to continue working on in future.   The conversations and training faculty received this past year resulted in the application of new pedagogical strategies and incorporation of novel teaching materials that will lead to active learning and student success. The Social Sciences, Humanities, and Fine and Applied Arts course from this year’s fifteen faculty will encourage students to engage with global issues and increase their knowledge of cultures and societies other than their own this coming Fall. We look forward to further collaborating with faculty and students in the following academic year as we continue our work to advance international initiatives and promote global studies at Parkland.  

Final Report AY 2020-2021: Initiative for the Development of Global and International Studies in Social Science Courses at Parkland College

https://spark.parkland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=global_studies_2021

Final Report AY 2020-2021: Initiative for the Development of Global and International Studies in Social Science Courses at Parkland College

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Scholarship at Parkland