Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE)
Faculty Stories
GOLE in Intercultural Communication: An Initial Asynchronous Collaboration
During the Fall 2024 semester, I implemented my first iteration of the Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) program with Anna Yuen of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).
Fostering Global Empathy and International Learning
In the Fall of 2024, St. John’s University students enrolled in a scientific inquiry core course focused on Global Health and Climate Change volunteered to participate in a five-week Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) project, also known as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), with students at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa.
Student Virtual Exchange Collaboration Produces “Voices of Forensic Psychology: Global Podcast Series”
Incorporating the Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) into my forensic psychology course at St. John’s University has been a transformative journey, creating unique opportunities for students to engage across cultures and develop a global perspective.
Professors’ Virtual Collaboration Cultivates a Global Community
I embarked on a partnership with Benedicte Kivle, a faculty member from VID Specialized University in Norway, as part of the Norwegian Panorama VE/COIL Partnerships Initiative and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Institute on Virtual Exchange/COIL.
Collaborating on Customer Journey Maps across the Atlantic Ocean
Nothing is more critical to a successful advertising campaign than understanding the customer. Who are they? What do they care about? Why would they buy your product instead of the competition's?
GOLE Strengthens Intercultural Understanding with Lebanese Partnership
Dr. Habre’s expertise in culturally congruent health-care delivery and interprofessional education overlapped with my own research background in medical anthropology, as well as my recent ethnographic focus on US nursing care before and during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Global Online Learning Exchange: Critically Engaging Multimodal Texts to Understand Political and Cultural Interpretations
Jordan González, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Education Specialties; Olivia G. Stewart, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Education Specialties; and Ekaterina Midgette, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Education Specialties, embarked on a unique Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) with international partners from Dnipro State University in Ukraine.
Analysis of an International Business with Tools from Microeconomics and Accounting in the GOLE Program
A GOLE project involves cocreating and coteaching with an international partner university; my project would not have been possible without my international partner and collaborator, Professor Zhivka Valkova Zapryanova from Universidad Colima in Mexico, and of course, the students in her general accounting course.
Criando Communidade: Global Online Learning Exchange in Applied Behavior Analysis Partners with Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil
We had three main objectives for our graduate students’ GOLE project: engage in culturally responsive practices in applied behavior analysis and special education, apply content knowledge and skills to the project, and engage in cultural humility during collaboration. The main objective of our GOLE project was for graduate students from St. John’s and UFPel to engage in culturally responsive practices in special education and applied behavior analysis while working together with a community teacher to help address the support needs of students with disabilities in their classrooms.
Students Explore Museum Artifacts & Develop Intercultural Competence
Intercultural Competence (IC) in hands-on projects within the virtual exchange environment encompasses teaching and learning practices that connect locally dispersed teachers and students to learn and work together fostering their intercultural competence in hands-on projects. Such collaborative projects provide an exciting opportunity for faculty to build on existing academic and research connections that one has with colleagues at other institutions located outside of the United States and to forge new ones and develop new opportunities for students.
GOLE Partners with University College Dublin to Create Research Opportunities
The overarching goals of our GOLE project focused on comparing US and Irish educational datasets and evaluating how data collection informs educational policy both nationally and internationally.
Reflection on a Global Online Learning Exchange Partnership with ESIEE Paris
My first-year writing students worked on a Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) project, “Writing and Thinking in the Globally Connected Digital World,” during the spring semester. The class worked with a group of students from ESIEE, an engineering school in Paris, France, who were taking an advanced course in English as a second language.
GOLE Brings Students and Cultural Understanding Together to Apply Counterterrorism and Intelligence Strategies in Homeland Security Program
One of my primary responsibilities as an educator is preparing students to be successful when they enter the workforce. As a faculty member in the Homeland Security programs at St. John’s many of my students are looking for careers in the intelligence field.
Discover New York Partners with University of Göttingen’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
This is a collaboration between a course at St. John’s, Discover New York, and one in Germany entitled Anthropology and Climate Justice: Research Practice in the City.
International Business Strategies and Policies for MENA Region Organizations
In collaboration with Dr. Grace K. Dagher from Adnan Kassar School of Business, Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, I implemented a Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) project in my graduate International Management course.
Fostering Global Connections Through GOLE: A Collaboration Across Borders
Our project brought together undergraduate students from St. John’s University and undergraduate students from France to explore the intersections of financial accounting, international marketing, and corporate social responsibility. Students worked in cross-cultural teams to examine European companies’ sustainability efforts within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“Alla nostra salute! Here’s to our health!”: Students Build Intercultural Communication and Italian Language Skills in Global Collaboration
The purpose of this collaboration between St. John’s and UCSC students was to strengthen students’ intercultural competency skills and provide them with the opportunity to utilize their newly acquired language skills in practical, real-life applications. Faculty collaborated to create a five-week project in which our students researched and compared health-care systems in their respective countries and used their findings to propose sustainable, more equitable alternatives aimed at improving overall public health outcomes in the target language based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Linguistically and Culturally Appropriate Language Assessment: A GOLE Collaboration
The overarching aims of the exchange were for students to become familiar with cultural responsiveness, methods of language assessment, and devising culturally and linguistically appropriate test items.
GOLE Faculty Experiences
In fall 2019, I implemented my GOLE project in one graduate level course in the School of Education focusing on designing and integrating learning technologies in classrooms.
After a year-long planning period, my GOLE project was designed around the theme of cross-cultural instructional design with learning technologies. Pre-service teachers at St. John’s University worked collaboratively with partners at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China, on a 10-week-long instructional design project.Each team consisted of approximately two St. John’s graduate students and four or five graduate students from the international partner university. The main task for the virtual teams was to design and develop an interdisciplinary unit for middle school students in two metropolitan cities in both countries, by researching and creating lesson plans that would employ particular technological applications in classroom teaching. The project guidelines required virtual team members to work as communities of practice to design an interdisciplinary unit for middle school students in both countries while simultaneously learning to use various online web- based and mobile-supported technologies in order to collaborate effectively. Students cultivated their cross-cultural competencies throughout the course. Many team members became great life friends after the project.
Being a course-based international exchange that does not require student travel, GOLE project allows St. John’s students who cannot study abroad or travel due to financial and other challenges. This virtual exchange experience became more valuable in the global COVID-19 situation where travel and health concerns rise worldwide. Without traveling to different international places, St. John’s students can collaborate and learn with their peers from around the world.
Language and Culture Virtual Exchange Builds Intercultural Competencies for GOLE Students
Zoe Petropoulou, Ph.D., Associate Professor of French, Department of Languages and Literatures, collaborated with colleagues from the University of Nantes and the University of Bordeaux in France to connect students studying French on St. John’s Queens, NY, campus with their peers in France studying Sociology/Psychology and English as part of the Global Online Learning Exchange (GOLE) program.
“This initiative is not just a peripheral project for a language and culture class,” she said. “It is aligned with St. John’s University’s mission to promote international education through global attitudes, knowledge, and intercultural skills, and includes everyone—even the students who cannot participate in traditional study abroad.”
Over two months, in course-embedded synchronous and asynchronous sessions, students worked together in small groups. They engaged in broad linguistic and cultural experiences and compared responses from interviews they conducted in both French- and English-speaking communities on different topics connected to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals such as global health, the effects of COVID on young people, climate change, and discrimination.
“These courses aim to provide a forum for students for cultural and linguistic exchange where they share cultural activities and experiences and compare points of views from both countries,” Dr. Petropoulou explained.