COIL Activities

COIL Receives NEH Grant

COIL Center Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant

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Prof. Robert Stein, Jon Rubin, COIL Director, Keith Landa, Director of Instructional Technology, and Asst. Prof. Karima Robinson meeting at Purchase College

Knowledge comes from many sources and through a wide range of human experience. In a world as interconnected as ours, students need not only to have access to knowledge, but they must better understand the many contexts and cultural points of view which give meaning to what is known.

In response to this need, the SUNY COIL Center and the Humanities Division of Purchase College proposed and recently received an NEH grant to Internationalize Humanities Education through Globally Networked Learning. During the 2008-09 academic year, humanities faculty in three disciplines will collaboratively develop cross-cultural courses with faculty partners abroad that emphasize online experiential learning. In the Fall of 2009 these courses will be implemented, connecting students at Purchase with their peers in three other countries.

The three participating faculty members will be trained in the use of learning management software and social software tools to generate collaborative assignments that “challenge students to negotiate and build shared learning cultures across diverse boundaries” (Stark-Meyerring, 2007.) This project addresses the need for institutions of higher education to find new ways “to equip students with skills and knowledge that will allow them to function effectively across cultures and nations” (ACE, 2000.)

The project’s goal is to demonstrate that any humanities faculty member with energy and vision can teach a course in a globally networked learning environment if given the appropriate technological, pedagogical and intercultural support. We will produce a process journal, using a blog that tracks the project’s development, the challenges and roadblocks we face, the questions we ask and are asked, and the strategies we use to move forward. This blog and other evaluative outputs will then be developed into a lessons-learned white paper for use by humanities faculty nationally and internationally.

OSI Grant

COIL Center Receives Open Society Institute (OSI) Higher Education Support Project Grant

The COIL Center at Purchase College (SUNY) and the European Humanities University – International (EHU), jointly received a prestigious OSI grant this past spring. COIL is working with EHU administrators, faculty and students to assess the state of EHU’s distance learning programs and to develop a strategic roadmap for their future development. These programs were originally put in place soon after Belarusian authorities forcibly shutdown European Humanities University in 2004, necessitating their move to online instruction as the only way to continue operating as a higher education institution.

SUNY and EHU team members at work

The European Humanities University opened in Minsk, Belarus in 1992, and was a leader of internationalization and liberalization of higher education in that country for 12 years. With the support of international donors, EHU worked to integrate Belarus into the arena of European higher education, but it became the target of increasing pressure from Belarusian authorities, and was eventually forced to terminate operations in summer 2004. It reestablished itself in Lithuania with financial support from the European Union, OSI, USAID, and the MacArthur Foundation. Though officially registered as a Lithuanian university, EHU continues to carry out its mission of providing internationally recognized quality higher education to Belarusian students who come to Vilnius to study in face-to-face courses or enroll in EHU’s distance learning programs, which are the focus of the joint OSI grant.

Jon Rubin, COIL’s director assembled a team of 4 SUNY experts who are working with EHU personnel throughout the grant period. In April 2008 the COIL team spent 7 days with their EHU partners conducting needs assessment and problem identification interviews, workshops and structured discussions. They returned to Vilnius in July with their findings and recommendations. As EHU acts to implement those recommendations, faculty from EHU and four SUNY colleges are working on an initiative to develop online modules for courses to be delivered collaboratively in the fall 2008 semester. These courses include Visual Design with FIT; International Law with ESC; English with SUNY Ulster and Tourism and Trade with SUNY Delhi.

Folk Music Festival in a Vilnius Park

This project brings together faculty and staff from a number of SUNY campuses to apply their expertise to support human rights at the university level in a meaningful way. The COIL team is: Clark Shah-Nelson, the Coordinator of Online Education for SUNY Delhi; Hope Windle a multimedia instructional designer at SUNY Ulster; Valeri Chukhlomin the Coordinator for Management and Economics at SUNY Empire State College’s Center for Distance Learning; and Eric Feinblatt co-founder of the Center for Excellence in Teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

2008 CIT Conference

COIL Center Leads Panel Session at SUNY’s 2008 Conference on Instructional Technology (CIT)

Genesee Community College hosted SUNY’s annual CIT conference this year where the COIL Center led a panel session entitled, Facilitating Collaborative On-Line International Learning: What We Know and What We Need to Know From You! The three panelists, Jon Rubin, COIL Director, Craig Little, SUNY Cortland, and Susan St. John, Corning Community College described their experiences teaching collaborative international courses to an audience of SUNY faculty and staff representing many of its 64 campuses. Click the video for highlights.

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