A New Way to Teach

Teaching cross cultural psychology is hard. Teaching cross cultural psychology in rural Ohio is even harder. How can I teach about issues of culture without sounding like an ad for National Geographic? How do I make the experiences of others real? How can I help my students get a distance near experience when, in reality, we are just far, so isolated, from others?

This semester, as part of funding from the Mellon Foundation, I have been given the opportunity to globally connect my Cross Cultural Psychology course at Kenyon College with another Cross Cultural Psychology course at Effat University.

Like Kenyon, Effat University is a small liberal arts college, dedicated toward helping it's students become critical thinkers.  At both sites, classes are taught in English and both schools even use the same textbook! However, unlike Kenyon, Effat is a all women's school with an exclusive Muslim student body. Further, Kenyon is a residential college where most students are monolingual and live away from family.  

What will this experience be like? What will our students learn? This blog is meant to document our paths as we globally connect our course - from Gambier to Jeddah, away we go! Inshallah!