Center for East Asian Studies Shares Global Virtual Exchange with Korean University
- Feb 21, 2023
A Global Virtual Exchange (GVE) grant awarded in 2022 to Professor Alice McCoy-Bae in the Center for East Asian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin has yielded an online Third-Year Korean course in which Longhorn students learned alongside their counterparts from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea.
Students from both schools met via Zoom during the fall semester to discuss topics of Korean and American culture, such as food, relationships and campus life. At the end of the Fall 2022 semester, after gaining language skills and cultural knowledge from their in-class conversations, mixed groups presented insights from their discussions.
“We use a textbook to teach this course, [but] with the exchange, their understanding is not limited to the textbook knowledge,” said McCoy-Bae. "It goes beyond what’s written in the textbook by interacting with students from the authentic culture and expanding their worldview."
In tandem with the course, GVE partner Professor Kim Eun-kyung offered a World Languages and Cultures Special Lecture titled, "English History and American Culture.”
An article on the KAIST website stated that this Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course, in which students from overseas universities collaborate online to complete joint assignments, represented the first iteration of this method to be implemented at the Korean university. KAIST hopes to continue offering the course.
One of many funding opportunities from Texas Global, GVE course development grants support faculty members at both UT Austin and their partner institution so they can envision and implement an exchange between students from both schools. GVE recipients also obtain instructional assistance via workshops, faculty learning communities and networking events. Texas Global awards GVE grants on a semiannual basis: once in the fall semester and once in the spring semester.
