Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The content of this study focuses on curriculum development in the area of Conflict Resolution (CR), with the goal of enhancing the International Scholarship of Engagement (ISOE) by introducing a field immersion component to online courses. The global courses are hybrid courses that in addition to the six-week online session, it includes an international field immersion component that takes place in a context where the institutional setting for these courses was developed under a partnering relationship among the university offering the course, and local organizations, academic institutions, government officials in the host country. In all cases, students traveled to the field/conflict settings for fifteen days, where they engaged in a variety of activities with local farmers, community groups, local organizations, and policy-makers. These courses combined experiential learning and scholarship of engagement within the context of CR. The course activities before, during, and after the courses were selected in order to facilitate transformational learning. This paper is based on the results of a qualitative research conducted with twenty students and alumni that participated in one or more global courses, with the objective of learning about the effectiveness of the courses from the participants’ perspectives. The global courses took place in the summers of 2011 in Suriname, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2017 in Ecuador. The session will analyze ISOE implications of designing curriculum that embraces experiential learning and scholarship of engagement for CR.