Abstract:
This paper presents a preliminary overview and findings of a pilot webconferencing course on globalization involving largely students and instructors in Canada and Ghana.  The overview focuses on the planning and implementation stages of the course.  It highlights the challenges confronted, lessons learned and lessons unlearned throughout the more than two years planning and implementation of the project, whose principal objective was to create geographically distributed collaborative learning and teaching between students and faculty in developed and developing countries.  The undergraduate and graduate course on Globalization was conceived on the basis of two ideas—“Classroom without Walls” and “Global Village.” It was designed, using a unique interactive multimedia approach to link students and faculty in two international locations—Ghana and Canada. The course aimed to break the boundaries of time, space and distance thereby facilitating the sharing of knowledge between the students at the three sites. What is more, it sought to create a “networked collaborative learning environment” for students and instructors at the University of Ghana and Kwantlen University College in British Columbia, Canada.  In total, 31 undergraduate students from Kwantlen University College (KUC) and six graduate students from the University of Ghana, Legon (UGL) took the course. The preliminary study showed that while the preparatory stage was quite daunting and the project leader had some harrowing experiences in finding collaborators, accessing funding, the overall benefits of the project to both students and instructors were quite substantial, making the efforts and sacrifices worthwhile.

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Quist-Adade, Charles (2008). Linking students from the University of Ghana and Kwantlen University College: challenges confronted and lessons (UN)Learned Presented at the 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training, Accra, Ghana, 28 May.