What is Experiential Digital Global Engagement (EDGE)?
EDGE, a subset of what is commonly referred to as globally networked learning and virtual exchange, is a project-based teaching and learning approach that promotes the development of intercultural competence across shared multicultural learning environments through the use of Internet-based tools and innovative online pedagogies. EDGE fosters meaningful exchanges between instructors and students with peers in geographically distant locations and from different lingua-cultural backgrounds.
EDGE courses, which link a class at Penn State with one abroad, are co-equal and linked by instructional partners who collaborate to develop a shared course project that emphasizes experiential and collaborative student-centered learning.
What is specific to the EDGE course model?
EDGE courses emphasize the collaborative process between both teachers and students. While podcasts, webinars and video-streaming may be ways to reach an international audience, we believe that it is the actual negotiation of meaning from the creation of the shared module between teachers, through the use of open discussion forums, to the development of collaborative project work between students where the stakes are raised as participants work to create shared experiences and understanding. By committing to a bi-directional process which is often multi-lingual, cross-cultural discoveries are made and these courses begin to model relativistic, less hegemonic approaches to meaning and truth.
Another important aspect of EDGE courses is that they aim to exploit the multimodal potential of online communication. Although they do not allow collaborating students to meet over coffee or to go out dancing once their course work is over, through social media partners can still engage in informal communication with their distant peers in much the same way as they do with their local peers using everyday tools such as Facebook.
Finally, EDGE is different from other models of globally networked learning in that it offers neither a platform nor a specific set of tasks and activities. Each EDGE course is as unique as the course content, the individual institutional resources and support, the country context, and the relationship between the partners.
How have they been implemented before?
One of the aims of EDGE is to work towards the normalization and institutionalization of EDGE across campuses in order to move beyond a “one-off” model towards broader curricular internationalization. EDGE also seeks to engage the key stakeholders on the campuses to support collaborating faculty and to build infrastructure to create sustainable institutional partnerships.
Schuylkill campus
