Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Just as diasporic communities must continually mediate their positions between cultures, countries, and perspectives, so too does Swarthmore’s new class, Re-Envisioning Diaspora, situate itself within an intangible “elsewhere.” The course, which explores the historical, visual, and literary representations of diaspora across cultures, relies on a virtual plane to bring students, some 5,000 miles apart, into the same classroom.
This semester, Swarthmore Professors Sunka Simon, associate professor of German and Film and Media Studies, and Carina Yervasi, associate professor of French teamed up with Assistant Professor Mikelle Antoine from Ashesi University in Ghana to teach a joint class using Skype.
“This class benefits the students because they become aware of different perspectives and where they come from,” Simon said. “The connection is crucial and built into diasporal identity.”
During every class, Swarthmore students correspond via Skype with students from Ghana’s first liberal arts college, Ashesi University, which was founded in 2002 by Swarthmore Alumnus Patrick Awuah ’89. Funded through SUNY Center for Online International Collaborative Learning and the Tri-College Digital Humanities Initiative, the class has 6 Swarthmore students and 35 Ashesi students. While previous Swarthmore courses have incorporated the occasional Skype interaction, no other has implemented it as the backbone to course work and classroom discussion.
The course is broken up into two components. At the beginning of each class, the Swarthmore students discuss that day’s assignments. Then they synchronously discuss the class’s topic with the Ghana students. The past few weeks’ topic, for example, was the African slave trade. Recently, the Ashesi students shot two 15-minute films at the infamous Ghanian salve-holding port, James Fort, where slaves were held before being trafficked overseas.
Although the Simon and Yervasi grade the Swarthmore students and Antoine grades the Ashesi students, the three professors consult each other during their weekly Skype session to discuss the students. Also after each class, one student from each school takes a turn as a reporter and posts a summary online of the day’s asynchronous activities. From this, the other school can get a sense of the points brought up in that class period.
“Measured along the trend lines toward online education, it’s the most ‘progressive’ class I’ve ever taken,” said Koby Levin ’15. “Though we’re asked to read just like any other class, we are also expected to spend time in forums communicating with Ghanaian students and our Swarthmore classmates.”
Levin believes all students involved will gain a lot from the course.
“The benefits are the same for both parties,” he said. “In order to communicate effectively with peers, each student must confront an even wider range of cultural perspectives than you find in the typical Swarthmore or Ashesi classroom.”
Antoine says both groups of students have something different to learn from each other based on their different perspectives.
“[Ashesi students] can teach Swarthmore students about selflessness — working towards a bigger/greater goal in life,” Antoine said. “Swarthmore students can definitely teach Ashesi students about taking risks, not going with the crowd and thinking independently.”
Simon agrees that the interaction, particularly the cross-continental teaching that imitates the diasporic conditions analyzed in the class, is important. For example, Simon explained that recently the Swarthmore students learned that birth order is much more relevant to the Ashesi students’ identity than it is for that of the Swarthmore students.
“The benefits of such a class is that it allows students and faculty to grow intellectually and culturally,” Antoine said. “As faculty, we learn a lot working with each other cross culturally and cross discipline . . . such collaborations are bound to be educational. Students also learn how to be culturally relevant; understanding the world and how others view it. By so doing, the class provides them with much needed tools to navigate and be part of the larger picture.”
These Skype sessions, however, are not always easily executed, a difficulty Simon says makes the class aware of their temporal and cultural distances. From the time difference to the quality of bandwidth, it can be difficult for the students from the two schools to communicate, and there have been some classes with only 10 minutes of successful Skype time. In fact, during the assigned Skype time, no other Ashesi class can use Internet to preserve the bandwidth.
Because of these issues, some Swarthmore-Ashesi interactions have had to take place via one-on-one online instant messaging, in which the professors represent their students’ views and report the responses back to their students. Still, Simon sees much value in the structure of the class.
“It’s worth it for me, because it broadens my horizons, both with pedagogy and methodology,” she said. “It’s a learning experience and an experiment, both for the students and me.”
