9 am presentations

by Sydney Fink

This presentation will focus on a Summer 2023 study abroad experience in Costa Rica, which offered enchanting natural beauty along with complex socio-cultural dynamics, and will highlight the importance of cultural immersion and improving the cross-cultural understanding of students.  Through this presentation, I will highlight the specific aspects of my experience that improved my knowledge on the cultural differences, observations, and reflections I gained during my time abroad. 

by Kalin Bradley, Connor Montoya, Shea Raiola, Madi Langworthy and Sydney Markovics

The purpose of this session is to highlight the experiences of returned Appalachian study abroad students through a presentation and then a panel discussion. The student presenters studied abroad in Thailand, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK. They will discuss the following:

- Study abroad location

- Highlights of the study abroad experience

- How each panelist dealt with cultural differences

- What the value of the experience was for each panelist

- Obstacles the panelists overcame to go abroad

by Jeanne Dubino

This presentation discusses Virtual Exchange courses (VE), which connect two classes located in different geographical spaces with one another via various means of technology in a sustained manner, over several or more class meetings. The purpose of VE is to enable students in countries around the world to learn about other countries and cultures in a more direct, conversational way. VE is a “people-to-people” education program. There are multiple ways of conducting these courses, including discussions and project collaboration. After briefly explaining the concept and purpose of Virtual Exchange classes, I plan to describe the kinds of VE classes (6 in total) I have taught for the past 11 years. Under the auspices of Appalachian State, I have led classes partnered with universities in Thailand, China, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, and Austria. I will give a few examples of how my fellow teachers and I set these classes up, how we conducted them, and how our students responded to them.

by Gyorgyi Retfalvi

This presentation will focus on the role of motion pictures in digital journalism in the latest modern media environment of Hungary. As the political, technological and economical environment completely rearranged the media landscape in Hungary after 2010, video journalism took on a much more important role in online platforms.  This presentation will seek to answer the following questions:  How can motion picture journalism find its ways in the late modern media environment?  What type of convergence happens between video content and video genres?  How does new media video journalism work in the unbalanced Hungarian media structure?  How do traditional and new video genres help the non-governmentally financed online media outlets to survive? Or will the additional costs of qualitative content production and the changes in the structure of the audience contribute to their disappearance?  What characteristics make video journalism vital? What kind of topics, issues are chosen to adapt to video journalism in Hungary? 

by Rahman Tashakkori

Globally, beekeepers lose a large number of their hives due to various causes that have been referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). There have been some recent efforts to improve the health of honey beehives across the world. Technology and Data Science tools such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Visualization, and Audio and Image Processing have made remote monitoring of honey beehives possible. App State has been active in developing reliable honey bee monitoring systems for several years. The Beemon system that was developed in the Visual and Image Processing (VIP) lab in the Department of Computer Science at App State became the foundation for a major grant from the NC General Assembly in 2021. The NC ROI grant, Appalachian Multi-purpose Informatics System (AppMAIS) is a collaborative project between the Department of Biology at App State and Biochemistry at UNC Charlotte. The project provides audio and video recordings of 31 hives as well as humidity, temperature, and weight data on these hives, as well as genetic diversity. This project has allowed researchers to learn about honey bee health and behaviors. We will share some of our findings in this presentation and provide details on how our efforts can scale up at a global level. 

by Lee Wittmann, Dr. Rebecca Liljestrand, Dr. Brian MacHarg, Pat Patterson, Dr. Emnet Shimber and Kelly Wittmann

In the Spring of 2023, Lee Wittmann, (AppState Director of Healthcare Simulation & Innovation), and Dr. Emnet Shimber, (2021 AppState Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni and Director of Ethiopia's Emergency Medical Services) were awarded the 2023 Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Grant and the 2023 Citizens Diplomacy Action Fund Grant to provide in-country learning experiences through the use of a high-fidelity training simulation manikin that was purchased by these grants. Additionally, a small team of educators and support staff also traveled to Ethiopia to provide this innovative learning experience. This presentation will bring this team back together to discuss what worked, what could be improved upon, and what are our next steps by using a common debriefing technique that is familiar in healthcare simulation.