Critical Virtual Exchange 

HERE ARE PRIOR STUDENTS' LEARNING OUTCOMES! YOU CAN BE LIKE THEM IF YOU FULLY PARTICIPATE IN THE PROJECTS! 加油！

LC111: focuses on comparisons of family and daily life with Chinese peers

LC112: focuses on exploration of unique localized Chinese communities 

LC211: comparisons of school life and internet culture 

LC319: stereotype inquiry and refinement project

LC420: examining media bias

Transformative learning impacts (pseudonyms were used):

1. Critically evaluate assumptions:  

Jack changed his perception about Wuhan, the epicenter of COVID 19. He used to think it was scary, after the virtual exchange, he described it positively using words like “beautiful” “developed” “big”, and identified the stereotypes people held about Wuhanese. 

Moreover, learners like Olivia assess more intricate political ideologies. Olivia's partner was from Hami, a city with 31.6% ethnic minorities like Uyghurs. She acknowledged in her first reflection journal that "I didn't even know Hami existed until the project" and “my knowledge of the Uighur population and autonomy was relatively limited". Upon concluding the VE, Olivia engages in an in-depth premise reflection that not only explicitly identifies her misconceptions about the minority group and the Chinese government, but also addresses the reason behind the assumption. She recognizes the negative impact of media bias on shaping her prior beliefs, appreciates the positive influence of interacting with her partner and plans to "continue to do more research into Uighur history and culture to learn more about how they govern themselves in the autonomous region."

2. Increased understanding of linguistic and cultural diversity of the Chinese communities

In the student Yuna’s final video presentation (00:30’’: CLICK Link to listen （河南方言) "你吃了冇", the student develops awareness of the local language, and demonstrates her ability to speak the Henan dialect, a casual way to do small talk. Similarly, Jack describes the multilingual phenomenon in Hubei in his final project: “some speak Gan dialect, some speak Xiang dialect in Hubei.”  Olivia explains that three languages are in the public signs including Chinese, English and Uyghur language, and compares the public road signs in Florida and Hami. 

3. demonstrated critical thinking and expanded knowledge

LC319 learners’ multimodal map storytelling project shows the impact of the critical VE projects in enhancing intercultural competence and challenging stereotypes. Ethan originally had an assumption that “Chinese like gambling”. Through evaluating and summarizing online artifacts and interviewing his Chinese peers, he demonstrated his critical thinking and expanded new thoughts about the topic, stating that some Chinese like gambling, some socialize with others via small gambling, some don't like it as much as I thought. His multimodal storytelling project demonstrates his ability to interpret authentic materials and explain some diversity among products and practices and how it relates to perspectives in connected paragraphs in both written and oral forms.  Student Jenny from LC319 not only gained a deeper understanding about why some Chinese parents tend to be very strict with their children after the project, but also enriched her knowledge of Chinese history and society. After learning about her partners’ parents’ experience in cultural revolution, she wrote in the final map story that, “many young people’s parents have struggled during the cultural revolution and they hope their children could work hard and receive quality college education for a better future.” 

LC319 Ethan's example: Stereotype refinement multimodal map story 1

LC319 Jeney's example: Stereotype refinement multimodal map story 2

  LC420 students demonstrated their ability to challenge news stereotypes based on the news source. In the example on the left, this student investigated the topic about the current issue Halloween Crowd Surge in South Korea through selecting and summarizing articles from various sources together with her Chinese peer, discussing media bias in zoom meetings, and demonstrated her critical thinking skills and advanced language skills through a PowerPoint presentation of the issue in the class. 

Example link: LC420 Final News Editing Report based on the VE 

 In addition to perspective transformation, lower level students also display their level appropriate language uses in their final projects. 

 More illustrations with examples:

This LC112 student  created a multimodal story map with voice over to introduce Ganzhou. She not only uses a variety of vocabulary, grammar and language expressions learnt from the class effectively to introduce local food, tourist attractions and more, but also provided suggestions on how to avoid culture conflicts: communication, participation in festival celebration events, learning Chinese histories and cultures. Example link (LC111 Summer 2022)

This LC211 student (intermediate level) created an interactive book with audio, images, texts to introduce their Chinese partners and compare their college lives with BU lives. She demonstrated her linguistic competence in using strings of sentences in describing topics relevant to school lives, local communities and topics relevant to the internet culture. Example Link (LC211 Spring 2023)

This LC111 (first semester student) created a video presentation to share information she learnt from the VE. She compared her family with her Chinese friend’s family, hobbies, language learning experiences, daily life before and after COVID, and introduced places to visit in her friend’s hometown. At the end of the video, she also did a reflection on her thoughts about the impact of COVID on Chinese people’s daily life.  Example LINK (LC111 Spring 2022)

More examples