Medallion Capstone Experience

Officialized by the FIU Office of Global Learning, I completed the Study Abroad Capstone in a unique and novel fashion. In the Summer semester of 2022, I planned on taking classes through FIU Online while simultaneously living in Seoul, South Korea for 33 days. One of these courses not only fulfilled my requirements for the Asian Studies Minor, but also allowed me to explore a new country in a way I've never done before. ASN3503: Exploring East Asia: Virtual Reality Travel, a course designed and taught by Dr. Marcela Lopez-Bravo, aimed to explore East Asian cities in both pre-modern and post-modern capacities through the use of Virtual Reality. The course required the purchase of a virtual reality headset compatible with smartphones to watch 360-degree video tours, use google street view in 360 degrees, and visit museums virtually. Since my peers in Korean universities were also doing online classes, we were able to explore the country together using knowledge from ASN3503. To visit a temple in Korea with a virtual reality headset and analyze its cultural significance to then visit that same temple in real life just a few days later was one of the most rewarding aspects of this experience. Many of the building blocks of Korean society were uncovered to me throughout this course, and as I learned about the history behind the multitude of factors leading to Korea's development, I was able to contextualize these aspects in real time adventuring around Seoul and Busan.