A cross-cultural and bilingual experience in LIS education – a case study

Abstract

The presentation will describe a case study involving the synchronous delivery of an undergraduate course on web technologies taught across three campuses representing a multicultural learning environment. The case study focuses on a session entitled internationalization and localization where students learn techniques for developing Web technologies that support multiple locales, languages, and written scripts. Internationalization deals with designing Web technologies to support multiple languages and forms of writing (e.g., Chinese or Japanese characters; Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic alphabets) as well as content translation. Localization deals with how to design systems so that they are appropriate for a specific locale. For example, a site design that is presented in English, but takes into account specific needed customizations for English-speaking audiences across different national and international boundaries (e.g., the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, etc.). Another important component of the case study presentation will report student experiences in engaging in collaborative work using an array of synchronous technologies such as, teleconferencing; videoconferencing; synchronous multi-modal virtual meeting rooms and the like. This session of the course reflects real-world experiences, including that students will likely find themselves working in organizational contexts that require collaboration over long distances, and potentially across national or continental boundaries. Challenges and benefits of distributed collaborative work across three cultures and two languages are presented.

The students’ course experience includes participation in a community-based project called Growing Tennessee: Rural Youth Cultivate Common Ground (http://glaucon.sunsite.utk.edu/drupalsites/growingtn/). Twenty-two youth aged 11 to 16 from two rural east Tennessee counties learned 35mm film, darkroom, and digital photography techniques in the project’s first two phases. About half of the youth are children of migrant and seasonal farm worker families and other half are from rural Appalachian families. The project was conceived and started by Telamon Corporation’s (http://www.telamon.org/) project development coordinator using Head Start funds, private foundation funding, and a number of volunteers. The Growing Tennessee project seeks to bring youth from different cultural backgrounds together in a shared experience that can help them better understand another culture as well as identify the similarities shared by the two cultures. The project also provides a creative educational outlet for rural youth while promoting cross-cultural awareness, developing self-esteem, improving aesthetic, media, and technical literacy, improving critical-thinking skills, and encouraging youth to continue their education past high school.

Dr. Robert Sandusky

Dr. Robert J. Sandusky is an Assistant Professor and faculty coordinator for the undergraduate minor in Information Studies & Technology at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research centers on the investigation of the information practices employed by distributed/virtual communities as they collaborate to achieve their goals. He has performed his research in multiple domains including open source software engineering, digital libraries, and the management of distributed infrastructure on projects funded by National Science foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). His research into software engineering as an information-intensive socio-technical enterprise continues, and he is developing new projects in distributed bioinformatics, community informatics, and undergraduate education in the library and information sciences. He is increasingly connecting research and community engagement activities with classroom experiences for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Dr. Edwin Cortez

Dr. Edwin Cortez has been a library and information studies educator for almost 30 years. He is currently Director and Professor of the School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee. Prior to this post he was on the faculty of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His teaching and research areas include organization of information, systems analysis and library automation, knowledge management, information retrieval and corporate librarianship. He is the author of several monographs in the area of management of information systems and technology. His research has been widely published and has appeared in such journals as the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology and Information Processing and Management. Dr. Cortez is an active consultant for the government and private sector. He has served on the American Library Association’s Committee on Accreditation and on the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine.

Simon Aristeguieta

Mr. Simon Aristeguieta is a Ph.D. student in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee. He holds a BA in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and MIS from the University of Puerto Rico. His research interests are scientific information and bibliometrics. While working in Venezuela, he coordinated the scientific journal program in the Science and Technology Department and implemented SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library on Line), LATINDEX (Latin-American electronic index platform) and CVLAC (CVs academic database). Mr. Aristeguieta plans to work as a professor, teaching scientometrics in a university.

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