Best Paper award
I just learned that my paper “The New School, CARE & Ajkem’a Loy’a: A case study in learning in intensive and immersive global programs and in cross-cultural and bilingual collaborative work” presented at GLIDE ‘08 was selected by conference attendees as the best paper of the conference.
Quite a nice boost to start off another busy week of writing, making, and teaching!
This is the abstract (full paper is available upon request): This paper addresses the challenges and opportunities, and suggests best practices in collaborations across year-levels, programs and divisions of a university; in external partnerships between a university and a large non-profit organization; in teaching and learning in intensive and immersive global programs; and in cross-cultural and bilingual collaborative work.
During the month of June 2008, 14 students, 2 faculty, and 1 project coordinator from The New School (TNS) lived and worked in the small lake-side village of San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, to collaborate with a group of Mayan artisan women, Ajkem’a Loy’a (AL.) The students and faculty represent a broad range of undergraduate and graduate academic programs at a university in the United States, and were investigating if and how the Guatemalan women could organize themselves and structure a business to create a sustainable form of generating income via the sale of their artisan goods in local and global markets.
KEYWORDS
Design education, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary learning, collaborative learning, multicultural, multilingual, humanitarian design, economic development