We introduced the learning activities this morning to our U.S.-based OSU students. They seemed enthusiastic about the chance to learn about Turkish culture – not only be interacting with texts from/about it, but with actual Turkish people. These students all had prior cross-cultural experience, and seemed to understand the value of this opportunity.
I focused on explaining the details of the badges they can earn by participating in these activities. The badges are not “add-ons” but are based on the assignments of the course. The badges merely capture student achievements, and hopefully help to make them more visible to future employers. Please see our FAQ on Global Learning Buckeye Badges for further information.
Badges, especially as part of e-portfolios, are one of the high impact practices of education (provided they are designed well). In sum, e-portfolios:
- go beyond the academic transcript by providing future employers a set of prompts to assess applicants (Kuh,2016).
- provide an ongoing process of digestion, processing, if well-designed (Kuh,2016).
By Mosborne01 (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons