Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 72

Internet Learning
success will decline. We had suspected this
when we first started out in 2011 and it was
not a surprise when it manifested itself in
2013.
To resolve this, SZPT has agreed to
offer the Collaboration as an elective available
to the entire School of Animation. This
decision neatly resolves the academic credit
and motivation issue and actually broadens
the skills sets and project scope of the
groups.
Lessons Learned
Globalization means Global Collaboration
drawn from teams from
varying cultures and with differing
skill levels. From an academic point of view
this new way of working cannot be taught
… it needs to be experienced. Our students
are graduating into this new environment
and the experience gained during our project
makes them much more adaptable to
this work environment.
A student-centric focus helped
bring this project to life. Both SZPT and
Humber realized the experience was beneficial
to the students and left the faculty
to bring the project to life.Cultural and
language difficulties decrease in concern
among the students as they work together.
Once both groups understand the task at
hand they focus on the solution and find
their own ways of bridging the cultural and
language differences.
From an institutional perspective
the financial cost of this project was essentially
0. Our job was facilitation but the
main value, from an institutional perspective,
was a deepening academic and personal
relationship between the respective
faculties and administration that may lead
to other, more formal, opportunities.
As we move into the third year of
the project we have agreed to tighten up the
organizational aspects of the project (i.e.,
progress monitoring and assessment).
Conclusion
Pulling together two student cohorts
from opposite sides of the planet and
having them work together on a joint
collaborative project is not difficult to accomplish.
It requires a student-centric focus
on the part of the institution and the
institutional will to initiate a project that
could fail. When I asked Jerry, during the
planning phase of the project, what would
we do if the project failed he made a very
wise comment: “Then we learn something,
don’t we.” This is important because you
learn just as much from failure as you do
from success and, in many respects, there
needs to be an institutional will to accept
failure, analyze the causes of the failure and
adapt. These are points both Jerry and I
made to our Deans and they accepted the
possibility the project could fail and how
we would adapt to this possibility. At no
point did either Dean suggest we end the
project if it didn’t work out as planned.
Employers are becoming more
aware of the effects of globalization on their
businesses and that Global Collaboration
presents unique management challenges.
As the Humber students discovered, this is
a unique experiential skill set that provides
a competitive advantage in the employment
market.
Distance Education or Global Collaboration
does not necessarily mean formal
academic courses. Our project demonstrated
there is a distinct experiential aspect
of distance education that is just as valuable
as formal learning.
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