Bridging the Miles to Build International Understanding of Quality of Life

The familiar ringtone signals a Skype session about to begin, and two groups of children sit in eager anticipation as they wait to see the images come to life at the other end of the line.

In an instant, the 19 students of Sandra Duggleby’s Grade Three class at the Banff Elementary School are connected to their new friends, who just happen to be eight thousand kilometres miles away in Peru.

It’s the last time the linkage between the classroom in Banff and a similar one in Lima will be made, as a research project into how each group looks at their own environment as well as the others’ comes to a close.

And although the project is coming to an end, the lessons learned by students, teachers and researchers in the Werklund School of Education will be remembered for a long time to come.

Unique local collaboration forged

Duggleby has also worked as a sessional instructor in the Werklund School of Education, and as such was acquainted with Jennifer Lock, Werklund’s associate dean of Teaching and Learning. 

Duggleby and Lock co-designed a research project to explore the concept of quality of life—what it might look, sound and feel like for young students, both in their communities and in another community more distant and distinct from their own.  “We wanted to develop online interaction and digital connection,” Lock explains, “and to have students reach beyond the curricular goals, develop critical thinking skills and explore the relationship of the physical environment on quality life in an informed manner within an international context.” 

“A key goal of this work is for students to develop an appreciation of each other’s surroundings and how they interact with it.”

Lock and Duggleby discussed the possibility of undertaking a project where Duggleby’ s class would interact with another class in another country and decided to focus on Lima, Peru—both because of a compatible curriculum and the fact that difference in time zones was minimal—a critical issue since some of the work to be done involved Skyping and connecting the students through Google Hangout.  

A chance meeting at a conference led Duggleby to Werklund student Andrea Mann, where they discovered their common connection to Jennifer Lock. Mann, who had received a University of Calgary Program for Undergraduate Research Experience (PURE) award last year focused her project, “Bridging Pedagogy and Media Design", on the investigation of digital storytelling within education, which tied in perfectly to the research project Lock and Duggleby were  developing. 

The partners, working together agreed on the three goals that had been set out in the research proposal: to look for ways in which international online collaboration might promote deep inquiry; to understand the impact collaboration, both in the classroom and online, has on student understanding of curricular topics; and to discover what factors influence student learning in technology-enabled learning environments.

The next step was to find a compatible school with which to connect.

Partners in Peru

Through local community connections, Duggleby was put in touch with a teacher at Lima’s Colegio Roosevelt School, and says the class was a perfect fit for the project.  “The teacher, RJ Rongcal, was also enthusiastic about having a collaborative team approach to teaching, where the students could learn together and from one another,” she says.

The project then got underway.

The student groups began by sharing PowerPoint presentations that described life in their perspective countries. Students then collected pictures that reflected how their environments  affect their quality of life and the community around them; these pictures were then posted with commentary on a Quality of Life Blog created for the purpose of the collaboration.  They then used Google Docs to create stories and then shared them others to get feedback and learned how to take photos of their physical environment with iPads and upload them into their Google Drive.

Finally, they recorded their voices on the iPods and shared their stories.

Then Andrea Mann stepped in and worked with the students on the process of creative and technical production in digital storytelling.    “The students quickly become conversant in the terminology and techniques used by professionals,” she says. “They also seemed to gain a sense of confidence in using the iPads for storytelling, as well as the knowledge sharing dialogue required to troubleshoot issues and improve their work.”

“By the end of the digital storytelling project, each student was able to successfully create their own iMovie of their story,” says Duggleby. “And they were all able to upload their story to their Google Drive so they could share it with others.  They also uploaded their stories to YouTube so that they could provide a link for our blog.”

Lessons learned all around

The students connected live with each other four times over the course of the project and Duggleby says her students learned a lot about their Peruvian counterparts--and themselves as well.

For example, she says her students were amazed to learn that the Peruvian students like to surf on the desert sand, something they didn’t realize could be done.  She says they also found it surprising that their new friends in Lima live so close to the ocean they can go surfing in their spare time.” 

“They were surprised that pink dolphins lived in the rivers of the Amazon and that monkeys would jump onto your boat to eat your fruit as you floated down the river. They enjoyed learning about the different kinds of animals that live in Peru and about the ancient civilization of Machu Picchu.”

“And they were excited to learn more about the history of Peru and were very surprised to know that there are historical ruins right in Lima.”

But the most important learning, in Duggleby’ s mind, is that both groups of students came to the realization that participating in activities with family and friends in the natural environment is key to their quality of life.

“They have discovered that that we both like to participate in activities outdoors and make use of our natural physical environment,” says Duggleby. “They realize that despite the differences in our physical settings, we all make use of the outdoors to maximize our quality of life.”

And the lessons learned go deeper than that.  The students became more proficient in using technology to connect with each other and the world.  Says Duggleby, “they realized that by working together they could accomplish anything at all."

Banff Elementary School principal Dean Irvine says the connection between his school and the university is an important one, and one that gives teachers the ability to collaborate about and engage in current best practices of teaching and learning.  “Access to and learning from post-secondary thought leaders to support our work and the Canadian Rockies Public School Division’s  focus on nurturing a culture of excellence in teaching and leadership.”

“Connecting research is crucial in advancing our knowledge of best practices with students,” he continues, “and research must align and support where we are going and give us further clarity on directions to proceed.”