Video Episode 11 - Dr Stephanie Doscher on making global learning universal

Hi, my name's Joe Houghton and this is the Plus One Podcast. I first met or saw Dr. Stephanie Doscher back in May this year when she was a keynote speaker at the UCD Intercultural Teaching and Learning Symposium in my hometown Dublin. Stephanie's official job title— now this is a bit of a mouthful— Director, Office of Collaborative Online International Learning at Florida International University, which I saw, I think yesterday or the day before, was awarded the 2021 Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization. So you must be doing something right there, Stephanie. That's brilliant. You also host the Making Global Learning Universal podcast. which I think you've had about 20-odd episodes. You're in the end of your second season now. You've co-authored a book, Making Global Learning Universal, and obviously, we'll put links to everything in the show notes. I loved your LinkedIn banner. You describe yourself as educator, writer, speaker, leader.

Yeah.

Which are really 4 very strong words, aren't they? And 4 fabulous roles. So, let's go through those and decompose those over the next hour. You describe yourself as a girl who never studied abroad and is 100% Ashkenazi Jew according to DNA, essentially the least traveled, least diverse person possible, grew up to devote her life to global learning and the process of connecting people and their ideas across borders of difference. Oh my goodness, welcome to the podcast. I have so many questions lined up for you.

I hope I have the answers. Cool beans. All right.

Oh, wonderful. So, I mean, let's start with that then, because that's a really interesting description that you gave me in the questionnaire that I sent you before we do the podcast. So, you mentioned your Jewish heritage at the start of that description that ends in this beautiful connecting people and their ideas across borders of difference. So, presumably your Jewish heritage is important to you if you put that in there, but also this lovely thing about connection and across borders of difference. So, let's start with that. Just talk to us about that, because I love that. I think it was brilliant.

Well, I think I'm, in all honesty, still discovering what these things mean to me. I don't know if it's so much the Judaism or my Jewish history, although it might be. There might be more there. I still need— I still have more digging and discovering. But when I had that 23andMe— I'm not trying to plug it, but that was the test that I used to learn more about my DNA. I was curious to know what are the ingredients that make up this stew, right?

Yeah.

I expected That there would be some variety.

Right, yes, because we're totally a mix, aren't we? We're all—

Yeah, yeah. And I thought that, uh, that, that maybe explained why I am a connector.

Okay.

In my personality, in my cognitive, uh, disposition. Uh, and when I got the results and They said 100%, not 99.8, 99 point— my sister was like 99.92% Ashkenazi with, uh, also with a mixed European heritage.

Yeah.

100. I mean, my jaw dropped. I felt this disappointment, to be like totally honest. Like, I thought, I'm so boring. And, and so like pure. And I— it wasn't long before I had written this chapter, the process of which was really a growth space for me about diversity in, in the book that we talked about.

Okay.

And then I see that I am the least diverse person on the inside that I could possibly be. And I thought, okay, so I have to unpack this. Of course, I did talk to a friend who is a geneticist And I said, "What is this? Is this even possible?" And she said, "Oh, don't worry. They're always getting more information. More people are being tested. You'll get an email that your DNA has been reanalyzed, and and it will surely come back that there's something else in there. There's more information." So I got the email not long afterwards, and once again it was 100%. So anyway, I I then thought, as I have a tendency to do. What does this mean, right? Is there another way to look at this?

Hmm.

And I thought, wait a minute, this might actually be really important evidence that one's educational background, that education really can influence a world perspective and one's knowledge and sense of placement in the world and in relation to others in the world. Because I also did not, did not ever study abroad. I didn't travel a lot as a child. I studied language a little bit by default. Miami was not as diverse a place as it, as it is now. I didn't have in my upbringing a lot of the ingredients that one usually says in our field makes a global citizen.

And is Miami home? Is that where you were born and brought up?

I was born in Atlanta, but because my parents were briefly, uh, gone, but I was actually— okay, this might be crazy, but I'm, I'm going to show you. My, my grandfather came in 1921 to Miami Beach. This is actually A really large— it's behind my— but this is my grandfather.

Oh, that's lovely.

On Christmas Day of 1921, I was walking through the airport, Miami International Airport. There was a display of photographs of Miami Beach in the 1920s. And I'm looking and there's my grandfather. Yeah.

Wow.

So So we've been around here for a while, but the reason why I say that it was— I think, I really do think it was education is that my teachers growing up, I do remember them definitely exposing us to a lot of different perspectives, cultural perspectives, a lot of different thinkers talking about connection, generating ideas, helped me feel that I was part of a bigger world. And there is kind of— so there's another story in there that has to do with FIU and global learning, which I'll tell you if you want to hear, but maybe after you ask some more follow-up questions.

Do you think the fact that Miami is kind of a coastal city affects this broader kind of view of the world? Because you— but almost by definition, when you're on a coastal city or whatever, there are visitors and there are, you know, ships coming in, and there's almost more connection, isn't there, in a lot of coastal towns and cities?

Yeah, I do think that that's the case. It is a global crossroads. By the same token, South Pacific, there's that amazing song, You've Got to Be Carefully Taught, and it's actually about, you know, to be biased, to be prejudiced. But it goes the same way on the opposite side, that you have to learn to see where you are.

Yes.

Yeah, because I definitely did not see Miami I saw Miami when I was younger as like a— I felt like encased in a prison, you know? I mean, like, you feel like, oh, I gotta get out of this place. Um, it's so this or so that.

But I suspect if you grew up in Dayton, Ohio, you'd feel exactly the same way, wouldn't you? Or, or, you know, Burnley in Lancashire, or, or whatever. It's wherever you've been for all your life is, is the, is the Prison, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't see all the diversity that's all around us because, because a lot of it also is cognitive diversity. That's in that chapter, right? It's, it's 2 people can look exactly alike but think totally differently, or the opposite, uh, look very different and think very similarly. So there, there are all these permutations and aspects of diversity that are around us all the time, but it's like it's always opening up and flowering in more layers. And that's what our education and our experience should help us to acquire, the agility to put on different lenses, the openness, the curiosity. I think that education really is the— plays that most important role, whether that education is in a formal schooling setting or a mentor, a parent, so in your house of worship, someone that helps you, um, realize that your way of seeing things is not the only way.

Yes.

And we can benefit by seeing things differently.

Yeah, that's funny. I remember, I always remember, I can't— I must have been 7. Something like that. I always remember a maths teacher called Mr. Michel.

Oh.

This is back in Leicester in the UK when I was 7. This is 50 years ago now. And I remember Mr. Michel teaching me about long multiplication, and I never got it, and I was never any good at maths. I'm still no good at maths, but I can do long multiplication. Yeah, and he showed me tricks, you know, the maths tricks to do long multiplication. Now don't ask me to show you them now, but he did and I kind of— and it clicked and I got it and I suddenly— and it was one of those first moments of realization that there was other ways of doing things and there were other ways of seeing things and I just had to find people who could teach me that stuff. And I was 7, And it's—

and I'm still—

I still remember that 50 years later. It was such a powerful moment.

That's beautiful. And, and so there's— so you had the experience, but then there's the mindfulness of the experience, the making of meaning and saying, okay.

And that putting things together that weren't there before, and the, the possibilities of the different connections that I could now maybe Visualize.

Yeah. And so that's what drives me is, is helping higher education faculty create experiences within their classrooms in which they can guide their students through the process of seeing things differently, and becoming mindful of that and leaving with that bigger lesson, with those bigger lessons of Curiosity, yes, skills in connection-making and idea, but that sense of, I have not just had an educational experience, I've had a transformational experience. I'm not the same person I was when I started this semester.

No.

And I mean, every class could be like that.

Well, we should. That's what we should aspire to, isn't it, as educators? Yeah.

Yeah, I go for like the golden ring, you know. What if we're gonna do this?

What—

why not really go for it? Uh, that's not for everybody, but for those who want to, I think we know a lot about what can generate those kinds of transformations.

I mean, good, good education. I mean, I say to my students, my job is to rewire your head.

Oh, wow.

I mean, what I have in mind there is establish new ways of connecting ideas. I don't want you processing the world the same when you've finished here as you do today.

Yeah.

You know, and whether that's project management or time management or leadership or team, I don't care. It doesn't actually matter, does it, the topic? It's what you do with information and how you process people and knowledge and relationships and views and all that stuff.

Yeah, totally agreed. All those disciplines are just like the vehicles for these different human skills and— ways of knowing, right? Because, because I guess I had never thought about it this way. But being a flexible person, being a, a curious person, those are ways of knowing. Those, those cause behaviors that either attract or help us process or help us go pursue information. Um, and so, so those— that's the, the really important stuff to, to leave every class with, unless you're going to be like a doctor or a nurse.

Kind of.

Yeah, you need to know those specific things. Um, but having just, um, you know, spent, uh, you know, a lot of time in— I spent recently some time in hospitals, not due to COVID, but to other, you know, family things. A person can know all of those sciency things. But when it comes down to applying it with a real human being that is sitting right there in the chair and who needs— it's those other ways of knowing, the curiosity, the empathy, the, the agility, the flexibility that determine the health outcomes for the patient.

Yes. Yes.

It has to be a combination of those things.

Yeah, yeah. I came across a beautiful, wonderful TED Talk by a guy called Julian Treasure recently, and I don't know whether you've come across it, but Julian Treasure, and it's all about active listening and the 5 kind of key skills for listening and stuff like that. But he said, you know, that we create our reality through our listening because what we let in and what we don't creates our reality. And I thought that was really powerful. I thought that was really profound. And it's fabulous. Yeah.

Yeah. Now what do we talk about? Now what do we talk about?

I'm gonna go to your 2 and 4-word description of yourself. So your 2-word description of yourself is connector, which we've touched on and we will continue, I think, to touch on. And I love the second one, firebrand. But I mean, you seem to want to light a fire. And that's what a firebrand is. I mean, it's a flame and you want to light that flame, don't you?

Yeah.

Which is brilliant. So if we take your 4 descriptions and the first one being educator, which is an interesting one to put first. So how did you get to where you are now? You've done a doctorate, you've done lots of different stuff, you've written a book, but you hadn't done your traveling and stuff like that. So how did you— what's your journey and who are your seminal educational or other influences?

Right. Well, that's a little hard because I have this terrible memory. Like, I was just talking about this with my father this weekend, that recall is not one of my— it's not high on my cognitive skills because I have a tendency to just like have an experience and it goes in and then I can't remember the names. Oh no, yes, yeah, that's true. So but in in general, I would say, and this is kind of the advice I'm giving my son and a couple of other people that I've talked to recently: follow your nose. That is absolutely how I got to where I am. Because if if I looked back, I could I could say every experience that I had folded into every other experience and connected here da da da da da. But the honest truth is that I never had a plan. Really?

You mean when you were 5, you didn't kind of say to mom and dad, I want to be, you know, the director of the Office of Interactive Online International—

Man, if you had asked me a year ago, well, maybe a little bit more than a year ago now, but like 2 years ago, right, I would just, It was, it was a little bit of a dream, but it wasn't, I don't know, it was a plan. When I was little, yes, I did like to play teacher, but I started, my, my passion was also in theater, which may not be too much.

Well, I, I, there's a connection there. There's a performance and there's, there's the outgoing communicator. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. So when I, uh, graduated university, well, the night before I formally walked and graduated university, I had a panic attack. I ended up in the emergency room. I couldn't breathe. I had no plan. I mean, I literally had no plan. This is depression. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. My parents, when I was in uni, always asked me, how are you feeling? Like, what did you do this weekend? My grandfather had this great question he would ask me. on Sundays when we talked, are you enjoying life? Nobody asked me, how are you going to feed yourself? Right? Like, it was an assumption. Oh, she's always been high functioning. She's always seemed like she has a plan. She must have a plan now.

Yeah.

And I didn't. I, I had a major in history and a double major in theater studies. And I had a summer internship gig in a theater, and no plan beyond that. And I started to realize, oh yeah, everybody else I'm graduating with, they seem to have like a job or something. So I, so I did that. I started following my nose. I worked in theaters. I, I did the first year of it, of an MFA, and, and, and earned a place, um, in a very selective and incredible, uh, theater program, uh, Trinity—

MFA?

Um, it was an MFA.

I—

oh, Master's in Fine Arts. Master's in Fine Arts. Yeah. And it was at this, like, amazing theater, Trinity Repertory, in, in, in Providence, Rhode Island, and this incredible director, Anne Bogart. And there was just a few of us who got accepted. And I mean, it was really a big deal. And I thought, okay, now this is going to be it. And, and then everything fell apart when I was driving across country and getting away from it for the summer. And, and I had this idea of maybe I won't go back. And I didn't.

Right.

I didn't. I didn't go back. I instead started to work as a in a Montessori school and in a grocery store.

Oh, wow. Well, that's always an amazing kind of— I mean, she was incredible, wasn't she? Yeah.

Yes. So I will say that the philosophy of Maria Montessori and Janice, that the, the master teacher with whom I worked, uh, worked its magic. And I started to connect personally, I think, also with the profession and think about how the aha experience had always driven me throughout school. I'm an intellectual person. I love to have like those sparks of ideas. And it started to feel like you didn't have to pay me to facilitate this in these 3 to 5-year-olds. Like, I could just— see it right there with their— and that's when I said, okay, I'm gonna just follow my nose again and, and get a teaching degree and a master's in secondary education, which that was, it was just by virtue of context, and started teaching. And next thing you know, I am let's say, let's fast forward to 2008.

Okay.

And I was, I was teaching, I was working on my doctoral degree in educational leadership. And I experienced 3 very intense losses of people in my life, like the closest, my 3 closest people within 2 months of each other, just snatched. And And as it was at the end of the school year, and I was thinking, like with the theater situation, I can't go back into the classroom. I don't think I have what it takes to give to these kids. I just don't. I'm depressed and I don't, I don't have it. And my then colleague, co-author, teacher, mentor, dissertation advisor, all these different— she said, I've been invited to lead this project at FIU, Florida International University, called about internationalizing the international university. That was what it was called. And she said it's really important because it's part of our reaccreditation process. So very, very, very high stakes.

Yeah.

I'd never worked in higher education before. I really kind of had no idea what she was asking me to do. But Absolutely, sure, you know, because I knew that—

You were ready for a change, weren't you? Because when— I mean, I remember when my first wife died, just kind of 2000, around 2000, and it was the same thing. I mean, when you go through a seminal life change like that, everything moves, doesn't it? And you're open to new, very much open to new.

And I think that would be a fast-forwarding really to now, right?

Yeah.

So here we are in this global existential crisis. And before the pandemic, I had been working in this space of collaborative online international learning since 2016.

Okay.

And it, it is a global learning intervention as we define it, as Hillary and I have developed a definition of what that process is. And so it was just one of many things I was doing, but I became more and more passionate about its power. And, but the world was like, why? Why? We want to go, we want to go to the place. Of course we want to go to the places, but I guess— but you don't have to go to the places to have a transformational experience. And global learning for all is our value. So I want this to be part of our menu of opportunities for global learning experiences for our students.

Did they get that pre-COVID, or, or really has COVID lit this up?

Well, No, people didn't get it. Very few people got it. Very, very few people got it. And I always share this book. I have it right next to me all the time. This is a woman named Doreen Stark-Meyering. Oh, yes.

I've got this in the, in the show notes.

Yeah, the late Doreen Stark-Meyering. She was at McGill, and she talked about globally networked learning environments. And, and What I, what I came to understand is that COIL is like, it has a unique power because you remain embedded in your own cultural context and you still have to meet this, the other people in this third space. And it is a designed experience.

Yeah.

That is based on equal power, collaboration, complementarity, knowledge creation. Whereas sometimes our study abroad experiences, they're transformational, perhaps for different reasons. They're not necessarily as finely designed. And so, so some people got it.

Hmm.

But in terms of like a broad spectrum of people, no, because it was seen as, well, if they do this online, why will they want to go abroad? And we already spend so— send so few students abroad. And then I think people are also passionate about the thing that transformed them in this field of international education. And for most of us, it's travel. But, but because I didn't have that, I was more open to— there's other ways to—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I'm— and it's interesting because, I mean, when I heard you speak and, and I pinged you during the— when you were doing your speech, um, I did. And, uh, and kind of the day after, I kind of you know, went on to the COIL website, which is the Collaborative Online International Learning website in Florida. So I'm really looking forward to exploring this program with you and hopefully connecting.

I know, I gotta find you a match.

Yeah, so we're gonna be looking at that kind of in much more detail as we go through, but I mean, that's an exciting opportunity. both for me as an educator to kind of learn from you who've kind of already done this and know what to do, but also it's really exciting, I think, for my students potentially to connect with students in different countries in a structured way to enhance their learning journey, which would be fantastic. Yeah, so I'm really looking forward to hearing more about that, definitely. So that's kind of the education journey. Writer. So you got a book. I mean, if I have a look at your LinkedIn profile, you've got a lot of publications as well.

Not as much as like other people.

Well, maybe not, but I mean, you've got more than a handful, certainly. So What's about writing? I mean, why do you enjoy it? And what do you think is your most insightful or important piece? If you could just be remembered for one piece of writing that you've done, what do you think it would be? Oh, there's a tough one, isn't it?

Yeah.

And obviously tell us about the book because, you know, that's obviously a big thing to do.

That's a big thing. And I would have to say that because, yeah, I'd have to say that.

And tell us, so this book is called Making Global Learning Universal?

Universal, yeah.

And you wrote it with what, Hilary Landorf and Japhus Hardrick?

Yeah, yeah. So I— so why writing? Well, I do love that process of discovering— of discovery through writing. Yeah. So, and I'm itching to have more time. I have such a long list of things I want to write about. And, and, but it's, it is that process of— Discovery, but also, I don't like the— I really don't love the drafting part. I love the editing part especially. So it's the refining of the thinking and the taking away the words and the focusing of the ideas and finding a structure that will get down to the fundamentals of the thoughts. The leanest, meanest way to say the thing. I'm a very process-oriented person, so I'm always looking for some way to convey the idea that kind of hacks into the thinking. And really, when I write, I don't want to write to share so much information as to help people think differently about the thing. Right.

So it's more about the ideas, just making those new connections and putting an idea out there. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's not about what to think, but how to think. That's, that's, uh, what I'm more interested in. So I, I want to share, uh, I want to share ideas about process. So thinking about partnerships in a different way, or internationalization, thinking about what is curriculum internationalization in a different way. Thinking about this term global learning, what is global? What is collaboration?

Yeah.

Really getting into the— so that others can decide for— can make the ideas and produce the knowledge they want for themselves or the outcomes in their institution, the leadership outcomes. So I like also particularly taking ideas from different disciplines And applying it to education and to leadership.

So powerful, isn't it? Yeah.

That's my favorite thing.

That's wonderful when you can do that. Absolutely.

That is pretty much my writing style. And so in terms of the book, taking the concept of collective impact from social change theory and applying it to educational leadership. Taking Scott Page's ideas about how diverse teams work— he's an economist— and applying it to diversity, inclusion, and equity in education. That's the sort of stuff that I really love doing, and finding really impactful metaphors, the mapping idea for introducing the book. In the professional development chapter, looking at diffusion of innovations theory, throwing that in there, right? So all of all of those connection making, discovering, learning that struggle. I really I really like that.

I'm looking forward to the kind of second half of the summer where I've recorded all these podcasts, and and then I go back to the transcripts. And start to extract, if you like, the different nuggets and the ideas, which will be the second half of the book. So the first half of the book is going to be like edited transcripts. The second half of the book is going to be like, right, let's take some of these strands now and open them up and have a look at them a little bit more and, you know, point people at resources and stuff like that. And You know, I get to talk to you and I get to talk— I've just edited Linda Yang's episode, which is going up tomorrow, which will be a lovely segue. The 2 of your episodes will follow each other, so that'll be fantastic. But I mean, so many different viewpoints, different thoughts, even in just like 10 weeks of interviews. I'm feeling very blessed by this project at the moment.

Fantastic.

So, I mean, I love the way you describe the writing process because it sounds to me as though the writing process kind of informs you as an educator as well. It's very much a kind of cyclic virtuous circle.

Yeah, and it is. So that connecting where I'm looking for different perspectives from authors, to be able to apply and then take these 2 previously completely disconnected ideas and take pieces of them to create a 3rd idea, right? It's that superadditivity of diversity that comes from Scott Page. That is also the essence of what global learning is all about.

Yeah.

And I say all the time that it's a process that demands others, but when we get to And I'm not— I don't want to— I'm not saying this, let's say, like I'm at a higher level of thinking, but our goal is to enable people within themselves to do that kind of writ small. So the process we— so we say that global learning isn't so much what you learn— different languages, area studies, world history—

Yeah.

Or where you learn, that you have to study in a different country or in a different institution. But it's how we learn, that it's a process that engages diverse people. And we use the term diversity as broad as you can imagine it. They're all— they're diverse perspectives, cognitive, gender-based, disciplinary, all of it. Even time, like historical and future.

Different.

Yeah, the whole just different. Yeah, so a process that engages that involves diverse people collaboratively. So it's that idea that, okay, we all hold a piece of the puzzle, or we're all touching a different part of the elephant in the Indian aphorism.

That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, we all have to bring it, um, together. So to analyze, to understand its component part, and then to address. And we use address because Addressing means a lot of different things in terms of action.

Yeah.

So global—

Yes.

It could be a solution, it could be a just a movement, it could be a new idea. So it's a process that involves— that engages diverse people in collaborative efforts to understand, analyze, and address complex problems that transcend borders. And so complex is key. Yeah, because it means that these are questions or problems that cannot be understood by one person, perspective.

These are the wicked problems.

Totally. But, but they can be wicked, but even they— but they don't— but they can also be very, very local, right? They don't have to be like Sustainable Development Goal. They could be wicked problems within our lives that are, that are complex. And the idea that it transcends borders is the fact that it transcends borders of perspective, but it also has differential impacts on different people.

Hmm.

And so that's kind of the social justice aspect of global learning in that we acknowledge that the way we understand, but also the way we're influenced by an issue differs by each individual. And so in order to create a sustainable and equitable solution, we have to understand the way— the different ways that people are impacted by these problems. That is not— and, and, and in terms of making global learning universal, it's this idea that All people— this is— it's not should, or that— this is what education is, right? Like, I mean, to me, global learning is education. It's not, uh, an add-on. It's not like— it, it's the way education has to be for all, all the time. So it is an inherent understanding that I, I'm, I'm not going to be able to be a truly learned person sitting in my office and, and just reading books.

I've got to connect.

I've got to connect with other people. I've got to dialogue. Yeah, yeah, I've got to connect outside of my brain.

So that's brilliant. And I mean, and, and Zoom has been fantastic for that, hasn't it? Before we started the podcast, we were kind of just chatting, and, and I think you said kind of that you feel that you've connected with more people.

I know I have.

Post-COVID, kind of through, through this little camera that we're staring into. It's been amazing, hasn't it? And I mean, that's how we connected. I mean, you were, you were talking to UCD.

It's my mission. I mean, global learning is my mission. So nothing's going to stop me from figuring out a way to facilitate this process and helping others facilitate it. It can happen in the classroom with just the students that are enrolled in my class. It can happen in a study abroad. It can happen in the community. It can happen online. It can happen in a— it can happen. It's just a process. It is modality agnostic.

Yeah. And you're employing multiple modalities, aren't you? So you're in the classroom, you're running this COIL program, which I'm still really interested in.

Okay, we'll get to that now.

You're doing the Podcast, you've written a book, you write articles, you speak. So all these different modalities you're employing to get the message out because you're effectively an evangelist for this, aren't you?

You love this.

This is like—

I do.

You're not doing this because of the paycheck, are you? Kind of because of what somebody's paying you to do. This is kind of coming from in here.

I'll give you my PayPal.

So, I mean, FIU is where you are situated, but you're also a member of a number of other organizations as well. So tell us about some of them and why we should be interested, and which ones kind of should we look at more closely perhaps, or, you know, if this kind of thing that you've been talking about for the last 40 minutes or so is ringing bells in people's heads.

Yeah.

You know, what other organizations are there out there that we could join or that we could look at that would, you know, maybe plug us in a bit more to this?

Yeah, well, in terms of internationalization and people around the world who are really— who really want to talk about this stuff, about how do we, um, develop educational pathways or, or ways for our students to, um, ways to connect people and their ideas. That's what— the way I say it.

Yeah.

Um, you know, we have NAFSA, we have, um, the International Education Association. That's the, the organization that gave us the— that fancy award, the Paul Simon Award.

Yeah.

It's an institution that is itself evolving. Um, I would say that all of the organizations that I'm part of— AIEA, uh, with the Association of International Education Administrators, EAIE, there's URI— I mean, like, all of these international networks, international education networks started in traditional mobility, people going and coming, right? And dual degree, this, these sorts of things. And all of them are in this space of evolution.

Okay.

All of everybody, because We can't do that work that we did before. We want to go back to being able to do it, but we want to do it better.

Yeah.

And we, we know we have not been able to move the dial on study abroad in decades, really. Right?

Yeah.

And so how can we achieve these goals? There is a piece that I wrote earlier in the pandemic. And it was, I think it was that one. I think I'll find it and give you the link.

Dig it out and I'll put it in.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I'll link to it in the show notes, yeah.

Yeah, but it's really about why we internationalize. Actually, it was from before the pandemic.

Okay.

It was before because people, what is internationalization? there's this idea, it's the infusion of international aspects to all of these different, uh, business parts of our business model as an institution.

Okay.

Whether it's the teaching and learning or, or the professional development or the research, things like that. But isn't there a bigger why, like a deeper why? And for me, there is this And this is probably a good segue to go into talking about COIL. There's a definition of internationalization that comes from a gentleman at INSEAD.

Yes.

So business, and his name is Gabriel Hawawini, and he says it's about connecting the institution and the people in it to the world's knowledge exchange and production network. That's what internationalization is. It's about both receiving information, but it's also about contributing to the network and making it bigger.

Yeah, totally.

We are— our institution is already internationalized in some way because we are part of the network, but some of us are either building walls or just not seeing the connections. And others of us are saying, we want to get as many ways to connect our institution and the people in it as possible. And we're going to have to create some new business models.

Yes.

To figure out how to do that. And why? Because that is the mission of higher education, to create and produce new knowledge. So if we're not internationalizing, We are not doing our jobs as higher education.

So let's segue into COIL then. Okay, so you, you're in this part of the university now where the mission is to make these linkages and, and stuff, and, and I'm teaching a program in Dublin in Ireland, okay, with postgrad students who want to learn about project management. So what, what can my students hope to get from connecting with COIL?

Yeah, yeah, this is good because I wanted to talk to you about your profile. I'm making you a match right now. People will see how the, the honey is made.

And I mean, you know, because, because I mean, take me as kind of like, you know, an exemplar of somebody Else out there who might be interested in doing the same thing, you know, who might be interested in signing up their students with Coils. So, so what's in it for us? And what, what's, what's in it for you? And, and how do we— what, what's the process? And, you know, yeah.

All right, let's do it. So the very first thing I'm going to ask you is, okay, you said that your students are working in project management. Is there a question, a challenge, a topic that's really hot, that's really important for your students, like a big takeaway that you really want your students to get out of?

I mean, certainly an emerging trend in the last couple of years, in the last 3 or 4 years particularly, is sustainability, right? And sustainable project management, doing projects right, doing them in an ethically right way, doing them in a sustainable way from terms of supply chain, in terms of materials, into all that kind of stuff. So, you know, the very practical stuff of procurement and supply chain and legal and all these kind of things, which perhaps might be to some perceived as, if you like, the more boring kind of bits of project management rather than communication and the soft skills and all the rest of it. But doing that right and doing that with an eye to, you know, sustainability and global citizenship and green issues and all that kind of stuff, that would be a big one. Yeah.

Okay, cool. So, well, do you know everything about the environment and ethics? I'm like, dude, you take too much.

That's a short answer. Yeah, it's a 2-word answer, that one. 2-letter answer.

No! Yeah, well, that's good. Of course you don't. Of course you don't. And, and, and that's good that you don't know everything, because then you wouldn't know as much about the stuff that you know about.

I don't know everything about anything, let alone—

Well, that's the way I feel more and more too. Um, okay. So supply chain, environmental impacts, ethics, legal impact, like all that stuff. So there are probably even cases.

Yeah.

That you could even like describe, like a case where that's— do students look at cases in your course?

Yeah, I mean, we use cases, but I'm trying to point students as much as I can away from, if you like, classic written case study analysis to more experiential learning.

Ah.

So I mean, they have 2 major assignments, one with a charity and one with a local company where they actually do a piece of work with the charity or the local company and stuff. So I wouldn't be looking specifically for kind of like an academic case Study assignment. Yeah, I'm trying to kind of make it a little bit more real than that.

Yeah, yeah. So, so, so, um, theoretically, you, uh, you could actually have your students work with a client almost.

Absolutely. Yeah, we already do.

You already do? Okay. And that client could be anywhere in the world?

Could be anywhere in the world.

Okay. So, so the way COIL works is that you get 2 or more teachers who are working with 2 or more cohorts of students, groups of students, and those 2 teachers, let's just say, well, let's just keep it as bilateral in the simplest form right now. Those 2 teachers will say, where is there a space that our courses kind of overlap, both in terms of the calendar, like 4 to 8 weeks, but also in terms of our mutual interest in a particular topic?

Yes.

Right. And sometimes those teachers teach the same subject, like you could find another professor of project management, say in, I don't know, like, is, is, are Irish businesses or even Irish charities Are there certain connections with certain parts of the world, like maybe in terms of labor in Ireland that's coming from this particular part of the world, or there's multinational businesses that have—

Oh, definitely. Oh yeah, lots of that.

Like it could be Latin America, it could be Africa.

One of the student teams did a piece on an Irish fabricator company in the middle of Ireland who are now supplying into Costa Rica.

Okay, yeah, great. The former president of Costa Rica works at my university, so that's interesting because we could use him as a potential connector. So that's it. So theoretically, so you could work theoretically with another project management professor in Costa Rica where you could take a look at a multinational Or from kind of that, or a company wanting to set up in Costa Rica and how that happened.

And that's what, that's what the student team did, actually.

Yeah, yeah. You could even look at parallel case studies, right? Where you can have something—

We did have 3 or 4 teams working on this and kind of working on different or similar kind of, yeah, areas.

And theoretically, I'm— this is, again, this is theoretically because I do not know No. Or field. I'm like a 5-year-old. I heard you say environmental, ethical, legal. You— it could be actually a professor in Costa Rica of law students or of, um, like environmental science students.

Yeah.

Who would look at that same case and kind of unpack it from that. So, so, okay. So, and it could be like a decision-forcing case where the students would have to— would bring their their, uh, copywriting.

It could be marketing. It could be a marketing class who, who, you know, how do we do a product launch into a new geography?

Yeah, you could study a third space. So you could have the students in Costa Rica and the students in Ireland looking at it. Okay, that's cool. So my job now would be to help you find that match. Someone who—

You're a matchmaker, are you?

Totally. That's what I have to do as my job. That's like, that is My favorite part of my job. So there are a lot of romance metaphor aspects.

Yeah.

Okay, so, so my job now would be to cast the net and see how can I find Joe, someone who is equally as interested in these, these issues and has maybe a little bit of the same kind of mindset and who you hit it off with personally, right? Because it is a personal relationship.

That's right, because you're going to work together and there's going to be ups and downs and—

Totally.

Get rid— get through and yeah, all of the rest of it.

Yeah. Totally. And you might have someone that you already know, that someone from grad school or someone from— someone that you want to just reach out to on your own who's in your professional organization or something. But also you may say, I don't want to pivot that existing relationship, just go ahead and find me Find Me a Match, definitely.

And I mean, the whole, the whole fun bit of this is, one, I'm making contact with you and your people, and I'm making new connections.

Exactly, exactly. This stuff is just as transformational for the professors, if maybe even more so, than it is for students. Global Learning is the same way, but it's, but it's very Intercultural, right? So, um, so I would look for a match, I would introduce you, you would maybe chat a little bit via email, then we have a meeting, we talk a little bit, we say, what's— when might you want to do this? When might you want to do this? What are our calendars, linguistic, like those basic things? And then you would say, we're a match, right? And we say, we want to do this.

Yeah.

Okay, this is when the pedal to the metal or the rubber hits the road.

Because now there must be some kind of a framework. There must be some— something that you've done now that we can do this properly.

Yes.

And what are the learning outcomes? And what are the— how do we run this properly?

Yeah, absolutely. There are extremely hip faculty out there who— this is in their genes. This is in your blood. And they're just like, Oh, they can look at something on a piece of paper and say, we can do that.

Yeah.

But the vast majority, even those that, that can do it and have done it, and they've done a pretty good job, but they hit some speed bumps that could be avoided if, um, or lessened.

Yes.

Or coped with better with some professional development.

And you've got a protocol. You've got it.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah, just the, the skeleton.

Skeleton.

Yeah, put on all of the— yeah, that it— so, um, so the fundamentals are that a great COIL is going to have icebreaking experiences. So the students are— because these are strangers, just like you and your other partners.

Right, they don't trust each other and they don't know each other and they're from different institutions and totally all that stuff.

Of course, after COIL faculty do icebreakers for the first time, and in the professional development training that we do, it is run as a COIL. So the faculty go through the same experience as their students would.

And this is your plus one as well, isn't it? So what you do with icebreakers is your plus one. So tell us about icebreakers and why they're important.

Exactly. Exactly. They say, oh my gosh, I have to do this in all the courses. Like, how can I not do this in everything that I do, even if it's not COIL? They say it, so that's cool. So, so first there's the icebreaker experiences, and those are everything from what is your name to starting to and how do you pronounce it properly? Yes, that's important.

And I meant to ask you about yours because I, I said Dasha, and I don't know whether you said it perfect or Dasha.

So yeah, you did it perfectly. So, so what is your name and how do you pronounce it to what does your name mean?

Yes.

Right. Do you, do you think your name properly fits you? Like you can go deeper and deeper and deeper into perspective. So developing some icebreaker experiences that usually have nothing to do with the content, but can lead into that, do lead into the collaborative. Experience. So then there's the collaborative task, and it really has to be a task where both sides, or all the sides, are of equal power.

Yes.

Equal contributions. And that takes some design chops. So in the workshop, we talk about how do you design collaboration. Collaboration does not happen by default. It happens by design.

Yes.

We get teams. We, we say, you're on a team, you're in a group, here's your assignment.

Well, you start a group, but you've got to form a team, haven't you? Because it's a— that's the forming, storming.

You got to do that. Totally. You got to do that. But also, or, and also, there's, um, the design of the task.

Yeah.

And the directions we give our students.

And how is it achievable and If they break down, how do they recover?

And— And even deeper. So is the task something that does require everyone? And then how are ideas exchanged and then connected?

Yeah.

So if we say just make a 6-slide PowerPoint, Then there's nothing in that direction that guides students to bring their different ideas to the table and then connect them to create something such that at the end, if the professor said, who did that? People go, uh, well, I kind of first did this, and then they did that, and then they did that. That's when you know collaboration happened. Yes, right.

Yes, so you don't want kind of Ted did slide 1 and Sue did slide 2. And no, because then it's just bolted together and it's— no.

And that's not to say that communication and cooperation, divide and conquer, aren't part of collaboration. They are. But there's this next step. So in the training, we talk about different recipes, if you will, for designing that. And then the most important thing, and we talked about this earlier, is that mindfulness aspect. So Yes. Because the learning happens in the reflection.

Oh, always. I always have a reflection at the end of almost every module, a reflective piece, even if it's only just a few percent.

So you are— it's like in your blood already.

Yeah. Oh, this is going to be brilliant.

Those are just little tweaks.

We're definitely going to have to explore this further, Stephanie. I'm conscious that we're kind of up on our almost I have I have a couple more little questions, and then then we'll wrap up.

Sure.

Your next step in your continuing professional development is is CETA CITA International.

Yeah.

Tell us about them.

What what's what's? Thank you. Um, I yeah, no, thank you for for for being patient with my interruptions because I. They call that— that is, they call that collaborative overlapping.

Okay.

That's a nice way to say interrupting. And people of the Jewish or Middle Eastern, Middle Europe persuasion, we tend to collaboratively overlap a lot.

Right.

New Yorker, New Yorker. Yeah, it's terrible. CITA. So, or CITA, I might be mispronouncing it.

I think EI is I, isn't it? CITA. Yeah. Yeah.

I have to— I'm just discovering this organization. And they are a global organization that has different chapters and provide professional development and training around interculturality. And I'm interested in. I'm just kind of digging in, taking advantage of the offerings that are very affordable. It's one of the sources. I didn't talk that much earlier about like the sources, the people that I really go to in the podcast, in my podcast, the second season. is a, is a, an interview with a woman named Tara Harvey, who has an organization called True North Intercultural. And there's also another interview with a gentleman who focuses on intergroup dialogue. So I'm really looking, I'm trying to learn more about different dialogic forms, and how, what I can offer to faculty in that training that is Very like small but powerful because faculty are overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed. So it has got to be one like super atomic explosion idea that they can apply.

Yes, they can go and use and apply.

Yeah, I cannot teach every faculty everything about intercultural. I can't learn it all. So I'm looking for those small, Incredibly powerful ideas to offer to them.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Right, so I'm gonna have a look at Sci-Tower as well then. That's amazing. We've covered so much and yet so little in an hour. I want to go on for another 2 hours, but I know we can't. So maybe we'll do it again sometime or whatever. But this has been fantastic. I've loved listening to To what you kind of— your passion, it just comes through in everything you say. And I mean, that's why I pinged you when you were talking at UTD.

Oh yeah, we're on the same—

I gotta have Steph on the podcast. This is fabulous.

We're absolutely on the same wavelength. I mean, it's definitely a natural connection. Yeah, it feels good.

Yeah, absolutely. So look, Thank you so much for taking the time. This is definitely not the last time we're going to be speaking.

No.

No, because I definitely want to follow up on COIL. So that's brilliant. Last word from you, one thing to leave us with. What's one thing that we should remember or think about in terms of what you do and Why you do it?

Well, I think I'll— I hadn't planned this, but I'm just going to show you these babies that I just brought into the house. So these are a couple of flowers. These are gardenias. I wish you could smell these. But I think I'll just— this will be the idea then. The reason that I grow the flowers and I bring them in and I put them next to my computer all the time is I do look for answers in nature. Yeah. How does, how does the natural world, how do plants grow and develop? How, how does it, how do, how do plants survive? I got to go to Iceland and watch the volcano create new land. Yes. Right. And And all what looked like destruction, what looked so dangerous and horrible—

Suddenly becomes life.

Becomes life, yeah. And so how do those cycles continue? And then how can I help people to see them and then to learn how we can do the same thing, kind of break down our old ideas of who we are and others and the world around us and then create new ideas that contribute to everyone's health.

I love that because my 2-word description of me is people gardener, which is absolutely tied into that whole idea.

Baker's in there too for me.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Listen, we'll wrap it up. Thank you so much, Stephanie Doscher, for your time today.

My pleasure. Joe.