Last week, students from ONU and Perm State University in Russia took part in an online conversation. This is the fourth talk between students from the two nations since 2009. The talks came about when Dr. Crawford delivered a lecture for PSU students on Sport and the Cold War. The initial contact was between Crawford and one of his friends from graduate school who was teaching in Perm. Other Russian professors led by Kate Isayeva of the Faculty of Linguistics, expressed interest in continuing the sessions to give their students practice communicating in English. Dr. Jimmy Wilson and some of his Geography students as well as students from Dr. Smith's Geography classes have also taken part in the talks. Talks are held using Skype and despite some technical issues, they have gone smoothly.
Students from both universities have made presentations, shared videos of their university lives, and conversed since then. This latest effort asked both sets of students to write their conceptions of the others before the conversation started, and then to write about how those preconceptions changed as a result of the talk.
Communication between cultures is an important method for bringing the content of textbooks to life. We believe that both sets of students benefit from these and will continue in the future!
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