My Kwantlen Polytechnic University colleague Dr. Charles Quist-Adade has helped found a project that brings students from Ghana and students from Kwantlen into the same classroom at the same time using “integrative information and educational technologies” like Wiziq and Moodle.

The course is called “Sociology of Global Inequalities,” in which students “critically examine the various perspectives on development and underdevelopment within a global context, as well as their relation to changing economic, political and social situations in Canada and the Third World.” Students focus on “NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and other regional economic arrangements, paying particular attention to the effect of such processes on communities and individuals.”

According to an article by Gibril Koroma, “The partially on-line course [uses] a mixed mode delivery, combining synchronous video-audio streaming, real chat, online materials, pre-packaged online materials, as well as asynchronous chat sessions. It is the second phase in a pilot project initiated in 2008 by Dr. Quist-Adade and his Ghanaian collaborators, Dr. Akosua Darkwah of the University of Ghana, Dr. Vincent Dodoo of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology [KNUST], Kumasi and Mr. Kodwo Ansong Boateng of Ghana Institute of Journalism, Accra.”

Juliet Oppong-Boateng, a graduate from KNUST, says she “decided to take this course because I wanted to get a deeper knowledge of what the globalization phenomenon is all about and [it] also offered me the opportunity to get a live interaction with fellow students in Canada.”