Professor: Luis Zambrano, Ph.D.
Course: MATH 201 – Pre-Calculus
Modality: Combination of On-line Synchronous using Zoom/WhatsApp and On-line Asynchronous on Padlet and WhatsApp
Partner Institution: Jordan University of Science and Technology
Links/Conference Presentation:
GSACS-Presentation-and-Reflections_Spring-2023_Luis_SalahAbstract of Project: This project brings college students in Jordan and New York City together to address United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6: Clean Water and Sanitation, through an exploration and comparative analysis of the quality of drinking water and clean water sustainability in different neighborhoods/regions in Jordan and New York City. Students analyzed water samples for key metrics such as metals content, pH, and total dissolved solids, in order to determine the unique challenges faced in each country in their clean water sustainability efforts and to propose solutions to solve or mitigate these challenges.
Crafting the Project with Professor Partner: My partner and I first agreed on the appropriate initial values and priorities for carrying out this project and achieving its objectives. Namely, we agreed that that it was important to first promote community: we wanted to have students take the initiative, ownership and leadership in working with each other, establishing on-going dialogue and meetings with their international group partners. My partner instructor and I initially scheduled plenary all-class meeting with between the classes where students could introduce themselves “live.” We then decided to make small working groups (3-4 students from each school) made up of mixed NYC and Jordan students and collected student contact information so they could set up lines of communication and chat groups to continue their dialogue independently in within each group.
As far as crafting the project itself, we wanted a hands-on experiential project so that students at any level of academic or math proficiency could actively participate and immediately make connections to their lives in the research they undertook. Thus we chose the UN sustainability goal for clean water and determined that collecting key measurements of water quality was a way to deploy this project, and at the same time a way to incorporate various mathematical measurements and tools (pH measurement, ppm and unit conversions, trends and patterns over time or geography, the use of excel, etc.).
Overall, I think it helped that my partner and I agreed on the fundamental principles of crafting the project and the priorities in terms of what we wanted students to experience. We kept the project technically feasible, but expected students to take the initiative to communicate with their international partners.
Student Engagement During the Partnership: Students engaged with curiosity and a great willingness to learn about their corresponding group partners from the Middle East, and the personal interest appeared to be mutual. Technically, we set up a platform for posting work using Padlet, where they could easily post and share work with each other and with partners in the Middle East. This included an initial posting of an introductory video, as well as subsequent posts of reflections, prompts, and other intermediary steps in the students’ joint work.
My students would often recount in reflections and discussions their surprise at the marked difference in the lives of their group partners in Jordan, in even the most routine, daily tasks that we often take for granted here in NYC. For instance, my students were surprised at the degree of care and rationing necessary by their partners in Jordan in order to plan and obtain potable water for everyday use.
Student Communication During the Project: Most videos and project work was posted on Padlet. My partner instructor and I collected individual student contact information so that students could directly communicate to plan any meetings or discussions with their group partners, primarily via WhatsApp.
Biggest Obstacles Faced: The biggest challenge was the difficulty that students faced in communicating synchronously (live on-line) with each other on a regular basis. Primarily, this was due to the time difference between NYC and the Middle East. In any given week, students in at least two of the five groups reported not being able to make contact with students in their group from the partner college. Consequently, they resorted to asynchronous messaging, usually on WhatsApp, to accomplish communication. However, I wish to acknowledge that the students and the instructor from the Middle East college were quite generous and accommodating, often offering to meet with my NYC class during our daytime hours EST, which on most occasions corresponded to after-hours meeting times for them in the Middle East.
Other challenges included having to contend with the interruptions of NYC spring break and with the Middle East’s Ramadan period, in which many students from the partner institution signaled that they were also less available, making it more difficult for them to meet with their group partners due to family and community obligations after sundown. But these are at the same time the type of challenges that deepen intercultural appreciation. Lastly, a few students also reported other cultural challenges, such as the reticence of female students from the Middle East to meet alone with a male student synchronously, the necessity to adjust English communication style and language in order to be clear to students who mostly spoke English as a second language. But such concerns were usually respectfully resolved and communication clarified when needed through asynchronous communication.
I also had expected to find it challenging to bridge project expectations between my freshmen and sophomore pre-calculus students at the community college level with senior or graduating chemical engineering students from a four-year, prestigious research university in Jordan. Although our two respective students were at very different levels of math proficiency and academic experience, this difference did not appear to obstruct the communication or relationships they formed, nor the work they produced. I think this bridging was in part successful due to the mutual focus of both classes on our choice of research questions that emphasized application and experiential investigation (the UN sustainability goals).
Evaluating Success: I think it went very well, despite the above challenges, or maybe because of the above challenges! I feel that the greatest learning was not primarily the learning of course content, or even application of content, but rather the challenges of working and communicating in a context where accommodation, respect, appreciation and understanding of the different values and perspectives of other group partners was necessary. Students’ reflection and feedback was very meaningful and humbling to me, as I’ve shared in the last few slides of the presentation PPT I submitted. In some cases, the challenges students faced served the purpose of gaining an appreciation of cultural difference and the recognition of the effort sometimes necessary to establish meaningful dialogue and productive communication.
Class Syllabus:
MATH-201-001-7030_PreCalc_Spring-1_2023_ZambranoLuisModule Description:
Welcome to Global Scholars Achieving Career Success (GSACS)! GSACS is a multinational collaboration between five colleges of the City University of New York and four universities in the Middle East and North Africa. Our project partners Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) and Guttman Community College students in a study of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6: Clean Water and Sanitation. Students will explore the shared inquiry question: What are the differences in water quality within New York City, and between New York City and Jordan? The learning module will provide students with international perspectives on associated social and cultural issues relating to water, and on the applications of science and technology to sustainability and development of water resources.
Students from each class will engage in dialogue with their international peers to compare how the UN SDG is experienced in the US and in Jordan, and collaborate on a group project that will be presented at the GSACS Student Conference in the Spring. Upon completion of the GSACS program, students will attend a career success workshop that will help them further develop career competencies and work on professional documents, such as LinkedIn profiles and resumes.
Theme: Quality of drinking water in Jordan and New York City
Water is essential for all aspects of our life, and therefore high quality of water needs to be maintained. Unfortunately, many people all over the world do not have an access to safe and clean drinking water. In 2020 two billion people lacked safely managed drinking water (https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal6). In addition to water pollution and water stress, many countries are struggling with challenges related to water scarcity due to the climate change, or
degraded water-related ecosystems, and other challenges (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2021/goal-06/). Although United States has an advanced wastewater facilities and expansive pipelines supply quality water to both cities and rural areas, various reasons, such as natural disasters, infrastructure failures or poor system maintenance may seriously affect the water quality (https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/water-inequality/). Jordan, on the other hand is considered as one of the countries struggling with water crisis. Dwindling water supplies and growing population will significantly reduce water use per capita in Jordan by the end of this century (https://news.stanford.edu/2021/03/29/jordans-worsening-water-crisis-warning-world/).
This 8 weeks course module brings college students in Jordan and New York City together to explore the issue of water pollution and the quality of drinking water in different neighborhoods/regions in Jordan and New York City, in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6 (Clean Water and Sanitation).
In this module, you will collaborate and complete activities with international peers, conduct an experiential learning activity and finally, present your research project with your international team at a virtual student conference at the end of the semester.
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this virtual exchange module, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate an increased knowledge about global water pollution issue
- Demonstrate an increased knowledge about common water pollutants
- Demonstrate an increased knowledge about the quality of water in Jordan and New York City
- Demonstrate an increased knowledge about cultural differences and similarities between Jordan and New York City.
- Develop intercultural competence, as demonstrated by exhibiting openness, inclusiveness, sensitivity, and the ability to interact and collaborate respectfully with all people
- Use digital technology to collaborate with international peers
- Conduct research to answer an inquiry-based research question
